Conventional Terrorist Crimes: Kidnapping and Homemade Explosives

"Conventional" terrorism covers a wide range of terrorist crimes. Assassinations, kidnappings, car bomb explosions, and suicide bombings all fall under the umbrella of conventional terrorism. Airplane hijackings, where passengers were held hostage or killed until the terrorists' demands were met, were common during the 1970s and 1980s. The international community's refusal to negotiate with hijackers made airplane hijacking a less popular method of terror. Kidnapping and hostage taking remain common terrorist crimes, and in some countries are very real dangers for tourists.

 

Conventional weapons include, of course, guns and explosives, but the term can also apply to pipe bombs, nails used by ecoterrorists to spike trees, or even razor blades sent in envelopes.

 

Plastic Explosives: Plastic explosives can be used either on their own or to supplement other homemade explosives. They are simple to make and can even be manufactured from common household chemicals. Plastic explosives have been used in both military actions and terrorist bombings.

 

Car Bombs: Domestic terrorists around the world have used cars as the mechanism of delivery for their homemade explosives. From political embassies to soda-pop manufacturing plants, boat, truck, and car bombs kill and injure thousands of people each year.

 

The newest method of terrorism is information warfare (or cyber terrorism). The major difficulties with cyber terrorism are pinpointing its origin and determining the nature of the attack.

 

Activities such as computer hacking, cyber hooliganism/mischief, or penetrating a system for the challenge or thrill, while considered computer crimes, are not considered forms of terrorism.

 

According to the Department of Defense Directive 3600.1, cyber terrorism "involves actions taken to achieve information superiority by affecting adversary information, information-based processes, information systems, and computer-based networks while defending one's own information, information-based processes, information systems, and computer-based networks."

 

Interestingly, countries around the world are constantly penetrating other countries' information systems as a routine form of espionage.

 

Some say that terrorists want to "bring down the Internet," but this does not seem likely, as these same terrorists use websites, chat rooms and the like to keep in contact with each other, recruit members, raise funds, distribute propaganda, and even plan attacks.