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MI5 moves UK Terrorism threat level to “SEVERE”
- cschep 6y agoPlease forgive my ignorance, is this based solely on the united states election?
- toomuchtodo 6y agoRecent terrorist attacks in a suburb of Paris, France, Nice, France and Vienna, Austria. France also recalled their ambassador to Turkey. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/samuel-paty-teacher-beheading/2020/10/21/b94fe7fe-123e-11eb-a258-614acf2b906d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/samuel-paty-teac... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/01/nice-terror-attack-french-police-arrest-three-more-men https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/01/nice-terror-at... https://www.npr.org/2020/11/03/930721562/at-least-4-killed-by-gunman-in-vienna-austria-in-terror-attack https://www.npr.org/2020/11/03/930721562/at-least-4-killed-b... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-teacher-beheading-turkey-ambassador/2020/10/25/577be92a-16b6-11eb-8bda-814ca56e138b_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-teacher-b...
- toyg 6y agoNo, it’s because of the events in France and Austria.
- pskinner 6y agoWhy would it be based in that? The USA is not the centre of the universe.
- wow_why 6y agoYes very much so
- eblanshey 6y agoA friend in London says it's because they're going into lockdown Thursday, so terrorists will use the last day everyone will be out and about.
- qgrgergfqgfev 6y agowow xD you're adding to the stereotype of the American who has no clue about what's happening in the world
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoWe have a federal election going on at home this month culminating today. What do you expect?
- ponker 6y agoNot at all, it’s based on the immigration policies of the European Union over the last 20+ years.
- ponker 6y agoLot of disagreement with my hypothesis. Anyone care to offer alternative explanations?
- jpxw 6y agoTechnically it’s set by the JTAC and not MI5: https://www.mi5.gov.uk/joint-terrorism-analysis-centre https://www.mi5.gov.uk/joint-terrorism-analysis-centre
- silverlight 6y agoHas that happened before? If so when?
- yabones 6y agoBased on their historical data, it seems to happen 2-4 times per year on average. Obviously the situation is very tense right now everywhere in the world but this isn't exactly exceptional.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoIs this actionable in any way? I guess you could just stay inside and be afraid but the silver lining is we were already doing that because of covid!
- alasdair_ 6y agoIt’s actionable to an extent. I once worked on an infrastructure project that increased all security controls based on threat levels, automatically. A simple example would be cancelling badge access for a janitor to a sensitive area like an engine room, but allowing it if the threat level Was lower.
- oh_sigh 6y agoIs that effective though? Does infrastructure terrorism happen any more in western countries? All terrorist threats I can think of off the top of my head involve attempts at killing citizens.
- reaperducer 6y agoIt doesn't have to happen more. It only has to happen once.
- jmull3n 6y agoThat sounds pretty effective
- oh_sigh 6y ago"That’s specious reasoning, Dad."
- jimmydorry 6y ago>What the threat levels mean: Threat levels are designed to give a broad indication of the likelihood of a terrorist attack. LOW means an attack is highly unlikely MODERATE means an attack is possible, but not likely SUBSTANTIAL means an attack is likely SEVERE means an attack is highly likely CRITICAL means an attack is highly likely in the near future
- LatteLazy 6y agoIt's worth noting that the level has literally never been below substantial or above severe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Threat_Levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Threat_Levels
- mtmail 6y agoThe 5 color US equivalent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Terrorism_Advisory_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Terrorism_Advisory_Sy... has never been on the lowest levels either, "high threat level is now considered as the "baseline.""
- brainfish 6y agoFrom the linked wikipedia page: 'It had been raised to "critical" following the Parsons Green bombing on 15 September.' (2017) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41288525 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41288525
- makomk 6y agoThough if you click through to the Wikipedia page for the previous alert scheme it replaced, apparently the lowest "white" no-alert level under that was "known to have been used for periods between the Good Friday Agreement and the 9th of September 2001". Really, it's just a reflection of the times we're in right now.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ATsch 6y ago
- pizza 6y agoThere's a lot going on these days..
- yalogin 6y agoWow this situation escalated quite quickly.
- tuckerpo 6y agoSimply part and parcel! /s
- Devils-Avocado 6y agoWhy do these attacks seem concentrated in the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, but rarely or never occur in Czechia, Poland, Hungary?
- ponker 6y agoHm.....
- breakfastduck 6y agoLarger target = bigger news story
- baybal2 6y agoMaybe because some places don't panic upon some random murder by a psychical person?
- secondcoming 6y agoRandom!?
- baybal2 6y agoThe victim was not likely specifically targeted. There were no signs of the guy surveiling the victim, or him getting guidance onto the man from anybody so far.
- qgrgergfqgfev 6y agodemography is completely different there, there is a large muslim population in Western Europe
- gsnedders 6y agoAnd many (most?) of these attacks are carried out by natives of the countries in which they occur.
- 6y ago
- throwawaw 6y ago> The current level is "severe", which was set on 3 November 2020, due to a shooting in Vienna by a suspected "Islamist terrorist" in which four people died. It was raised by Home Secretary, Priti Patel, following recent attacks in Europe. It was previously held at 'substantial', set on 4 November 2019. Prior to that it was rasied to "severe" on 17 September 2017. It had been raised to "critical" following the Parsons Green bombing on 15 September. The previous threat level to that was "severe" having been reduced to that level following an increase to "critical" after the Manchester Arena bombing of 22 May 2017. From the Wikipedia article, which features a Threat Levels Over Time chart that is genuinely funny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Threat_Levels#Changes_to_threat_levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Threat_Levels#Changes_to_th... Why is this a story?
- blensor 6y agoI believe they are thinking along the lines,first there was the attack in France which kicked this series off (2 is not yet a series, I know), then here in Vienna, which the attackers seemingly expedited due to the corona lockdown coming into effect today. So changing the schedule gave them a glimpse of what is yet to come elsewhere where they didn't have to change their timeline
- ponker 6y agoEurope gave the world Enlightenment values and then performed a scientific experiment on itself to see what happens when you take those values to an extreme. Thank you, Europe, for everything you gave to civilization and the concept of a rights-based government. Catch ya on the flip side.
- freeflight 6y agoThat's not really what happened, but I guess for some people it's easier to just completely forget the US's and UK's role in this whole mess [0] and how this current situation was already rather predictable nearly two decades ago [1]. It was such a predictable outcome that it triggered the largest global protest movement in human history. Plenty of people saw the long-term consequences of the US invading a Muslim country with heavily laden religious language coming; How the refugee waves would reignite violent European far-right nationalist sentiments, the occasional disgruntled Islamic extremist attack would pour additional fuel into the fire, a violent and hateful circle steadily escalating. By now we are pretty much exactly where Osama bin Laden wanted everybody to be: In an open and blatant "clash of civilizations" where US presidents can run on a platform of "Muslim bans" and over a billion people get constantly and casually generalized as being some kind of uncivilized subhumans because of their religion. [0] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2015/9/9/the-iraq-war-the-root-of-europes-refugee-crisis https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2015/9/9/the-iraq-war-the... [1] https://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0919/p12s2-woeu.html https://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0919/p12s2-woeu.html
- ponker 6y agoYou don’t have to be an uncivilized subhuman to be incompatible with Western liberal democracy.
- FatDrunknStupid 6y agoMore chance of getting run over by a fucking bus. car. bike. But yes sometimes you win the lottery
- quickthrower2 6y agoPerhaps this is due to people taking the threat level seriously?
- ponker 6y agoLooking at the fertility rate data, at some point they’ll just have to leave it at “Severe.”
- qwerty456127 6y agoI'm curious if many people who have lost their parents to COVID or believe they themselves are close to dying this way are more likely to become terrorists.
- Nextgrid 6y agoI'm wondering what is the point of this threat level measurement (other than to say "see? we're doing something"). To me it doesn't seem actionable in any way, and if it was actionable (like significantly raising security), how would that help considering all the terrorists have to do is to wait for the level to go down (thus the security is lowered) before striking again? Furthermore the threat level has never gone below "substantial" (which signifies that an attack is likely), so it's akin to "cry wolf" all the time - eventually everyone learns to ignore it and it stops being a useful metric (if it ever was one, that is).
- colordrops 6y agoThe terrorist threat has always been to scare people into trading freedom for "security", i.e. more control over the populace and more contracts for security subcontractors. You have more of a chance of being struck by lightning.
- op03 6y agoNot really. Sometimes it's just a default move leaders have to make to cover their ass. If you are in a position of responsibility, even for a small group, and the neighbouring building gets robbed or there is physical violence, people are going to start asking you about the security of your building. You can ofcourse ignore/reassure them if you have built up enough trust or social/political capital. If you haven't and there are a bunch of ambitious people eyeing your chair, good luck showing the group robbery stats.
- colordrops 6y agoThe analogy would make sense if it was lip service for a year rather than trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands dead over the course of decades.
- mellosouls 6y agoIt's useful in that it raises the alert level in the general population (in addition to the more cynical motives posited by others). "crying wolf" or "alertness fatigue" might be an issue if this was a frequent thing, but it isn't. It also presumably can be timed to coincide with recent attacks when there is genuine intelligence; the events in the news acting as cover for the intelligence which doesn't necessarily need to be acknowledged as a reason for raising the level.
- rodgerd 6y agoIt feels as though /r/the_donald refugees have found HN. Can't say it's much of an improvement.