
Alleged Assassins Caught on Dubai Surveillance Tape - phsr
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/alleged-assassins-caught-on-tape/
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rudyfink
The amount of effort that would need to go into creating that video and the
facts that the article asserts is just impressive:

-figuring out the group of people

-how everyone entered the country

-all of their phone communication while they were in the country, including finding out their numbers

-how they spent money inside the country

-their motions inside the country

-where they went after they left the country

~~~
jules
They probably got it from the secret service? Those likely have most of this
information in a database and can get it with the the press of a button.

~~~
gridspy
That would be a pretty impressive database.

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electromagnetic
Of the two methods currently being used to deal with the militant Islamic
fanatics, the 'War On Terror' has only really achieved in causing mass terror
amongst our own people and imprison hundreds of innocent people because our
government's criteria for 'wrong place and wrong time' were basically
Afghanistan and post-invasion.

However the allegedly Israeli approach causes virtually no terror to our own
people (in fact it appears to instill the exact opposite of terror), it has no
collateral damage and only a minor amount of innocents get caught in the cross
hairs.

What I'm wondering is if the 'Israeli' approach to militant Islamiscs the
better approach? IE is it getting the job done at a better tax-payer cost and
a better ethical cost (less young soldiers dead, less innocents wrongly
imprisoned and less collateral damage vs. a wrong target).

~~~
zzleeper
The thing is who decides who gets killed and who not. You could argue that
Bush caused the massacre of thousands of Iraqis, or something similar for past
Israeli leaders. Does that mean that we can assassinate them? W/out even a
fair trial? Once you go through that path, things get scaringly fuzzy.

It reminds me of the idea -popular in Latin America- that there are bad
dictators and good dictators (pro markets, etc.). I've seen people that
supposedly like freedom and democracy take a very pragmatic approach, being
happy under the rule of Pinochet/Fujimori/etc.

~~~
berntb
Good/bad dictators is a well known debate. "King" is an old term for
"[military] dictator".

One bad problem is that most every king/dictator made certain to put his own
relatives in positions of power. That means that the leadership competence in
future generations will be very varied.

From history studies, somewhere between 25%-75% of my country's royalty were
total asshats. When you have a fixed incompetent leadership that is very hard
to change, then employees/citizens/etc will _suffer_.

There are more problems, like that you just can't tell an absolute ruler,
which has been brought up for the job, all the things he needs to hear. [Edit:
A dictator can be said to have an alternative version of "Kill your darlings",
when someone complains about his worst ideas...]

Edit: To sum, I'm with Churchill on this: "... democracy is the worst form of
government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to
time."

Edit: Some points of grammar.

~~~
tome
Interesting HN comment about that Churchill quote:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=571797>

~~~
berntb
I've read about that discussion but lacked the energy. :-)

(Anyway, your link might have a point in that the inherited dictators might on
average be less actively evil than those that crawl to the top of the heap.
That seems like arguing that some cancer form has a little bit less mortality
than lung cancer. It might be true, but the practical/emotional impact is
low.)

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farrel
The Mossad Kidon (it's assassination branch) is rumoured to only have about 50
or so operatives. Which means they potentially compromised almost 20% of their
resources to take out this one target.

~~~
endtime
This was almost certainly not Mossad, for precisely that reason. Mossad is not
known for sloppy work, and this was nothing if not sloppy. The passports were
bad fakes; several of them were duplicates of real innocent Israeli
lookalikes; 11 people to kill one guy with no security detail, all of them
with their faces on camera? Yeah, pretty sure this wasn't Mossad.

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tome
They went to a lot of trouble to make the death look like a heart attack, even
somehow having the door locked from the inside as they left.

But it seems like it was immediately obvious to the police that this was a
murder, so what was the point of going to all that trouble?

~~~
alextp
I'd say just to save time and face. If he was found with a bullet through his
head or something like that it is not unreasonable that all airports and roads
would be closed for a while, but if it looked just like a heart attack the
murderers have a bit of extra time to leave the country.

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jonshea
I love that there was a guy whose whole job was to show up at the hotel, pay
for the room across the hall from the target, hand off the key, and then
immediately leave the country.

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utku_karatas2
Flagged. What's this Mossad PR stunt doing on HN?

~~~
tonystubblebine
I'm hoping for someone to discuss the implications as they relate to
technology, PR, security, and privacy.

What technology is necessary to gather that much video so quickly? Is that
video feeding into a central hub? This is Dubai, a relatively tiny country.
Did they build this technology themselves or did they license it.

PR. What's to gain from releasing this? It's fascinating but long. It's
definitely not put together as a soundbite, in fact it has no sound.

What are the security implications of releasing this information? Will it make
future assassins think twice?

What about the privacy implications? If you were incorrectly identified as a
lookout what would you do to clear your name? The story includes some Israelis
who share names with the assassination team who are freaked out right now.

~~~
yannis
_What technology is necessary to gather that much video so quickly? Is that
video feeding into a central hub? This is Dubai, a relatively tiny country.
Did they build this technology themselves or did they license it._

The technology is CCTV <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-
circuit_television>. It is imported from all over the place and is probably
not feeding into a central hub. In most countries UAE included it is found in
all hotels, airports and Shopping Centers. The assassins for sure knew about
it but because of their modus operandi did not worry about it. If you notice
the end of the video says the hotel staff opened the room 17 hours later and
that the latch was locked from the _inside_. They made the murder appear as a
heart attack (other reports at the time) reported it as electrocution -
probably killed him by inducing a heart attack via electrocution.

The team scattered to different places and all the names and nationalities
mentioned are probably false. They also probably had multiple passports and on
leaving Dubai appeared in another country with a different name.

~~~
johnyzee
Accounts from previous Mossad agents have explained one technique they have
employed for this kind of murder: They give the victim hardly traceable
anesthetic and fever inducing drugs, then, when his body temperature is
exceedingly high, he is submerged in icey water (f.ex. in a bathtub).
Apparently this causes heart attack in the victim and is very difficult to
distinguish from a natural cardiac arrest.

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aquarin
This reminds me about the movie "Munich".

