3 Texas men terror plot foiled.

The really scarry part of this whole thing is now that the statement has been made that these guys are not doing anything wrong, there will be another bunch that will do the same thing, under the same excuse, and then send them to a terrorist group, and come back to haunt us. Guilty or not and just doing a business of reselling the phones, may be just what these guys say it is, but I would not give a free pass to anyone doing the same thing, as it is just to easy now to commit a crime of selling, or making straw purchases of these phones for a terrorist group.

Sounds like the terrorist are learning how to get their hands on legal phones for illeagle intent, I would if I were in the Law enforcement community, keep Very Close eyes on this sort of thing, and not pass it off as "oh well they are just conducting buisness" remember that the Terrorist take a long time to study and set up their attacks, don't let this one be a part of the next wave of attacks on us here, or any place else in the world.
Click to expand...

They're cell phones. Cell phones. Yes, terrorists use them. But I hope we don't get stupid enough to start limiting the number of freakin' cell phones somebody can buy in a given time. I don't even like rules like that when they apply to guns, let alone cell phones.

Guess what? White kids do this all the time. Buy a bunch of these cellphones at Wal-Mart, and resell them for profit. Been going on for quite some time now. You never heard of it before, because no racist cop picked up a bunch of Arabs for doing it before. But it is not new.

I hate to break it to you, but it is simply not possible to make everybody completely safe. Terrorists will occasionally succeed in pulling of an attack. Period. Even if you take away every freedom we have left, and enact every stupid rule possible, they will still manage it. The only thing you can do is enact reasonable security measures, and work to find them before they kill somebody.

Arresting somebody for buying cellphones in bulk is not reasonable. If it was some white suburbanite's kid that had been arrested and thrown in lock-up for buying a bunch of cellphones and taking a picture of a bridge, they'd have sued the police department into oblivion. And last I checked, "looking suspicious" was not valid reason for an arrest in this country, regardless of ethnicity.

tyme , Do you think they need a roaming connection to use these things as a detenator, these people are not stupid and the frequincies are all they need to utilize the signals as a detenator device.
Click to expand...

Which, of course, would make a standard Motorola radio just as easy to use as a detonator. Which, oddly enough, is one of the more common detonators used in Iraq. Along with garage-door openers, cordless phones (not cell phones), remote controls (like those for toy cars), etc. So why go through all the trouble (and pay more) for cell phones?

And why ship them from the US, when they are available on the continent on which they'll be used?

If they were to be used as detonators in the US, why use cellphones and not cheaper devices? Why stockpile? You certainly don't need 1,000 to pull of an effective terrorist attack. If they were being purchased as throwaway phones, why keep 1,000 of them on you, rather than buying them 10 or 20 at a time and getting rid of them? Seems like you'd have a lower risk of making some racist cop suspicious that way.

Of course, it could just be that they had chosen a route and were cleaning every Wal-Mart along that route out of Tracfones in order to make a profit by reselling them. This would, of course, require stockpiling them in a van so they could be transported efficiently back to the place of resale. [EDIT: This would also require travel, as the local stores would probably have very few left due to other people, or even these very guys, doing the same thing. Further hammering home the point that just because you can't think of why somebody would travel across the country buying cellphones, and can't think of how a profit could be made that way, doesn't mean there isn't a reason and it can't be done.]

But common sense seems to go out the window when it comes to terrorism nowadays.
 
JuanCarlos , With all due respect I am only saying it is at best a supiscious thing that has brought attention to a possible threat, and to be perfectly honest with you if you were a cop onthe beat and there had been a rash of roberies in an hispanic area of businesses pulled of by a group of Chineese thugs would you be looking for a bunch of American Black, brown, red, or white guys, or would you be looking for Chineese? This isn't profiling in the sence of bigotry it is simply looking for the people most likely to be a posible perp, if all you can see here is a bunch of biggots then I really feel sorry for you.

The piont I made about the phones being used as a device to set of IED's wasn't mine it was reported that these phone types were used by the terrorist not only for triggers but also used to communicate with other terrorist, and if being cautious and trying to be able to protect my Family as well as your Familia, then I stand guilty as accused but know this I would rather error on the side of caution than wish I had done or said something that would have stopped an attack.

You can do as you wish and ignore any possible threat if that is your choice but don't cry foul if an attack occurs and you might have been able to stop it if only you had said what you thought was a suspicious act by some people you observed doing a thing that was said to be a threat or a possibnle threat.
 
JuanCarlos , With all due respect I am only saying it is at best a supiscious thing that has brought attention to a possible threat, and to be perfectly honest with you if you were a cop onthe beat and there had been a rash of roberies in an hispanic area of businesses pulled of by a group of Chineese thugs would you be looking for a bunch of American Black, brown, red, or white guys, or would you be looking for Chineese? This isn't profiling in the sence of bigotry it is simply looking for the people most likely to be a posible perp, if all you can see here is a bunch of biggots then I really feel sorry for you.
Click to expand...

Racial profiling may or may not have its uses...for instance, your example of a few Chinese folks in a mostly Latino area, when a rash of robberies had been committed by somebody fitting that description might be quite reasonable, especially in combination with suspicious actions by those same Chinese men. You could make a case for perhaps delivering upon them some additional scrutiny.

There are two problems with this, however, that in my opinion most definitely apply in this case.

One, this generally escalates to the point where suddenly anybody who is the wrong color in the wrong neighborhood is exponentially more likely to be pulled over, leading to police harrassment.

The second is that the "wrong neighborhood" has a way of expanding. For instance, people who are the wrong color being pulled over in their own neighborhoods. Or, as is the case for Arabs/Muslims, the entire nation becoming the "wrong neighborhood" for them to be in.

Again, these guys weren't doing anything wrong, per se. Did what they were doing "look suspicious?" Probably. Was it enough to bring them in? I don't think so. Would they have been brought in if they were white guys with non-Islamic names? Of course not.

You can do as you wish and ignore any possible threat if that is your choice but don't cry foul if an attack occurs and you might have been able to stop it if only you had said what you thought was a suspicious act by some people you observed doing a thing that was said to be a threat or a possibnle threat.
Click to expand...

Did I ever say I supported ignoring "any possible threat?" I'm pretty sure I didn't. I believe the word "reasonable" was used by me, however. Arresting people for activities that are not criminal but merely "suspicious," however, is not "reasonable." Last I checked, Michigan did not have laws banning the possession [EDIT: or purchase, or resale] of large numbers of cell phones. These guys were picked up because of ethnicity and racism, period.

EDIT: I guess I'm just not a fan of living in a climate of fear and suspicion. I also think the idea of treating an entire ethnic group like criminals (or more to the point, terrorists) anytime they do anything out of the norm goes against the ideas that America was founded on. The attitudes I see surrounding the idea of terrorism, and more specifically Islamic terrorism, are probably a much greater threat to "America" than any man with a beard and turban hiding in a cave and making videos.

I've given several years of my life, and spent a year in Iraq, supposedly defending America and what it stands for. All I see now are people throwing away that which I've given so much (and which others have given so much more) of myself to defend, all in the name of "safety" or "security." Oh well.
 
Juan, thank you.

Although you will find that the tide of sheer disregard for logic and facts in this thread is difficult to stem. :barf:
 
Thanks guys for the encouragement. I just came up with another thought while I was away, though.

The price of living in a "free" society (to whatever extend a society can be free) is risk. We have the freedom to own guns, but we assume the risk that our neighbor might have a negligent discharge that could take the life of a loved one. We allow drinking, which brings upon us the risk that a drunk driver could kill us or our families. I'm sure any of you could probably come up with another example (not allowing illegal searches, for instance, aids drug dealers and armed robbers...standards of evidence and jury trials let rapists go free, etc.), but you get the point.

The price of treating everybody in our country fairly, even those of Islamic heritage, is running the risk that every now and then, they might kill us or those we care about. Again, terrorists attacks are a fact of life. You cannot stop them all, no matter how vigilant you are. We could try to round up every last Muslim and put them in camps, throw out the entire Bill of Rights, and still we'd suffer terrorist attacks. So you have to decide whether treating innocent people as guilty due to their heritage is worth it. Personally, I don't think it is. I'd rather see the occasional airliner blow up than live in that kind of society, much the same way I'd rather see the occasional armed robbery than live in a society where a law-abiding citizen cannot own a gun. It's the risk you take to live in America...or at least it was.

Think how few civilians have actually lost their lives to terrorism in the last century in the US. You have an exponentially higher chance of dying at the hands of a drunk driver over the course of your lifetime than a terrorist. Yet for some reason terrorism, especially as it relates to flying, brings out this irrational fear.

And all I can say is that if this level of risk is not one you are willing to take, if maintaining our freedom isn't worth it to you, then please don't ask our soldiers to risk their lives for your freedom either. Because last I checked being a soldier in the US Army is much riskier than working in a high-rise office building or flying on a plane. Think how high a risk they take for you, and decide whether the small risk of treating Muslims in our country as human beings, and maintaining our civil liberties in general, is worth it to you.
 
Guess what? White kids do this all the time. Buy a bunch of these cellphones at Wal-Mart, and resell them for profit. Been going on for quite some time now. You never heard of it before, because no racist cop picked up a bunch of Arabs for doing it before. But it is not new.
Click to expand...

Proof?

Not saying it may not happen, but I find it hard to believe that cell phones can be resold inside this country for a profit. White kids, black kids whoever.

Why not just buy them yourself? Why buy them for more than you can get them for in the store?
 
Clanky said:
Proof?

Not saying it may not happen, but I find it hard to believe that cell phones can be resold inside this country for a profit. White kids, black kids whoever.

Why not just buy them yourself? Why buy them for more than you can get them for in the store?
Click to expand...

I'll go into a little more depth than Redworm for you...and keep in mind that you don't even need to sell this stuff on eBay for it to be worth it; small cellphone shops can use this method to get parts for the same amount, or less, than through "real" suppliers....especially if they unlock the handsets.

First, a disclaimer. I'm quite honestly too lazy to look up the actual numbers for everything, so all these prices are made up. However, if you don't believe me feel free to look up what all these parts actually cost.

Say you need a charger for your cellphone. You go to the store, and it costs $15. An entire Tracfone (with charger) costs $20. Most people aren't going to buy the $20 Tracfone and bother to resell the additional parts, they'll just spend the $15 on the one part they need (the charger). Same goes for a battery...say it also costs $15, and the entire phone (with battery, charger, etc) goes for $20. People just don't see the entire rest of the phone being worth even $5 to them to keep, and don't have the time or inclination to resell the parts.

Assuming that both the battery and charger can fetch $15 apiece, and the entire phone with both runs only $20, there is obviously the possibility of a profit in there...you buy the phone, take it apart, and sell the parts. Granted, a $10 profit on one phone (we're assuming you aren't bothering to unlock the handset or resell the minutes, of course...even more money if you do that) isn't exciting. Now imagine you can get the capital together to buy 1000 of them. That's $10,000!

Now, any given Wal-Mart, or Target, or wherever will not stock enough phones to make this worth it...though some money could be made locally. But get a few guys and a van together, and hit every Wal-Mart along a given interstate, and you can start making some real money. Granted, you're not keeping all the profit; you're just the mule. The guy reselling the phones will keep most of the money for himself. But you keep more than enough money to make the trip worth it, even split three ways. And keep in mind, Wal-Mart is generally open late (even 24 hours), and with three guys to drive you could cover a lot of ground overnight. The amount of money you could bring in off of a three or four day trip will certainly beat working at McDonald's.

Why would Tracfone sell these things for only $20, though? If the phone, charger, battery, and minutes are worth so much more, why not charge $30, or $50?

They want to make the initial purchase cheap, so they can reap the benefits of continued sales. You see this business model all the time (I touched on this earlier); the classic example is losing money on razors to make a bundle on the blades. Video game consoles are often intially sold at a loss of hundreds of dollars per console in the hopes of making it up twice over in accessories and games. This is actually part of why they have chips in them that keep you from doing whatever you want with the hardware; they don't want you reselling the parts of the console for more than you paid at retail, or buying them instead of an equivalent computer (the other reason, of course, is to prevent the use of pirated games).

With Tracfone, they hope to make it up with the minutes you will buy over the life of the phone. This is why they've actually made attempts to stop this practice (placing a chip in the phone to prevent it being used as a normal cellphone, for instance, then claiming the DMCA makes it illegal to unlock the phone). Regardless, even the charger and battery alone are still resellable for more than the cost of the phone at retail.

That's honestly as much detail as I care to go into on this subject. Feel free to do additional research if you're still not getting it. The point is, hard as it may be for you to believe, it is more than possible to make a profit reselling something you bought at retail; even something that isn't "scarce" like Tickle-Me-Elmo or an Xbox 360 at launch. Even something as common as a Tracfone.

About half the information I just presented here (minus made-up numbers and general conceptual stuff regarding razors and video game systems) was also available had you clicked the link I gave to Wikipedia. I'm guessing you didn't.
 
JuanCarlos , This is the point I will try to make, You see the Arrest of these guys as Ethnic Profiling and I understand your view, but I see this as Good Police work to detain these guys and at least proove they are not doing anything wrong, as I said I would rather error of the side of caution than wish I had taken an action that would have prevented an attack, I feel you have a blind out look for what ever reason and that is your right to feel the way you do, I would simply say that in this case we must agree to disagree and move on with our lives as we see fit. The old saying that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"

Thank you for your Military Service and from one Veteran to another Welcome Home. US Navy 59 - 67
 
I read along with what's been said and felt compelled to jump in. If someone acts suspicious, then we should suspect them. If cell phones can be used as tools of terrorists, then I would hope that someone in our government is keeping an eye on those sales. As for racial profiling, it's based on a science of predicting patterns of crime or in this case, terrorist acts. I wouldn rather see profiling than America's epitaph that reads, "But they were politically correct!". We are kidding ourselves if we believe there are no terrorists living amongst us. Just as we would have been kidding ourselves in all previous wars if we thought spies and fifth columnists couldn't find there way to our shores. If we were engaged in convicting the innocent I'd be the first to cry foul. That is not the case here. If these Middle Easterners are investigated and found to be without fault, I have every reason to believe they will go free. Would that be the case in Arab countries? I seriously doubt it. I am sure that anyone blond haired and blue eyed would instantly be singled out, suspect, and find much less justice at their hands, if not outright persecution for being a non-Arab.
Okay, I said my piece. Let it fly!
Don
 
BigBlue said:
I read along with what's been said and felt compelled to jump in. If someone acts suspicious, then we should suspect them. If cell phones can be used as tools of terrorists, then I would hope that someone in our government is keeping an eye on those sales. As for racial profiling, it's based on a science of predicting patterns of crime or in this case, terrorist acts. I wouldn rather see profiling than America's epitaph that reads, "But they were politically correct!". We are kidding ourselves if we believe there are no terrorists living amongst us. Just as we would have been kidding ourselves in all previous wars if we thought spies and fifth columnists couldn't find there way to our shores. If we were engaged in convicting the innocent I'd be the first to cry foul. That is not the case here. If these Middle Easterners are investigated and found to be without fault, I have every reason to believe they will go free. Would that be the case in Arab countries? I seriously doubt it. I am sure that anyone blond haired and blue eyed would instantly be singled out, suspect, and find much less justice at their hands, if not outright persecution for being a non-Arab.
Okay, I said my piece. Let it fly!
Don
Click to expand...

First, I'll start by saying that I don't think that the Arab countries are the yardstick by which we should be measuring our justice system. Of course they'll get better treatment here than there...we shouldn't be proud of that, as it isn't saying much.

Also, I'd have had no problem with us keeping an eye on these guys for what might at first appear to be suspicious acts (bulk cellphone buying). But the fact that they were locked up, booked, and that bail was set at nearly a million dollars is absolutely insane...all because of the color of their skin and the sound of their names. Were these kids white, they would have been stopped, questioned on the street, and sent on their way.

So now we have an America where the treatment you can expect to recieve varies based on the color of your skin, and you seem to be okay with that. So do a majority of Americans. I'm not saying you're wrong, necessarily....if that's the way most people want it, I suppose it's the way it should be. But I do know I wish I could get a few years of my life back, because that's not the idea I signed up to defend. Love it or leave it, I guess...I'm leaning towards leaving nowadays.
 
Juan Carlos,
I can't go any further without first thanking you for your service to this country. I don't really know you, but based on your last post I would take it that you were in the service and we owe our existance to our service men and women. You have my thanks and respect for that.
That said, I don't believe your past service record can be relied upon to guaranty that every issue will follow your wishes.
Let's assume for the moment that the issue of anti-terrorism in America was run your way. We would be painting an 88 year old crippled Grandmother with the same brush of terrorist suspicion as we would young Arabs? Either that or we would be forced to assume their are no terrorists in America in an attempt to be pure of heart. That would and should be foolhardy to say the least. In my mind that is one of the big problems this country has. We blindly go about averting our eyes from the obvious in a politically correct attempt to appear better than everyone else. After all we're Americans, come look at us world because we're better than you. Oh sure we may lose our loved ones, our freedom, our very country, but at least we can proudly hold our heads up high and show the world our pretense at being holier than thou through the simplistic ideology of political correctness. That is to say, if our new Islamic masters allow it and we're able to learn to speak Farsi.
Don
 
Those are some really great lines, but unfortunately that's all they are, lines.
I just don't happen to see preserving the lives of Americans as forgoing our principles. One of the primary obligations our government has is to preserve and protect the lives of Americans. I'd rather read a story of a few non-citizens being arrested and later released, than to read about the next terrorist attack being a great success. Then again we always have those one liners to fall back on. Maybe we can comfort the widows and orphans by telling them that we may not have stopped the terrorists, but at least we appear to have principles.
Don
 
Also, I'd have had no problem with us keeping an eye on these guys for what might at first appear to be suspicious acts (bulk cellphone buying). But the fact that they were locked up, booked, and that bail was set at nearly a million dollars is absolutely insane...all because of the color of their skin and the sound of their names. Were these kids white, they would have been stopped, questioned on the street, and sent on their way.
Click to expand...

I agree in part that it is insane, but it is a reality to which we have been driven -- by the FACT that we are faced with a VERY DIFFICULT-TO-DETECT ENEMY that is willing in toto to sacrifice the life of its last member in order to destroy our lives. The desperate measures we have been taking are truly desperate, and why? Because the nature of the attacks that this enemy engages in is random, unforeseeable, and undefendable.

Let me ask you, is it any less insane that every single person, no matter how utterly unlikely they are to be a terrorist, cannot board an airplane without being treated like they are being processed as an inmate in a high-security prison?


-azurefly
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top