What, if anything, should we be doing to foreclose such attacks?

Not to be snide but, start digging more graves?

Seriously, I see very little that could possibly be done to foil such an attack. Any police force in most any major city could easily be quickly overwhelmed by such an attack. They just are not set up to deal with such things, and the cost of getting them set up would be prohibitive, starting with a whole lot more cops on the street, and all of them going thru SWAT training, as well as equipping them the same, etc.

But you now, as to the blackberry thing, it strikes me as reasonable to jam mobile phone signals in the area involved in such an attack as a first response.

This struck me as obvious when bit first said it, but after thinking about it, I am not so sure. All cell phones have GPS transmitters, maybe that could be used against them? (I am mindful of the techno/civil liberty problems, but maybe?) Besides, FRC radios are cheap, easy to use, have decent range, good battery life, and a simple code could be made up to talk in.

On the other side of the communications coin tho, make police scanners illegal? (I know, that opens up a whole 'nother can of worms...)

http://www.schneier.com/blog/

Basically he says that shutting down communications is a bad idea, and there's basically no countermeasures you can take to stop this stuff, so keep in mind that this kind of thing is extremely rare, don't overreact, and try to have the best intel you can.

If there's any lesson in these attacks, it's not to focus too much on the specifics of the attacks. Of course, that's not the way we're programmed to think. We respond to stories, not analysis. I don't mean to be unsympathetic; this tendency is human and these deaths are really tragic. But 18 armed people intent on killing lots of innocents will be able to do just that, and last-line-of-defense countermeasures won't be able to stop them. [what's important is] Intelligence, investigation, and emergency response. We have to find and stop the terrorists before they attack, and deal with the aftermath of the attacks we don't stop. There really is no other way, and I hope that we don't let the tragedy lead us into unwise decisions about how to deal with terrorism.

Schneier tries to stay pretty apolitical, but having read his blog for several years, what he means by the last sentence, IMO, is: Bin Laden got what he wanted when Bush attacked the middle east, and these terrorists will get what they want if India and Pakistan go to war. Hope that doesn't happen.

We still don’t know for certain yet why the attacks in Mumbai took place

Not to get off track....but is it plausible that the intent was similar to the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Iraq?. Stir the pot between rivals...in this case, push India and Pakistan to heightened defensive alertness or possibly a skirmish thus Pakistan would be using forces in places other than Waziristan?...it'd even let Pakistan off the hook for the little terrorist hunting they do.

Surely if they just wanted to kill Jews/Americans/Euros there are other soft targets to hit with greater potential death tolls...more bang for the buck if you will.

Among their arsenal of weapons are bags of almonds and BlackBerry mobile phones – almonds to keep their energy up, and the mobile internet connections to stay one step ahead of police and the military.

Heh. CNN was a help, there, as well.

The reports we got from the planes involved in the 9/11 atatcks suggested that the onboard TV systems were being used to monitor reaction, too, particularly to my memory in the case of the plane that went down in PA, after the victims revolted.

But you now, as to the blackberry thing, it strikes me as reasonable to jam mobile phone signals in the area involved in such an attack as a first response. THere's some chatter in the last few weeks from Canada about such boxes.

It's true enough that such deployment causes problems for the good guys, too, but I would guess those to be more than offset by the crippling of the bad guys comms.