Marshall Brain's Blog

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An article in Time magazine entitled Trains in Vain talks about a new form of terrorism -- blackmail terrorism. From the article:

"The hitherto unknown group [named AZF] has threatened to bomb France's railroads unless the government forks over a hefty ransom.

Beginning in December, AZF sent the President and Interior Ministry letters grousing about the state of French society and warning that it had planted bombs along the nation's rail lines and at two other unidentified vulnerable targets. Officials say they were instructed to communicate with the group via personal ads in a newspaper, using the code name 'Big Wolf' for AZF and 'Suzy' for the ministry. A day after officials posted one such ad, they received the GPS coordinates of a sophisticated bomb that had been planted along a line in central France, which ballistics experts detonated."

The basic message is: "Pay us $5 million or we will blow up your train system."

This kind of stuff from terrorists is one reason why there is so much pressure to develop robotic police and security systems as quickly as possible. If there can be robotic sentries gaurding remote rail lines, pipelines, powerlines, bridges, etc., many terrorist opportunities will be eliminated.