Bruce Schneier calls this the "war on the unexpected". If you take average people, who aren't experts at security / investigating / etc, and you tell these people "if you see something, say something", then you're going to get a ridiculous amount of false positives.<p><a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_the.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_th...</a><p>Everything "unusual" becomes suspicious. See a guy taking photos at an airport? Must be a terrorist! Can't be a photographer and aviation enthusiast, no!<p>As Bruce says, the CYA angle is also horrific. Landlord sees something, thinks it might be nothing, but just in case, tells the local cops. Cops figure it might be nothing, but just in case, calls the FBI. Branch office figure it might be nothing, but just in case, gets regional / national HQ involved. Somewhere in the chain someone inadvertently gets word to the other 3-letter agencies, and the effect is magnified.<p>... and every time it's escalated, people figure "well, the people below me wouldn't have escalated unless they had reason to" ... while at the same time thinking, "well, I'm not sure, but I'm also not going to be the scapegoat if I fail to neutralize a potential attack and something does happen."<p>Everyone in the chain has plenty to lose and little to gain for <i>not</i> escalating to the next level -- <i>nobody</i> wants to be the guy who missed an opportunity to stop / neutralize a threat, especially in the unlikely-but-possible scenario that an attack does occur.<p>Regarding "if you see something, say something", Rick Moranis had an intelligent take on that at the beginning of his guest column in the NYTimes:<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16moranis.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16moranis.html?_r=...</a>
Devil's Advocate:<p>You are a nontechnical person and stumble upon what appear to be plans for a terrorist attack. You talk to the person about it and they say "Don't worry. is computer game".<p>A great exploration of this is the 30 Rock episode where Tina Fey reports her neighbor for what ends up being a plan to get on the show 'The Amazing Race'.<p>The problem is, not knowing any better, you feel obligated to report the activity just in case. Let someone much smarter than yourself decide what is really going on. If you say nothing and someone gets hurt, can you forgive yourself?<p>As a hacker, I would understand this is definitely a game. But can I really expect the same from non-technical people?
Ah, letting agents.<p>I got evicted from a property years ago because they did a surprise inspection while I was out (which is, of course, totally illegal), and decided they'd found "mountains of cocaine" on the kitchen counters.<p>It was fucking Ajax kitchen cleaning powder. Still, they didn't care. The police (who they contacted) thought it was laughable, but couldn't do anything about the fact they were evicting me.
This reminds me so much of an awesome 30 Rock episode where Fred Armisen plays the middle eastern neighbor of Tina Fey's character. She ultimately gets him turned in for planning an attack, when he was just preparing for The Amazing Race with his friend.<p>Its sad how sensationalist and afraid we have become.
What are the odds that someone leasing a house has control of an ICBM and is making plans to use it on his home whiteboard? People, especially stupid people, that can't mind their own business, are both dangerous and endlessly frustrating. Personally, I hope this guy tries to get the letting agent fired.
Henry I'm not sure if you are checking this thread, and I can't find a way to contact you on your site but...<p>I wanted to see more of your posts, so trimmed the URL down to "<a href="http://henrysmith.org/blog/"" rel="nofollow">http://henrysmith.org/blog/"</a> and got an error message "Included file 'navbar.html' not found in _includes directory" at the top of your page. Clicking your name in the left directs me to henrysmith.org which doesn't have this problem.
I'm doing work with a drug testing company, that generates a lot of stuff you wouldn't want taken out of context. This kind of stuff: "How's the meth goin?" - "Oh great. We're getting loads this week" "And the Steroids" - " Ah, not so well. Bob's lab is running behind, they're really busy"
I'd be livid if something like this happened. I think it's worth this chap getting the details of the police report, and speaking to someone on the force directly. He needs to be assured that he won't end up on any "lists".<p>I'm not sure whether he has any legal recourse over this. I doubt it, but he has potentially been materially disadvantaged (if indeed, it goes "up the chain" and he finds visas being denied).<p>At the very least, he needs to enumerate to his landlord the various ways in which this could seriously affect him, and ask for a rent reduction.
Par for the course with letting agents in the UK. I'm surprised they didn't begin evicting the renter. Using a property for work is often prohibited in the boilerplate rental agreements they charge £100 a time to change the name on.
Sadly, if you look carefully at the pictures, it's pretty clear it's for a game...and I didn't even need to read that he mentioned that they were game ideas.<p>Goes to show how dumb people can be.
Common sense isn't quite as "common" anymore. If you actually read those diagrams it is pretty obvious (to me) that that is a game, and not some missile design or "plan" (although who plans a state missile attack from their apartment?).
This seems relevant:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc</a><p>Title is "Dont Talk to Police" from 2008. Henry Smith should probably watch it.
Planning a missile strike by drawing a crude world map with an explosion (labeled "explosion") is like planning a killing spree by drawing a stick figure with an uzi in each hand mowing down other stick figures.
Wondering if Introversion Software had to deal with this when they made Defcon (<a href="http://www.introversion.co.uk/defcon/" rel="nofollow">http://www.introversion.co.uk/defcon/</a>)...
"I am not planning any nuclear attacks as my centrifuges are on the fritz and I have been unable to procure switches accurate enough to get a good implosion out of my C4 detonators. Also, it turns out that my ICBM designs are prohibitively expensive, and the Russians will not let me have access to their launch sites for some reason."