http://smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/11/1036308630893.html
An American teenage student pilot who committed suicide by crashing into a skyscraper had nearly hit the control tower at an air force base that houses a nerve centre for the war in Afghanistan, a US government report said.
Charles Bishop, 15, flew his stolen Cessna "just a few feet" over the control tower at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida during the January 5 flight, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report released today.
The NTSB did not speculate on whether Bishop, who left a suicide note expressing admiration for Osama bin Laden, had intended to make the base his target.
The base is home to the US Central Command, which plays a crucial role in directing the war in Afghanistan.
The report said that after Bishop buzzed the control tower, he flew the Cessna 22.5 to 30 metres over two loaded tanker planes. When a Coast Guard helicopter tried to force Bishop to land, he flew toward Tampa, the report said.
Bishop slammed the four-seat aircraft into the 28th floor of the Bank of America Plaza in downtown Tampa. Nobody else was hurt
http://smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/12/1036308674124.html
Bush dishes out licences to kill on a wide front
November 12 2002
US President George W Bush has authorised a variety of people in his administration to launch attacks like the missile strike that killed six suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen last week.
Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has told Fox News that's because the United States is fighting a new kind of war on many different fronts.
The principal target of the Yemen attack was senior al-Qaeda leader Qaed Senyan Al-Harthi, a suspect in the 2000 bombing of the warship USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden.
Newsweek magazine says several other al-Qaeda operatives are being tracked and targeted for strikes in Islamic countries in the Middle East and Asia.
Human rights group Amnesty International has called on the US to state clearly that it doesn't sanction such executions.
http://smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/11/1036308630893.html
Washington: The Pentagon is building a computer system that could create a vast dragnet, sifting personal information in the hunt for terrorists in the United States and around the world.
The system would provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information - without a search warrant - from internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel records. Historically, military and intelligence agencies have not been permitted to spy on Americans without legal authorisation. But Vice-Admiral John Poindexter, the former national security adviser to the Reagan administration, has said the US Government needs new powers to process, store and mine billions of electronic details of life in the US.
Admiral Poindexter has taken charge of "information awareness" within the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, the agency charged with developing new spying technologies since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The possibility that the system might be deployed to let intelligence officials look into commercial transactions worries civil liberties proponents.
It could be the worst thing for civil liberties in America, said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre.
"The vehicle is the Homeland Security Act, the technology is DARPA and the agency is the FBI. The outcome is a system of national surveillance of the American public."
http://smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/11/1036308630905.html
On the bright side...
Up to $1m pocketed by ATM scammers using little black box
By Jonathan Pearlman
November 12 2002
Attached device read cards' magnetic strips ... the ATM in King Street, Newtown. Photo: Edwina Pickles
The thieves needed two components for their batch of fake ATM cards: the information on magnetic strips from genuine cards and the bank customers' personal identification numbers.
The first step was to copy the magnetic strips.
For a month, on various nights between 8pm and 10pm, the thieves attached a little black plastic box to a St George ATM in King Street, Newtown.
The box, fitted beneath the card-entry slot, copied the magnetic strips as users inserted their cards.
Police do not yet know how the thieves obtained PINs for the cards. It could have been a nearby camera. Or a sly bit of "shoulder-surfing" - looking over the customer's shoulder as the number is entered.
The thieves then transferred the information to unembossed blank cards - or "white plastic" as they are known in the world of scamming.
By Friday more than 100 cards were ready to be used by the thieves. Between Friday night and Sunday night the thieves put them into action, stealing at least $100,000 and possibly up to $1 million by withdrawing cash from ATMs and making EFTPOS purchases across Sydney.
Police said it was the first time it had happened in Australia. St George said it was aware of the scam happening before, but not involving its own banks.
Customers began reporting the thefts to police on Friday night. A few recalled seeing the matchbox-sized device when they made their withdrawals in King Street.
One customer who did not notice the box was Clare Dwyer, who had $6800 stolen from her account over the weekend.
"If it's something that's really small, I probably wouldn't have noticed it," said Ms Dwyer, 32, of Woollahra.
The thieves used a copy of her card to withdraw $800 from an ATM in Neutral Bay and $1000 from one in North Sydney on Friday night, bought goods worth $4000 at a computer shop in Villawood on Saturday afternoon and withdrew $1000
from an ATM in Rockdale that night.
"They obviously waited 24 hours to make the second withdrawal from the teller because my card has a $1000-a-day limit," she said.
Some detective work by St George bank's fraud team identified the King Street ATM.
"We pinned all the transactions by customers who had money stolen back to that ATM," a St George spokesman said. He advised bank customers to beware of any suspicious-looking boxes protruding from ATMs.
Other big banks, including ANZ and Westpac, also reported customers whose card details had been copied and used at the King Street ATM. All the banks said they would reimburse money stolen from the duplicated ATM cards.
The fraud squad is meeting bank security representatives this morning to compare information and attempt to determine the extent of the theft.
"We got news of it just before the weekend, and we have a standing strike force working with security sections within the banks," said the head of the NSW Fraud Squad, Detective Superintendent Megan McGowan.
"The amount stolen was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and up to a million dollars."
http://smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/11/1036308633496.html
ROYAL BUTLER SCANDAL
On Her Majesty's sleazy service
Attempts by the British royal family to prevent a former butler from revealing palace secrets have spectacularly backfired and, 11 days on, plunged the House of Windsor into its most prolonged crisis since Princess Diana died five years ago. more
Gerard Henderson: Butler exposes more than secrets
http://smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/11/1036308630209.html
Bribery and political business as usual...
Club chief 'wished he had paid' $1m ALP donation
Former Bulldogs rugby league club chief Gary McIntyre had discussed an offer of a political donation to the Labor Party, two witnesses told the Independent Commission Against Corruption yesterday. more
Pancakes and pigs - the ballad of Big Al
When the Independent Committee Against Corruption's hearing into the Oasis project broke up on Friday afternoon, businessman Al Constantinidis, angrily brandishing a blue folder, said: "I'm not going to sit here and just cop pancakes, so I brought my own." more
Peace not on cards if points to be scored
"This is about peace," shrieked Julia Irwin, Labor MP for Fowler. And indeed it was, although you would not have known by her tone of voice, or by the savagery of the insults flying around her. more
http://smh.com.au/news/national/index.html
