Great Western Coffee Shop

Airport-style security screening is being considered for Tube and mainline stations across London, it has been revealed ...

Why don't they chip us all and monitor us by satellite?

To catch terrorists, you use CCTV, undercover operations/surveillance, monitoring internet/phones. That's why I despair when people moan about the gov wanting to do those things, as the police watching the internet or spying on people on CCTV IS making the country safer, with no inconvenience to yourself!!!

It's a smokescreen. It's nonsense. It's just so the government can say "look, we're doing something", "look, everyone's safe".

To catch terrorists, you use CCTV, undercover operations/surveillance, monitoring internet/phones. That's why I despair when people moan about the gov wanting to do those things, as the police watching the internet or spying on people on CCTV IS making the country safer, with no inconvenience to yourself!!!

Spying on people doesn't work all the time either. I encrypt a large amount of information using 1-key ciphers, oh, a super computer will take 20million years to decrypt it.

Speaking to people you can do the same. A book cipher works incredibly well and is near impossible to break.

CCTV is beatable through a variety of methods, some of which I won't go into; the most simple is to avoid it.

Great, police monitor my internet traffic, use a self signed SSL page to communicate, even with a GAK, it will take weeks to decrypt the information.

Kindly don't suggest silly things that I can easily get around.

Having recently queued with thousands of ordinary holiday makers to get through the shoe-sniffing security at Bristol Airport, I would rather see railway station-style security at airports.

But I wouldn't have to virtually undress, hand over my bottle of water, and put my hand luggage through the scanner half a dozen times. And Mrs FTN would still have her nail scissors, her whatever they are for doing something at her eyebrows (or lashes - beats me), and her prized machete that she forgot was in her bag.

A few years ago we took the rain from Madrid Atocha station to Algeciras

oint is - expect security at airports 

Though a hoax, Madrid train bomb threat deepens jitters about 'lone wolf' attacks

Police have arrested a suspect, whose threat forced the emergency evacuation of a commuter train between stations.

Spanish officials say a suicide bomb threat at Madrid's Atocha train station, site of the March 2004 bombing that left almost 200 people dead, is false, and that a suspect has been taken into custody.

The suspect, identified by newspaper El Pais (in Spanish) as Jamal H, a man of North African and Spanish origin, reportedly threatened to blow himself up on a commuter rail train approaching the Atocha station. The suspect had left a backpack on the train and warned passengers that an explosion was imminent. Spanish police said that the warnings prompted a passenger to pull the emergency brake before it reached the station, and the train was evacuated.

No explosives were found in the suspect's possession, and police told El Pais that he has no known ties to terrorist groups. He is currently being held for psychiatric observation.

But the threat comes amid heightened tensions in the West amid a spate of attacks of "lone-wolf terrorism," launched by unbalanced individuals claiming to be inspired by tensions in the Middle East and fighting in Syria. France saw three instances in late December of attacks by individuals that injured members of the public. And in Australia, a man with a history of criminal activity held more than a dozen people hostage in a Sydney cafe before police stormed the site. The man and two of his hostages were killed.

Europe is also highly concerned about the possibility of its citizens traveling to fight in Syria, becoming radicalized, and then returning home and pursuing similar tactics. As of late last year, some 95 Spaniards were estimated to be involved in the fighting in Syria, The Washington Post reports.

Although there is no immediately apparent tie between today's incident and Islamic terrorism, the site itself, Atocha station, has particular resonance for Spaniards that evokes such a connection. The station was the site of Spain's deadliest terrorist attack in the modern era, when, on Mar. 11, 2004, a series of 10 backpack bombs was detonated, killing nearly 200 people and injuring scores more. Although initial suspicion fell upon the Basque separatist group ETA, investigations revealed the perpetrators to be Islamic militants.

The 2004 bombings had a dramatic effect on the country, coming just days before Spain's general election. The conservative ^ and hard-on-terrorism ^ Popular Party had been expected to win the elections handily. But the attack galvanized support for the Socialists, who scored an upset win on the back of their campaign against Spanish involvement in the Iraq war, which many saw as a reason Spain was targeted by terrorists. The new Socialist government quickly affirmed its intent to withdraw from the conflict, depriving the US of one of its staunchest allies in the war.