Monday, May 08, 2006



Making work for themselves

That is the only way to describe the news that the SIS is sniffing around Massey University in case students are misusing the facilities. Really, don't they have anything better to do, or are there unoppressed Muslims roaming free in Palmerston North?

Posted by Idiot/Savant at 5/08/2006 10:45:00 AM

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13 comments:

Yeah, that's nothing new. One of the guys I was in College House with 1991-93 turned up back at Uni circa 98-2000 ish, but never went to classes, just hung around in cafes. Turns out he was working for the SIS, surveilling students.

 Posted by Weekend_Viking : 5/08/2006 11:16:00 AM

A pity the FBI weren't checking up on flight students in the US.

I suspect the SIS is more worried about a domestic threat than an overseas threat.

Some disgruntled student decides to see if he can make anthrzx in a lab.

 Posted by Anonymous : 5/08/2006 11:21:00 AM

Well, I got bored in a chem lab in 1991 and made some TNT for fun. But to do enough bioagent to get a good outbreak, you'd probably have to be a postgrad with fairly dedicated lab access, and utterly no supervision to follow up on what you are doing.

 Posted by Weekend_Viking : 5/08/2006 12:16:00 PM

There are all sorts of hazardous materials and equipment in laboratories and their storage facilities. It is the privilege of the inquiring undergraduate to take advantage of any laxness in management of aforesaid materials and equipment for fun, profit and things that go boom. I imagine this is enough to concern the SIS.

You could probably poison a civic water supply, irradiate a preschool playground or explode the public library with what you can get your hands on in an unsecured chemistry department.

 Posted by stephen : 5/08/2006 01:07:00 PM

Re: Stephen - Yeah, you could. However, I can also do the same with supplies from an unsecured supermarket, camping or garden store, all of which I have used for procuring explosives and similar chemical agents for fun and profit. In addition, very few NZ chem labs have sufficient radioactives to irradiate much at all.

Hell, you don't even need a University level chem lab. Most of the average high school chem labs have sufficient interesting stuff to make some fun things (I know, I did), even in these days of dumbing down the experimental parts of the courses.

 Posted by Weekend_Viking : 5/08/2006 01:17:00 PM

Weekend Viking: I think its rather easier than that. For terrorism, you don't need a hell of a lot of material (though the more the better), the skills needed are rather basic, and the equipment is readily available or can be easily improvised. A first or second year student with a death wish could do it in their kitchen. The difficult bit is getting your hands on something nasty, and coming up with an effective delivery mechanism (other than the blatantly obvious) - and even that I suspect is easier than we'd like to think (remember those examples from the US of people just mail-ordering some Black Death...)

The problem is that it is neither credible nor desirable to regard first-year biology students as security risks solely on the basis of what they are studying, and more than Physics PhDs should be targetted because any one of them could build a nuclear weapon...

 Posted by Idiot/Savant : 5/08/2006 01:46:00 PM

I'd invite anyone to read clause 5 of The Disciplinary Statute of Auckland University:

http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/fms/default/uoa/Students/Prospective%20Students/Calendar/actsst.pdf

It begins:
"5 Members of the Security Intelligence Service
a No member of the Security Intelligence Service enrolled as a Student at the University shall carry out any inquiries into Security matters within the University Premises."

And only gets better

 Posted by Graeme Edgeler : 5/08/2006 02:31:00 PM

I don't see why the HSE shouldn't ensure that hazardous substances are under adequate control, and the police shouldn't deal with any attempts to make bombs or whatever.

BTW, making an atomic bomb isn't all that easy. (If it was, then it wouldn't have taken three years and several thousand people in WW2). There are several things that might stop you:
- U235 isn't easy to get, and even harder to make. Making a significant quantity would involve diverting most of the power generation capacity of NZ to run your enrichment plant.
- Plutonium is easier to make, assuming you have severel nuclear reactors and a shielded factory the size of central Auckland.
- A uranium gun device is relatively simple, assuming you have uranium. An implosion device is not.
- Then there is the whole issue of initiators, the details of which have never been declassified, although maybe if you asked AQ Khan he'd give you some tips.

 Posted by Rich : 5/08/2006 03:10:00 PM

Rich: if you read that Guardian article, you'll see that a pair of fairly bright postdocs can work out all the messy details of even a plutonium implosion device (from what was publicly available in 1964 let alone today) to produce a workable design (and they deliberately did it the hard way for a challenge). The most difficult part is obtaining the materials, and so that is where anti-proliferation efforts have to focus. But the idea that there are "atomic secrets" which can be protected and prevented from falling into the "wrong" hands is laughable - unless you're willing to basically ban the study of physics, or prevent any qualified physicist from emigrating to a non-nuclear armed country, and bomb all their universities so they can't produce any of their own. The same applies to biological warfare - except the problem is rather more severe.

 Posted by Idiot/Savant : 5/08/2006 04:05:00 PM

Neil: the idea that spies are snooping on people, coupled with a
well-founded distrust of the security services. They may actually be on to something - but given their usual standards (cough Ahmed Zaoui cough Aziz Choudry splutter) I don't think its that likely.

Look, it is an offence under NZ law to manufacture or possess biological weapons, its an offence to contaminate food or water, its an offence to cause sickness in animals and of course its an offence to infect people with disease, poison people or kill them, or to conspire or attempt to do any of these things. If the SIS have any actual evidence, they should turn it over to Police so the people involved can be prosecuted. But despite all the fear they try and spread, somehow that never seems to happen. I wonder why?

 Posted by Idiot/Savant : 5/08/2006 04:24:00 PM

The SIS has a long and dishonourable history of spying on students, dating back to the Cold War days when the National Party demonised all critics as traitors (something they still do today, BTW). There was an inquiry back in the 1970s, I believe, that revealed widespread SIS spying on campus but, of course, nothing ever changed. IMHO, the SIS are acting as thought police.

 Posted by Anonymous : 5/08/2006 04:28:00 PM

Yes, what the article doesn't specify is what "designing" amounts to. The rough details of how an A-bomb works are public knowledge - the details are the problem, not to mention the scale of equipment needed. I don't think you'd get very far trying to reprocess nuclear fuel in the Massey University chem labs, for instance.

 Posted by Rich : 5/08/2006 04:36:00 PM

Rich: exactly what it says: "designing". To the level of producing a parts list, schematic diagrams, and build instructions. Fissile material was assumed to be available (they were interested in the design process, after all), but technical problems were "solved" by drawing up exactly what experiments needed to be done, and feeding them to their handlers, who would pass back results (so "appropriate resources" includes other nuclear scientists to do the mook-work). It was a desk exercise, but an illuminating one nonetheless.

 Posted by Idiot/Savant : 5/08/2006 05:26:00 PM

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