Apparently, when George W. Bush visits Australia for the APEC conference in September, he’s going to be trailed by a Blackhawk helicopter, which will be blocking mobile phone signals.
A helicopter equipped with signal-jamming equipment will shadow Mr Bush's presidential motorcade whenever he travels on the city's streets.
It is expected the mobile phone network will be neutralised for about two minutes.
Many of the remote-controlled bombs detonated in Iraq and those used in the second Bali bombing were set off by mobile phones.
I first heard this on the radio, and even the radio DJs picked up on the obvious flaw in this plan... What if there’s another kind of emergency? Let’s say the terrorists decide to set up a sniper and start shooting the car (I assume the car will be bullet-proof, but this is just an example). How are they supposed to ask the helicopter “hey, can you guys see where that sniper is?” without a phone?
In addition to this, it’s now May. The conference is not until September. They’ve just announced to the terrorists that they won’t be able to detonate their bombs by mobile phone. The terrorists now have four months to adjust their plans and use something else.
And that’s the problem with trying to counter every possible attack individually – the terrorists know as much as you do: perhaps more. They’ve seen all the past attacks as well, so they’ll just try something else next time! Mobile phones don’t work? Try a CB radio. CB radios get blocked? Try a HAM radio. HAM radio is blocked? Try a bloody garage-door remote! Or how about a good old-fashioned timer?
You can’t predict every possible attack, the only way to stop them is with a little thing I like to call “police work.”