Once again, terrorism evolves and we use ineffective traps.

[tannybogus]

Al-Qaeda Masters Terrorism On the Cheap: Financial Dragnet Largely Bypassed

LONDON -- Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, al-Qaeda has increasingly turned to local cells that run extremely low-cost operations and generate cash through criminal scams, bypassing the global financial dragnet set up by the United States and Europe.

Although al-Qaeda spent an estimated $500,000 to plan and execute the Sept. 11 attacks, many of the group's bombings and assaults since then in Europe, North Africa and Southeast Asia have cost one-tenth as much, or less.

The cheap plots are evidence that the U.S. government and its allies fundamentally miscalculated in assuming they could defeat the network by hunting for wealthy financiers and freezing bank accounts, according to many U.S. and European counterterrorism officials.

In an ongoing trial here of eight men accused of planning to blow up airliners bound for the United States two years ago, jurors have been told how the accused shopped at drugstores for ingredients to build bombs that would have cost $15 apiece to assemble.
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Needles in Haystacks

Some officials defended the anti-terrorism financing laws passed since 2001, saying that al-Qaeda would have a much easier time raising money if the measures weren't in place.

"We mustn't be wooed into the idea that because attacks are costing less and less, that there isn't a need for money, or that it isn't being provided," said Michael Chandler, who headed a U.N. panel that monitored financial sanctions against al-Qaeda and the Taliban from 2001 to 2004. "It's not just the money they need to make the explosive devices. It's the money they need for other things: to support the network, to recruit and to train."

Chandler also acknowledged that al-Qaeda and its affiliates have adapted and are having little difficulty financing their plots.

"Notwithstanding the successes we've had, groups associated or affiliated with al-Qaeda still appear to be able to carry out an attack, as and when they feel so inclined," said Chandler, a former British Army officer and U.N. diplomat, citing the Taliban and cells in Iraq and North Africa. "Either they had the money already when they needed it, or they have no problem getting it."

Law enforcement officials said terrorism-financing controls also make it easier to investigate cells that are under surveillance or after an attack. By retracing suspected plotters' financial footsteps, no matter how small, investigators can map their movements and develop new leads.

But Cliff Knuckley, a former chief money-laundering investigator for Scotland Yard, said it's difficult to detect potential terrorist plots just by monitoring cash flows or bank transfers -- the basis of many of the anti-terrorism financing laws in place today.

"You're looking for a needle in a haystack, and unfortunately you have a field full of haystacks," Knuckley said.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/23/AR2008082301962_pf.html

Laws have been passed that have increasingly infringed on our rights. This article calls into question the effectiveness of the financial limitations put in place to catch terrorists. I believe that we will find out that the same thing will be true of other statutes. The immense information gathering operations and the further expansion of police powers will only serve to put us in a virtual prison. The terrorists will always find ways around our attempts to rein them in. The government does not think ouside the box nor do they think about how an organization will change.
:spank:

[Indi Guy]

1. The al Qaeda threat was hyped in order to get Americans to kneel to the NeoCons...

...it worked (past tense).

[martymar64]

2. Al Qaeda is a myth, a boogyman invented by the CIA

AQ is a US manufactured enemy used to justify keeping our military expenditures at Cold War levels.
Don't believe the hype.