What’s Next?

I’ve talked about Andrew Keen before. Last night he popped up on the Colbert Report.

Still not convinced.

Whilst this tone is slightly broken by the flaming car driven into Glasgow Airport a few hours ago, this clip is an interesting watch, in it ex-cia intelligence expert Larry Johnson concludes that if the car bombs found in London yesterday had gone off, they would have made a big boom, but unless you happened to standing literally right next to it, they wouldn’t have been that dangerous.

In some ways the climate of fear even ineffectual bombs create makes them just as potent as the real thing (with the advantage that no one gets hurt). Hopefully this won’t be jumped on as another reason to push through more ‘anti-terror’ measures like ID cards. I’ll accept that there may be times where a trade off between liberty and security can be acceptable, but in those rare eventualities not only should we err on the side of liberties (because once given away, they’re hard to take back), we need to see evidence that they do actually make people more secure, something notably lacking (or in some cases evidence actively points the other way) in many measures introduced so far and those planned for the future.

This is perhaps the most moving thing I’ve ever seen made from plasticine.