AUS police foil plot on aircraft
 

Police disrupt plot in Australia to 'bring down an airplane'

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian police disrupted a plot to bring down an airplane and arrested four men in raids on homes in several Sydney suburbs, the prime minister said Sunday.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that security has been increased at Sydney Airport since Thursday because of the plot. The increased security measures also were extended to all major international and domestic terminals around Australia overnight.

"I can report last night that there has been a major joint counterterrorism operation to disrupt a terrorist plot to bring down an airplane," Turnbull told reporters. "The operation is continuing."

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin said details were scant on the specifics of the attack, the location and timing.

"In recent days, law enforcement has been become aware of information that suggested some people in Sydney were planning to commit a terrorist attack using an improvised devise," Colvin said. "We are investigating information indicating the aviation industry was potentially a target of that attack."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/4-arreste...133500937.html

Any more from down under on this?

As always, it is what is not being said that raises the most interest.

All I can say is the terriosts have won again. The PM has warned the nation to expect long security screening times and asked then to limit the amount of luggage the carry. What is it costing to fight this cancer? There must be a better solution.

Sydney terror raids 'disrupted' plot to bring down plane, Malcolm Turnbull says - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Not much more detail, but obviously the potential threat was enough to make airport security reassess what they currently do.

Well done to all involved, but I fear this is just another part of modern life that we will have to learn to live with. Once people get it in their mind that they can further whatever cause seems important to them, and have no guilt or remorse about killing innocent people, there is nothing really that can be done but watch and act.

As the USAF used to say "The price of eternal vigilance is eternal vigilance"

Lord Denning in The Road to Justice (1988) states that the phrase originated in a statement of Irish orator John Philpot Curran in 1790: "It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."

Reading between the lines. They had worked out a way to construct an explosive on a plane from parts carried on. It makes sense to not reveal any more details.

Cats outa the bag now...

That's just your speculation and no such thing has been reported or inferred here.

This may becomes a headline tomorrow quoting you as the source :ugh:

No, SOPS, the terrorists have not won again. We will have to get used to the extra measures. Personally, I would sooner wait in a long queue, knowing that the (hopefully, well funded) security services are doing their job, than breeze through with the possibility of never reaching my destination.

You only had to,look at the names of the suburbs with the exception of Surry Hills to know who is behind it all.

Security
 

Mostly I fly through UK, Australia, Spanish, Asian airports.
UK & Australia (Sydney) seem to me to be usually chaotic,
long conga lines in the UK, nowhere to put anything, shoes, bags.
Nowhere to sit when putting shoes on.
Supervisors who seem to be of no value whatever.
My opinion is there should be the necessary number of properly trained security staff for the job to be done without long waiting lines.
If security has to be, then it should be done properly.
By the way, why do UK passport readers usually not work and other countries do ?

Five properties were searched on Saturday across the Sydney suburbs of Surry Hills, Lakemba, Punchbowl and Wiley Park.

or thought that they had worked it out ?

Whilst technically correct, the use of the descriptor "IED" has more gravitas than the term, "home made bomb".

In my view, "IED" implies a professional or military level of design, sophistication or potential destructive force by using improvised military munitions.

"Home made bomb" implies the materials to make it are gathered from a domestic environment.

The Boston bomber was charged with using a "weapon of mass destruction", until then a term in common use for err well weapons of war, not the humble pressure cooker.

In both cases are police deliberately over emphasising the threat by using these politically charged terms?

In doing so, raising level of public apprehension?

The 'security forces' are not going to suggest that what they have 'found' was 'nothing of consequence'.

Strict legal definitions used in the criminal justice system are often different from common parlance or from military definitions.

The Boston bomber was charged with using a WMD because according to US criminal code, any explosive device is considered a WMD. Police aren't in the habit of just using random terms when they legally charge someone with a crime.

IED does not imply professional or military design. IEDs by definition are "improvised" in some way, that is, not a standard military or commercially designed explosive (although an IED could be improvised from one).

"Home made" explosives generally mean IEDs constructed solely from readily available materials, like bleach (hydrogen peroxide), fertilizers (ammonium nitrate), etc. -- whether or not they were actually made at any home.

So all "home made explosives" are IEDs, but not vice versa.

It's not clear from reports what kind of materials were seized in the Sydney raids.

I would guess they were widely available materials. From an aviation perspective, the good news is that most of these materials are detectable by security screening devices.

Excellent.
And also presumably excellent use of intelligence on the part of the security services.
That is the difficult stuff, the clever stuff. All as it should be.
So let's not allow some middle management to make a career out of extra security screening and even more baggage restrictions.

I am only SLF, but it seems to me that putting the baggage back in the hold would help to mitigate a lot of the problems. Granted that battery powered items are an exception, but with the fees the airlines are charging, passengers are dragging all their worldly possessions into the cabin with them. If those fees were eliminated, undoubtedly a lot of stuff would be checked, instead. It would make life easier for the flight attendants, lessen the chance of heavy bags falling on someone in turbulence or a crash (and keep people from bringing their bags in an evacuation), and there would be less for the security scanners to check, presumably allowing them to do a more through job and speeding up the lines. Is there a legitimate reason (besides greed and the fact they can get away with it) for the airlines to NOT want luggage in the hold?

So that gave Dubyah and Tony quite a bit of leeway for invading Iraq, right?

Lucas electrics?

And, yeah, I wouldn't mind being 'randomly selected for additional screening' every other flight I take if the people doing it weren't so incompetent. I was particularly impressed the time I was waiting for my 'additional screening' and the swab they took from the little old lady in front of me triggered an alarm, and they all ran around like headless chickens trying to figure out what to do.

This is why I just avoid flying these days. The terrorist have, indeed, won.