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The message he sent right before the attack will likely not have been his first communication about it. There's been a pattern of Isis operatives abroad guiding
by makomk 10y ago
The message he sent right before the attack will likely not have been his first communication about it. There's been a pattern of Isis operatives abroad guiding and supporting terrorists in detail via end-to-end encrypted messaging for weeks or months, right up until the moment they attack: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/world/asia/isis-messaging-app-terror-plot.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/world/asia/isis-messaging... Presumably the British police are assuming that this is like those previous attacks, but they haven't managed to obtain the actual message contents after the fact this time around for some reason.
- GordonS 10y agoCome on. If this was really ISIS, then we plainly have nothing to fear. My bet is that he's just a random crazy, but of course these days it suits the political narrative to brand such people 'terrorists' to stoke public fear
- DanBC 10y agoStop tossing out mental health as a reason. There's nothing to say he had mental illness, and you cause harm to people with mental illness when you incorrectly link violence to mental illness.
- GordonS 10y agoI used the word 'crazy', rather than mentioning mental health issues. 'Crazy' does not just refer to people with mental health issues, if refers to irrational acts. To expand on my point, some of these small-scale 'terrorist' attacks show very little evidence of being coherently planned, and it's difficult to believe that an organised terrorist group is behind them. It seems more likely that some of these acts were performed by people acting alone, or vulnerable people provoked to it - and yes, some of these people may well be mentally ill; that hardly means they cannot be capable of violence.