Al Qaeda is Busy in the United Kingdom

What's al Qaeda been up to lately? Quite a bit in the United Kingdom. The United States should take some pointers with how the Brits are beefing up security around critical infrastructure.

Scotland yard has discovered a plot to destroy Britain's largest internet hub in London. Several suspects have been arrested.

In a series of raids, detectives have recovered computer files revealing that terrorist suspects had targeted a high-security internet “hub” in London.

The facility, in Docklands, houses the channel through which almost every bit of information on the internet passes in or out of Britain.

The suspects, who were arrested, had targeted the headquarters of Telehouse Europe, which houses Europe’s biggest “web hotel”, containing dozens of “servers” , the boxes which contain the information that makes up the web.

Recently, public safety officials in Britain discovered a plot against natural gas delivery in the UK.

Last year MI5 uncovered intelligence which suggested that Islamic terrorist suspects had carried out reconnaissance of the huge Bacton complex of gas terminals on the Norfolk coast. The threat led to the deployment of armed guards around the plant.

Britain has taken substantive action to protect their infrastructure in ways that does not infringe on people's liberties.

The discovery led Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of MI5, to set up the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure last month. It is a special MI5 unit to help to protect “infrastructure” sites from terrorist attacks, such as telecommunications, the internet and key utilities such as oil, gas installations and nuclear power stations.

I wonder if the United States is paying attention. All of the terrorists are not in Iraq. Some of them, unfortunately, could be here.