Many of the surveillance and counter surveillance that took place to bust up that cell appears to be the same stuff that the ACLU is against. I would urge all to start following the trial because it clearly illustrates why we are taking these steps to secure our country. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2101149,00.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2099435_1,00.html

Here are a couple excerpts:

Salahuddin Amin was said to have been entrusted by senior figures in a terror cell in Pakistan to act as a go-between in their planned purchase of the radioactive device.

He is standing trial alongside six alleged accomplices for conspiring to detonate explosives at key sites in Britain, causing maximum damage and fatalities. Among the intended targets were the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, the National Grid, synagogues and a nightclub in Central London, the court was told during the second day of the trial.

However, the plotters did not realize that as they pondered which of many potential targets to strike, their movements were being monitored by police, David Waters, QC, for the prosecution, said. Some of their cars and homes had been bugged. One defendant, Jawad Akbar, allegedly said in a recording: “The biggest nightclub in Central London. No one can put their hands up and say they are innocent — those slags dancing around.”

He said that Waheed Mahmood worked for Transco National Grid at its Brighton depot. Computer discs giving detailed plans of Britain’s electricity and gas systems, including pipelines, cables and sub- stations, had been found at another defendant’s house.

“Anyone armed with such information would have no difficulty identifying, in the context of this case, a potential target,” Mr. Waters said.

Providing detonators had been the responsibility of Momin Khawaja, a computer expert from Canada, who faces trial in that country. He and Mr. Khyam were said to have been in regular e-mail contact about how best to bring detonators from Canada to Britain. In one e-mail Mr. Khawaja had said: “We’ve got to find a way to get it [a device] into the UK. Maybe I could courier it over?” He had also suggested sending it via the company that employed him at that time.

Mr. Waters said that the internet played a vital role in the alleged plot: some of the defendants had purchased outdoor clothing and camping equipment online in preparation for trips to training camps in Pakistan. Wary of surveillance, they allegedly communicated by e-mail but without sending messages: by saving drafts and logging on using identical usernames and passwords.

The men were said to have bought pay-as-you-go mobile phones and regularly disposed of them and their laptops in an attempt to evade MI5. Police had said that they appeared “surveillance sensitive”, being “extremely aware” of vehicles and pedestrians around them.

Nevertheless, Mr. Waters said, security officers successfully bugged their homes and cars. In one conversation the men had been heard discussing a remote-controlled detonator that had a dipswitch to encrypt the signal, a booster chip to prevent it from being blocked and antennae that they hoped would increase its range to two kilometers.

Reading what is coming out publicly in the trial is like reading a spy thriller, except it is real and these are real people.

Al-Qaeda’s advantage is in this country, exploiting our laws and how we protect individual rights. It is also that, as I see it, the rights of the criminals and terrorists over the rights of the victims and “Joe Public.”

In the other article link our American raised terrorist, Babar, now prosecution witness, has already pleaded guilty in New York to terrorist-related offences, including what the American authorities described as the “British bomb plot”. He is the first supergrass linked to al-Qaeda to give evidence in a Western court and has been given immunity from prosecution in relation to his evidence.

There undoubtedly will be a lot more information released in Britain as to the whys of their upgraded security and surveillance techniques.

At the end of the day, if we blink we are going to loose. We have to be right 100% of the time and the terrorists only have to be right once. That is something that the ACLU and unfortunately the demagogue and left wing pundits and social legal beagles cannot get through their heads.