The Security Blog

Wow.

I just found out that in my beautiful hometown, Haifa, the famous Carmel Tunnels project is nearing completion.  It’s about time.

Originally envisioned by the Ottoman Empire, the Turks thought the designing a tunnel under the gorgeous Carmel Mountain would shorten the travel time between northern Israel, Lebanon (and thus Turkey) and southern Israel (and thus Egypt).  What would have saved horse-and-camel caravans several days has a new meaning today.  As Haifa grows and develops, traffic traveling the main North-South highway in Israel skids to a halt 5 miles north of Haifa and does not ease up until about 2 miles south

While the delay length seems minuscule in American standards, it adds up to two hours in travel time to a trip that should last one and a half hours.  Further, the famous Israeli driving mentality, that demand that the brake pedal be constantly connected to the horn, creates a huge, often work-day-long traffic snarl in Israel’s 2nd busiest city.

Due to the vagaries of Israeli law, a law that was built in unique combination of the Ottoman Empire legal code, English (British) jurisprudence and Talmudic dictation, this project took many years to get started.  Once it has started, it was subject to many court challenges, some around the IMPORTANT question of just how deeply, beneath one’s house, does one’s land possession end.  Apparently, the answer is NOT “to the center of the Earth”….

The tunnels are two sets of two tunnels each (one in either direction), and they meet in each direction about a mile from my parents’ home.  You can see pictures of the current status here, here (description in Hebrew), and here. You can also see some of the 500 Chinese Workers Imported Just for This Project to Israel dancing.  For detailed pictures and maps, see here (I could not post these on this page due to (C) concerns).

The tunnels should open for travel by July 2009 ce.

Enjoy, Israel!

The NY Times just released an article (Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror) talking about alleged US actions to monitor financial transaction between people suspected of involvment in Terrorism. This leads me to TWO questions:1) What’s the big deal?2) Who is the NY Times to decide to publish this article.

Depends on one’s political view, the questions’ order may be reversed.

Let me explain…. In a world where we know that we:

a) Track criminals by their cell phone,

b) Have a “Do Not Fly” lists, and

c) Computer power is cheap;

Wouldn’t we expect our government to track financial transactions across international boundries? Especially large ones?

I beleive that while the “American Public” might have been surprised, the terror suspects knew something like this is happening for quite some time…

As for the NYT. Without delving into politics, which I might do in further blogs, who the heck do they think they are? This operation, if the story holds:

a) Does not violate US law (to the best of my, very limited knowledge),

b) Probably does some good, and

c) Is CLASSIFIED

The Press, which at times I am proud to be a member of, has a legal way to get information DEclassified. Once it is declassified, it may be published. If it remains classified – why put, as they say, methods and resources at risk?