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from the learn-anything-on-the-interwebz dept.
Australian Broadcast Corporation reports
Haisem Zahab, an Australian citizen, is alleged to have been researching how to develop laser missile detection equipment for IS and helping the extremists develop their own destructive missile arsenal.
...
"We will allege he has utilised the internet to perform services for ISIL," Commissioner Colvin said."Firstly, by researching and designing a laser warning device to help warn against incoming guiding munitions used by coalition forces in Syria and Iraq.
"Secondly, we will also allege that he has been researching, designing and modelling systems to assist ISIL's efforts to develop their own long-range guided missile capabilities."
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Commissioner Colvin said Zahab, who is a trained electrician, had conducted "fairly sophisticated" research.
Mmm...aybe it is indeed a good time for Australia to kickstart its own space agency? I mean, look, if a trained electrician living outback manages to conduct a credible "fairly sophisticated research", perhaps the tech potential is quite high downunder.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 28 2017, @08:20PM (6 children)
The first thing that ran thru my mind is in the USA almost all FBI "captures" turn out to be entrapment of retarded people, like developmentally disabled in the brain people, because thats how we get easy convictions and grow prosecutor careers and thats how we mistreat our retarded adults, by surrounding them with cops, gaslighting them into agreeing with something they probably don't understand at their IQ level, and then toss them into jail to make a buck.
The next thing that comes to mind is how does a retarded guy end up an electrician. Then again I'm old and handy and I've seen some crazy shit in my day WRT electrical wiring so maybe its not so unusual. Lets see. The guy who got 220 to his clothes dryer by tapping into two 110 outlet legs, that was classic (WTF where is the 220 breaker !@#! then I trace the wires thru the conduit and holy shit ...). The guy who wired what seemed like half the outlets in my house with a hot neutral reversal and god help me somehow wired one with a neutral ground reversal, I mean he literally just randomly attached wires to screws. The guy who wired my parents kitchen range with two short cables and didn't clamp the splice very tight and the inside of the junction box was cooked pretty well (my dad and I replaced that entire run with lower gauge wire).
So retarded electrician, I mean I just don't know. Its possible I guess. It might be the guy isn't a "real licensed electrician" but is like a laborer or go-fer working for an electrician perhaps.
I suppose being south of the equator, aussies turn the screwdriver the opposite direction to tighten connections and their electrons probably flow from neutral to hot in the opposite of ours. Let me guess, instead of 220/110 you guys being south of equator run -220/-110. Also I imagine you south hemisphere people must install floor boxes in your ceilings and ceiling boxes in your floors. Well that's enough Australian electrician banter.
I mean, Australians do the same entrapment of special needs adults that americans do, right?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 28 2017, @08:28PM (2 children)
Highly doubtful the guy is that low on intelligence. I would be more curious to see the actual evidence and his defense, everything before that is pure guesswork. Was he duped into helping someone with a project? Or was he intentionally trying to develop military tech? Was he helping people on the net without any real idea of who they are?
"Police will allege that this individual, in a regional centre, acted with intent to provide ISIL with the ... technical capability, and high-tech capability, to detect and develop missiles," Mr Turnbull said.
"This highlights that terrorism, support for terrorist groups, and Islamist extremism is not limited to our major cities.
Honestly it just sounds like some FUD, but that is why I'd like to see the evidence. How hard are they trying to find a bogeyman, or is the bogeyman real in this case?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 28 2017, @08:43PM (1 child)
Highly doubtful the guy is that low on intelligence.
I donno man they're very specifically going after him for the "crimes" of researching and designing and modeling.
If he was mass producing missile jammers that would have been in the charges. If he had ever produced something that actually worked or even looked interesting that would be in the charges. If he had ever tried doing anything, even at the level of astrological idiocy, that would be in the list of charges. So all he's done is thought crime at most. Assuming he's not retarded and ten cops offered him M+M candies if he'd just repeat what they tell him into a camera, like the American FBI does to protect us from terrorism.
Basically I have done what that guy has done, because I own an old 60s era microwave RF textbook about pre-60s era unclassified ECM gear (like the kind of textbook an EE soon to be hired by Raytheon or General Dynamics in 1965 would have read to get the job) so that counts as research and I've done some fooling around design work with high power LED drivers that could theoretically be combined with some high power IR LEDs to jam an IR missile, or at least jam a 1960s era missile. And I used to be paid to do RF modeling so yeah I'm sure guilty of that. Now having a Nordic-ish name and appearance and not Arabic means I have no personal contacts in Syria and I have the wrong nationality of name for the perp walk in front of the news cameras, so I'm immune to prosecution, but so far as I know I've done everything this guy is accused of doing.
Perhaps they'll have more details, perhaps the evidence will all be classified for public safety and more importantly self protection of the injustice system.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 28 2017, @09:23PM
Understandable, and why I'm interested to see the evidence. If all they have is thought crime due to researching things THEY deem questionable, then the authorities should put their big boy pants back on and start acting like adults. They'd better have concrete evidence that the guy knew he was working for ISIL and was NOT misguided into thinking he was making a detection system to protect civilians from an imminent bomb threat. Bombs on the ground, terrorism. Bombs in the sky, bringing freedom. Civilian casualties from ground bombs, terrorist animal scum. Civilian casualties from sky bombs? Regrettable casualties of war, paired with blaming the village for the presence of enemies.
Personally this sounds more like a way to make searching everyone's internet activity OK in the minds of the people, along with building cases based on "suspicious internet activity". Its the same old quote we hear, but seems applicable here:
One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting. -Salman Rushdie
So do we defend all people from outrageous "thought crime" policies? As we all know, there may be good reasons to pass such legislation (catch the bad guys!) but the chilling long term effects are often much worse than the benefits.
(Score: 1) by tedd on Wednesday March 01 2017, @07:34AM (2 children)
You do know there's no such thing as negative AC, right?
(Score: 1) by MorePower on Wednesday March 01 2017, @12:12PM
Well, not in the Northern Hemisphere there isn't. But down under?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 01 2017, @03:07PM
Seriously dude take a 741 set up the feedback to invert (ground the positive input and short the output to the negative input) look on a dual trace scope at both wave forms and tell me one isn't "negative AC". Surely the trace of the output of that opamp isn't positive AC or plain old AC, its clearly the input trace negated or "negative AC"
I am mostly kidding. Mostly.
Another one of those philosophizing at the lab bench, to troll bench techs, is phase angle. OK most people are pretty chill with applying a positive 180 degree phase delay using resistors and capacitors sized for some specific freq sine wave. People are chill, of course RC circuits cause a delay, sure no challenge to delay a waveform by half a cycle to get a postive 180 degree phase angle. Now, mind blown time, you can use the same parts to cause a negative 180 degree phase delay, yo its like the output wave goes forward in time half a cycle to figure out what the input waveform will be in the future and outputs it now, whoa... Again mostly kidding.
In the old days bench techs mostly did stuff thats probably a fire able OSHA violation today, which is a shame because it was fun and didn't kill anyone very often, mostly, like charge up electrolytics to 400 or so volts and carefully toss them to other techs to catch, that usually only works once or maybe twice with the dumber ones, or we'd hook the caps up across line power to cause a (probably toxic) steam explosion. We also did stupid things with smoke emitting diodes. I specifically remember a switching power supply undergrad lab where I'm surprised anyone made it out alive. Every idiot there found a way to put their hand across rectified line power or found a way to wire up an oscilloscope without an isolation transformer on the lab experiment to fry the scope or blow the room breaker or fry themselves by touching floating ground scope or I remember one idiot had to fail the lab in shame because he blew every transistor he touched and the stockroom wouldn't give him any more. I remember the lab TA yelling at one kid for blowing the room breaker because the TA didn't think it was physically possible and he wanted to know, apparently the kid crossed some wires and shorted out the AC and to get around the bench breaker tripping he held it down until the room breaker popped. Every time I look at a power supply that I didn't make, I consider that one of those idiots probably designed it. I keep a lot of fire extinguishers in my house.
Dumbest thing I ever did was built a bridge rectifier out of green LEDs on a dare and the peak voltage of the transformer, whatever it was, apparently exceeded the PIV rating of a green LED, whatever it is (probably like 5 volts, 24 volts, wasn't much) and I blew the LEDs either on the charging spike or exceeding PIV and then popped the little smoothing electrolytic I had on the output (so at least two failed shorted or zenered, at least for a little while). Ah good times. This was in the old days before blue LEDs so green LEDs were the coolest and I thought having a glowing bridge rectifier would be cool. It glowed, but not for long LOL....