For Valuable Prizes

As it happened, I was in an airport security queue when I first heard about the new London bombing plot. My first thought was “it will be a fizzle.” Hey, as a first try, it was not a bad guess: most of the other trumpeted busts so far have been, to put it mildly, vastly overhyped.

Ten days later, I’m a little less certain that it is a fizzle, but I’m still on the fence. It does sound like we have a bunch of guys who like to say rude things in chat rooms; how much farther it goes--that remains, I think, to be seen.

But I can’t take much reassurance from reports of today’s first court appearance. BBC says:

“Two were accused of failing to disclose information and a 17-year-old was charged with possessing articles useful to a person preparing terrorism acts.”

Two points here. One, when was it, exactly, that “failing to disclose information” became a crime? And two, “articles useful to a person preparing terrorism acts.” In one of several previous incarnations, I was a police reporter for the old Louisville Times. I remember reading a hundred warrants that charged “possession of burglary tools.” Imagine my chagrin when someone explained to me that this meant they had a screwdriver in the trunk.

For valuable prizes, is there any reader who can affirm that s/he does not possess “articles useful to a person preparing terrorism acts”?