Search: “Terrorists”

If there is one spy agency in Canada that is poorly understood and about which much of little veracity has been published it has to be CSE – Communications Security Establishment. CSE has a number of roles but the one that gets the most public attention is signals intelligence or SIGINT. This method of intelligence […]

One thing I find fascinating is the science of lie detection. There is a lot of research out there about which tools can pick up on an attempt to avoid the truth, ranging from eye movement (saccades) to vocabulary use.  As a former intelligence analyst I had to undergo periodic lie detector tests.  They were […]

As we still reel from the foiled terrorist attack  last week in Strathroy, Ontario, we can still rest assured that attacks, successful or not, remain a rarity in Canada.  In the period since 9/11 we have had no more than 8 such incidents: on average one every two years.   When we compare our experiences […]

I apologise  for leading off with a statement of the obvious, but terrorism is real.  We in Canada were reminded of that this week when the RCMP and its partners thwarted an attack by Aaron Driver in Strathroy.  Regardless of whether Mr. Driver’s attempt was amateurish or not, whether he was an “A”-team member or […]

In Cixin Liu’s science fiction novel The Dark Forest (sequel to The Three Body Problem), a race from the Alpha Centauri system has identified Earth as a suitable home and is seeking to thwart any efforts from our planet to interfere with their takeover plans.  One of the new technologies developed by the “Trisolarans”, who […]

There is no question that terrorism gets a lot of attention these days.  Nary a day goes by without a story of an attack somewhere in the world.  Most – not all, but most – of these attacks are carried out by some individual, some small group or even a large bunch with some tie […]

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks one of the most often asked questions amongst Americans (and many others)  was: why?  Why were we attacked?  Why did so many innocent people have to die?  Why did we deserve such a catastrophe?  Why do they HATE us? The answers to those questions were spread all over […]

We expect a lot of those agencies tasked with keeping us safe.  We demand that they identify those who mean us harm, investigate the nature of the threat they pose and take appropriate action to disrupt their criminal acts.  When they fail to do so many are critical and want to know why they were […]

Another attack has hit France – this one is particularly heinous, the murder of an 85-year old priest – and the critics are out in full force, all of whom know what is wrong with France and what the French should do about it.  I certainly would not want to be French President Hollande or […]

It has been an awful few weeks.  Terrorist attacks in Munich, Ansbach, Nice, Kabul, Baghdad…and those are just the major ones.  Thousands killed and wounded.   In what is more frightening to many, the tools of the terrorist have evolved from guns and bombs to knives, axes and even a truck.  The banal has become […]