You could start by making a rational argument instead of appealing to a cynical belief that everyone is irrational and intent on restricting freedom. The essence of the irrationality that pervades American political discourse is exactly that sort of "everyone is crazy" mentality. There are plenty of people advancing rationality and freedom. You aren't one of them.
appealing to a cynical belief that everyone is irrational and intent on restricting freedom
I don't see that in the GP. It looks to me that he's working from the observation that personal liberty is decreasing, presumably revealing that the decisions being made are not rational. In particular, there's no reason to read into this anything about scope ("everyone"), nor their intent (to restrict freedom).
Clearly it would be incorrect to impute this to everyone when the restricted liberty can only be caused by the few in power.
Also, it may not be their intent to restrict freedom. Indeed, their intent may be to save our freedom, but due to the observed lack of rationality, their efforts carry the (assumedly unintended) side effect of restricting freedom.
Thank you, that was a very clear and succinct rebuttal.
I would add to it, that "advancing freedom" is one of those phrases that is, when you examine it, quite poorly defined. Freedom is more a set of associations than a strict definition, though I'm sure one can find philosophers who have attempted to strictly define it, so you get "freedom sub Professor X". Freedom is much easier to talk about in the abstract than to define, and lends itself to pithy (or, less charitably, glib) phrases that can be twisted to whatever one's own definition of freedom is.
My original post was flippant and lacking in nuance, to be sure (still not warranting the personal attack; I do, in fact, attempt to point out logical fallacies and bring about reasonable discourse). I am not immune to making the odd sound-bite myself, though calling my post cynical and then making a strawman attack also does not advance the cause of rationality.
"advancing freedom" is one of those phrases that is, when you examine it, quite poorly defined
I agree, which is why I instead used the term "liberty" in some places. While the term "freedom" has in modern times become clouded particularly with the notion of "positive" freedoms, I believe that the term "liberty" tends to be more strongly associated with the more traditional notions of "negative" liberty.
But I must concede that even this difference is at the grossest level, and there remain much more nuanced differences in definition beyond the negative/positive distinction.
I hate to admit it, but I quick-clicked the upvote on your parent basically -as- I started reading your comment and thinking. Normally I'm firmly in the "misdiagnosing stupid" camp.
It's sad and frustrating to realize that we, too, are human! and so must constantly self-check on these sorts of things. While the word "community" gets over-used, I think that's part of what community can do.
Please study some history before you make claims like that. Have you seen any witches burned recently? Have 100K Japanese people on the west coast been put into camps recently?
Depends on how you define "recently." I think the idea that humans are getting smarter and nobler is hogwash. There were plenty of professional philosophers in Rome while the emperor was burning Christians on pikes as party candles. And Rome was certainly the pinnacle of civilization in its day.
The worst evils of the 20th century were done by people with lots of scientific, industrial and psychological knowledge propping them up. And the worst evils of the 21st century will be no different.
> I think the idea that humans are getting smarter and nobler is hogwash.
OK, find me a duel and a bear-baiting match in America and I'll believe you. Otherwise you're just mindlessly cynical, like any number of other teenagers.
UFC is not a duel in the traditional sense, nor is it 'violent' in the same way a war or aggravated assault is 'violent'. It's a technical sport (well UFC is a league of MMA fighters, where MMA is the sport) with well-defined rules designed to minimize damage to participants. Saying that the popularity of MMA shows that our society is getting more violent doesn't make sense, on the contrary - it's proof that we are able to channel primary urges to measure ourselves with our fellow humans in controlled and structured ways.
As for your link, an anecdote does not data make. If you want to argue that our society is getting more violent you need to prove that the amount of violent episodes now is higher than in the past, not that there happen violent events now. And as a matter of fact, overall in most of the Western world, the amount of violent crimes has been on a steady decline for the last 50 years at least (the amount of other crimes has gone down too, by the way).
Darfur, from wikipedia: "Sudanese authorities claim a death toll of roughly 19,500 civilians [72] while certain non-governmental organizations, such as the Coalition for International Justice, controversially claim that over 400,000 people have been killed.[73]"
Compare that to WWII: "Most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilian"
Looking at North Korea and Iraq, every single person in those countries could die and that still wouldn't exceed the body count from WWII, not to mention WWI or any of the truly pointless European conflicts before that.
Even comparing Iraq to Vietnam, do you know what that war did to that country?
Millions and millions of civilians were killed, an order of magnitude worse than even the extreme estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths.
Forced labor worldwide? Slavery was legal in the US 150 years ago. Now it is not -- in fact, we just elected a black president.
I didn't compare any of those examples to all of WW2, but rather you rour example of the 100k japanese interned during WW2. And despite that, suffering can't be gauged merely on the number of people killed.
You said: "Have you seen any witches burned recently? Have 100K Japanese people on the west coast been put into camps recently?"
And my response was to indicate that tragedies like those are still happening in modern times, for very much the same reasons.
"Forced labor worldwide? Slavery was legal in the US 150 years ago. Now it is not -- in fact, we just elected a black president."
You response seems to have little to do with my point. Forced labor is a worldwide problem. Reciting US history to me does little to discredit that. I'd like to know what Obama has done recently to stop the sex trafficking of girls from Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia.
They are representative of the state of the world in that we still allow them to go on. If you think your hands are clean in any of that, then you are sorely mistaken.
> If you think your hands are clean in any of that, then you are sorely mistaken.
Oh yes, original sin. Wonderful. That makes sense. Can I buy some plenary indulgence from you, or is it a 'salvation by grace' thing now?
> They are representative of the state of the world in that we still allow them to go on.
The world once allowed the Black Plague and religions based on human sacrifice to 'go on', as you say. Darfur and North Korea are nothing compared to those.
Wow, you have some serious distortion glasses on there. When did I say anything about original sin? And as for 'allowing' the Black Plague and human sacrifice to go on, that's an entirely different timeframe when the world wasn't globalized in the way it is now. At that time, people were isolated enough that direct social effects across societies were hugely limited. This isn't true now -- everything that goes on in the US directly affects the quality of life for people around the world, and vice versa. Any other poorly thought out responses you want to throw this way?
and yet your comment was created on a machine built upon rational being used to communicate on a network built upon freedom. start? more like recognize and celebrate what has already happened whilst rejecting the birthing pains.
used to communicate on a network built upon freedom
Actually, it was built by the Department of Defense, aka The War Department. The freedom aspect was purely unintentional.
Indeed, I suppose that the reason that the best way to make the network robust results in making it free, creates an interesting analogy to the original point. At the very least, it proves that it's possible to be both more free and more secure, simultaneously.
I couldn't disagree more. The Times Square bomb was reported by a bystander who was on guard (certainly in part) because the media has effectively kept the terrorist threat fresh in our minds.
While terrorist attacks may be rare, the ones that are attempted are often thwarted by people simply being aware of their surroundings. Terrorism and the threat of terrorism are not just a media creation. They are real, with real people wanting to kill real people. While we shouldn't surrender our fundamental ideals and liberties on the altar of security, pretending like the problem doesn't exist hardly seems like the answer either.
The Times Square bomb was reported by a bystander who was on guard (certainly in part) because the media has effectively kept the terrorist threat fresh in our minds.
He noticed that a car was filling up with smoke. Even if had never heard of terrorism before, he still would have called the police because that's what people do when they notice a fire nearby.
pretending like the problem doesn't exist hardly seems like the answer either.
There are 300,000,000 people in the US. On any given day, tens of thousands of them will notice something that looks like terrorism to them. On almost every day of the year, every single one of those tens of thousands of people will be wrong. Completely and totally wrong. As a result, those people will become extremely anxious and will cause law enforcement to waste time and hassle innocent people needlessly.
We need to face facts: the vast majority of people are completely incapable of distinguishing terrorist activity so what they report as suspicious is often nothing but an artifact of their own prejudice. Terrorism has become an excuse to systematically harass out groups. And in the process, we are all made less safe because the police have to investigate these stupid incidents instead of focusing on real crimes.
By analogy, there are two solutions to spam: to filter it out, or to stop gving spammers a reason to send it. In this instance, it's almost impossible to do the former—requiring every human to add an additional step of waryness to their already-complex urban model—while the latter is easy, and only requires O(n = news editors) instead of O(m = humans) effort.
Almost certainly, the best thing any person can do is work to lessen their own cravings for sensationalist news entertainment. Then, let your circle (at this point only containing yourself) grow to include others, beginning with the people closest to you (in one sense or another, as in you might start with friends, family, or maybe even start by telling us about how you lessened your cravings here on HN).
You probably meant something larger scale in your original questions, or maybe something more tactically concrete. Hopefully, starting by getting the scale of the problem under control might help us get the tactics right, and then expand the scale.
But here we are, sitting on HN voting up the most ridiculous non-useful articles. HN is often full of sensationalist entertainment news - endless appstore policies, iPad raves/rants etc. Why this is dead, why X is a Y killer. Endless rants about privacy.
We're just as bad as the general population as a whole. Our "Terrorism" is "possible affront on privacy" or "Apple might be evil!"
The problem is "news." Without sensational news—without ephemera, in other words—the concept of "news" crumbles. We don't need to know the ongoing developments in stories that don't affect us personally, but we still crave to. If humans were stripped of this urge, this and every social news site would be reduced to magazines, publishing only after-the-fact analyses of completed narratives.
Maybe a way to start doing this would be telling people that they are dumb.
The past couple weeks I've been thinking that people are ok with small/short/quick news because it makes them think they have figured out the whole thing. Maybe they are satisfied that they've learned something, or maybe they think it is enough.
I think folks are overestimating their ability to put loosely connected ideas into something bigger. You get a little here, a sprinkle there and you're cool with that.
It's like a fast food for the brain. You're constantly satisfied, almost by the second, because you're supposedly "learning" something.
But I don't know. My train of thought stops there. I don't know how to strip people of this urge.
That's an easy advice to give when you're not really facing terrorism, but an extremely difficult one to follow when there's non-negligible chance your children's school bus will be bombed.
Where is the danger of a terrorist attack on a schoolbus currently the greatest? How does that danger there compare to the danger of a traffic crash involving a schoolbus? There should be official statistics on all these issues anywhere where governance hasn't completely broken down.
You are extrapolating from your own experience on situations which are very different. My argument has two points:
1. I don't consider the current situation in the US "terror". I'm talking about different times and places. If you were boarding a bus in Israel, Sri Lanka, Iraq during certain periods of time, you would have a higher chance of dying from a bombing than from an accident.
2. The natural response to terror is anything but rational. It is a completely different feeling to go on a bus knowing there's a possibility of an accident to going on a bus knowing that one of the passengers may be carrying a bomb.
>If you were boarding a bus in Israel, Sri Lanka, Iraq during certain periods of time, you would have a higher chance of dying from a bombing than from an accident.
You should check the stats on these things first. I'm pretty certain that isn't true. Check out the traffic fatality rate in Iraq: http://chartsbin.com/view/0lz
Even with the rate of Israel at 7.59 per 100,000, that comes out to 539 people per year.
Certain time, certain place. Check bus stats in Israel between 1993-2006 - I guarantee you will find significantly more passengers died of bombings than accidents.
In any case, the stats are meaningless, as they have nothing to do with human nature and the way we perceive odds & danger. When the Beltway sniper was operating I don't think anyone was calmed by the knowledge their chances of being hit are really quite small.
> It is a completely different feeling to go on a bus knowing there's a possibility of an accident to going on a bus knowing that one of the passengers may be carrying a bomb.
I would compare the feeling to the feeling of wanting to do something, but not having the guts to just 'do it.' In this case, you want to search everyone on the bus that you don't trust until you are satisfied there is no bomb, but social pressures prevent you from doing so. This causes the stress.
The difference just being acceptance. When you believe that someone may be carrying a bomb you hold onto some hope that something can be done to stop them. When you get on a bus knowing that there is the possibility of an accident, there's not much you can do short of wrestling for control of the bus from the driver (or just not getting on the bus).
People have accepted that accidents happen. People have not accepted yet that 'terrorism' is a fact of life.
You are making an assumption about my personal experiences that isn't based on complete knowledge of my life history. In fact, I had a very specific example in mind of a country that has become more free, more prosperous, and more safe during my adulthood because the people there stopped being afraid of the terrorist acts perpetrated by agents of that country's dictatorial former government. The courage of the people brings about the safety and the freedom and the sound judgment of the people. I know of a terrorist movement that has utterly failed because its victims ceased being afraid.
Taiwan. When I first lived there, the ruling party (which is once more the ruling party, after a change of ruling party in between) used political assassination and other terrorist acts to keep its grip on power. During the late 1980s, the common people stopped being afraid there, realizing they outnumbered the secret police, and peaceful mass demonstrations and continual efforts at forming opposition political movements and a free press when both were formally banned eventually resulted in free elections and a change of government. Here in the United States, and all over the world, that should be our response to terrorist threats: keep on seeking more freedom and more exposure of truth. Don't let the terrorists scare you from exercising freedom, and don't let your own government scare you from exercising your freedom while it responds to terrorists.
Terrorism is a legitimate tool or strategy of warfare. It's terrible, distasteful and I think we can all agree it's bad. But in terms of asymmetrical warfare strategy it's the strongest weapon you can use. People often forget that because most people think along lines of war having rules and being civil (and following conventions of war and honorable rules of engagement and such).
But it wasn't all that long ago really that it was perfectly common and acceptable to do things worse than terrorism. Like rape and pillage an entire city as a perfectly legitimate and really quite typical invasion tactic.
Yes yes yes. Either you believe that asymmetric tactics like terrorism are legitimate, or you believe that anyone who has the biggest guns should be boss forever 'n ever. And I say that as someone who lives in Moscow, which has faced terrorism very recently.
That depends on your definition of 'legitimate'. According to broadly-accepted international law, from the 20th century on terrorism is not a 'legitimate tool of warfare'. If you argue that it is (can be) an effective tool, then yes - in the same way rape and pillage can be. Terrorizing opponents is not exclusively for the small party in an asymmetric way.
That's a great thought and probably the correct long view, but what a lot of people mean when they talk about defeating terrorism is addressing the existence of actual terrorists alive today.
I suspect that the general promotion of rationality wouldn't have been as effective at stopping Zarqawi as were the missiles that hit his safe-house.
After we kill Zarqawi, what then? Do you think AQ just disappears into a puff of smoke?
Historically speaking, targeted leadership strikes have not been terribly effective at stopping terrorist movements. You kill leaders and more arise. You kill those and yet more take their place.
I've been increasingly wondering about this, and I'm not sure I agree with the article.
Schneier asserts that "It's hard to sneak terrorists into the U.S.", which is hard to swallow given the essentially unchecked flow of immigrants coming across the Mexican border every day. Why would a terrorist fly into a major US airport, when he could just as easily fly into Mexico and then walk across the border (carrying as much cargo as he liked). Think of the vast drug shipments that cross this border, and then tell me that sneaking across a small suitcase of biological agents would be difficult.
I also disagree that "small attacks aren't enough". If you and 9 of your friends coordinate to roll grenades into 10 elementary schools in 10 different cities, I can assure you that you'd make headlines, and bring daily life to a standstill as parents refused to send their children to school.
It's also increasingly bizarre to me that terrorists would target airports or airplanes at all. Airports are the one place where security is most concentrated. Practically speaking, blowing up a plane is probably the most difficult option you could choose if you wanted to kill 300 people. Why not pick one of the other myriad unguarded 'soft' targets where people gather?
Either terrorists are incredibly stupid, vanishingly small in number, or both.
given the essentially unchecked flow of immigrants
coming across the Mexican border every day.
The words missing there are "poor Latin" (immigrants). Coyotes are not stupid and want to be left (more or less) alone and free to conduct their business. They "self-police" themselves by selecting who they carry across the border, choosing:
1. People they can trust not to create problems along the way
2. People that will try to stay out of trouble in the US (if you're successful, you're more likely to try to get your family in as well and recommend the same coyote. If you're caught (specially early on) you might turn them in.
3. People that don't look suspicious (that might be undercover law enforcement, for ex)
And above all, they KNOW that the day a terrorist attack within the US is traced back to them public outrage would make law enforcement come down on them with the heat of 1000 suns and the border would be closed tighter than Scrooges coin purse.
Smuggling in illegal aliens is illegal... but smuggling in terrorists is illegal, dangerous and extremely bad for business.
The same thing applies to drug smugglers as well. Collaborating with terrorism isn't in their best interest.
"poor Latin" immigrants have many disadvantages, which is why they depend on coyotes. Presumably, a terrorist organization could:
* pay well enough that the coyotes would forget their principles
* provision their agents well enough to cross on their own.
Or, leave Mexico aside. Why not Canada? Why not Cuba? via boat from Haiti, landing in some god-forsaken part of Louisiana? I can't accept the proposition that getting into the country presents any serious difficulty for someone with means and motive.
You should check out the borders sometime, both Canadian and Mexican. You're underestimating the difficulty of getting across, even if there were no border agents. It's miles of walking through harsh terrain. You start out in the middle of nowhere, get across, and you're still in the middle of nowhere. Most people are not Bear Grylls. It's far easier to just fake some ids and take a plane, which seems to be what most of the bad guys end up doing.
Hiking for a week or so while covering ~20-30 kilometers per day is hardly beyond a motivated individual. Especially if you have collaborators on the other end, and can arrange being picked up in some remote location.
Well, the Coast Guard has spent considerable time, money, and effort learning how to effectively detect and (if necessary) stop people in boats from getting into the US from Haiti and Cuba- at this point, they're pretty good at it.
Not to say that with sufficient funding and time it wouldn't be completely possible; just that it's not as easy as setting out from Havana and ending up in Miami.
Sneaking into the country's no picnic, no matter how you do it. I've always thought that this fact says a lot about what the places that people who do sneak in must be like.
He probably means it's hard to sneak known terrorists into the United States. That much is true. Illegals coming across the border have a decent shot of getting caught, even if they hire experienced professional help, which terrorists might not have. Good luck going to Mexico with an Arabic accent and finding a coyote to smuggle you across the border. I'm sure there are plenty venal enough to take you, but there are also plenty who would recognize the prudence and possible intangible value of tipping off the cops. It's easier to train a new guy and get a tourist visa for him, but then you have to make sure the FBI never knew he was at a training facility, which is probably difficult these days. (With all the heinous stuff our country has done in the last ten years, do you really doubt we have a bunch of terrorists' wives and children living in custody somewhere, maybe in a very nice facility with schools and playgrounds, but still somewhere where we can send pictures from little Achmed's birthday parties as a warning to big Achmed of what might happen if he doesn't keep supplying information?)
Also good luck finding nine terrorist friends who wouldn't tip off police to a plot to kill children. True sociopaths are very rare; how rare are true sociopaths who are loyal to a group or a cause?
Either there are groups of terrorists who are willing to kill and die, or there aren't. My question is: why do they seem to prefer complicated plots involving heavily guarded airplanes instead of simpler plots involving lightly guarded [anywhere else].
In contrast, the Lod airport massacre ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lod_Airport_massacre ) was only 3 guys. It was a pretty simple plan, which would have been hard to foil completely, and resulted in 26 dead and 80 wounded.
The first plot you linked illustrates my point: they were able to get people into the UK easily, but failed because intelligence knew they were linked to known terrorists in Pakistan. One of the plotters was already under police surveillance, so the plan was doomed from the start.
I don't know why terrorists don't use guns for mass killings, but I suspect it has something to do with the psychological impact. You don't want the attack to be psychologically attributed to individual people who are captured or killed after the attack. It decreases the terror factor. You want the attack to be attributed to a group or a cause, which is much scarier because the force behind the attack is still out there operating. In a suicide attack, the perpetrators are seen as whatever force inspired and controlled the attackers, so there is a continued threat.
But part of the reason they were caught is that they were purportedly targeting airplanes, which are closely watched.
I can't claim to have done any more research than simply reading the Wikipedia article, but it seems like the principle plotter was already under police surveillance, leading to a secret bag search when he came back from Pakistan, which kicked off a huge surveillance operation on the whole group. It was after the police already found a "bomb factory" (but decided to watch the group further) that they observed one of the men -- the same one who was already under police surveillance to begin with -- researching airline timetables. So, if the order of events as described in the article you linked is correct, the plot was busted wide open before the authorities realized they were targeting airplanes.
Just to raise a counter-point, I would contend that the UK liquid terror plot was successful in the terrorist's scorebooks. I bet the operation achieved what the upper level terrorists expected (realistically). The "mules" thought they would make explosions in the sky and I'm sure the upper level wished for that, but overall it achieved its mission:
A good point. The obvious alternative to terrorists being stupid and/or scarce is that their motives are quite different from what's usually assumed.
That being said, I'm also not sure I buy the 'terrorists hate freedom, so they want more big-brother security' theory. That seems much more likely to be a combination of a frightened populace and opportunistic government.
What you're missing is that nothing occurs in a vacuum. People don't like being associated with terrorists, especially not people helping immigrants across the border. If you go to Latin America, they're often even more bigoted than Americans are - and I'm not talking about gringos. The level of hatred for blacks is positively revolting from a North American perspective.
So Mexico really isn't a great entry point for a dark-skinned Arab, unless he speaks Spanish with a flawless accent (though given the variety of Spanish accents, that's not necessarily that hard.)
>I also disagree that "small attacks aren't enough". If you and 9 of your friends coordinate to roll grenades into 10 elementary schools in 10 different cities, I can assure you that you'd make headlines, and bring daily life to a standstill as parents refused to send their children to school.
If you've managed to coordinate 10 different homicidal suicidal maniacs in 10 different cities to kill a bunch of people on the exact same day (and somehow managed to find 10 who won't tell anyone anything that suggests they're doing something suspicious,) aside from the fact that that is very hard, you've definitely evolved to a large-scale attack.
> If you've managed to coordinate 10 different homicidal suicidal maniacs in 10 different cities to kill a bunch of people on the exact same day (and somehow managed to find 10 who won't tell anyone anything that suggests they're doing something suspicious,) aside from the fact that that is very hard, you've definitely evolved to a large-scale attack.
I'll counter by saying that if no terror group exists that is capable of obtaining:
* 10 people willing to kill for their beliefs
* 10 hand grenades
* 10 cell phones
Then we have been vastly oversold on the dangers presented by terrorism.
Forget the hand grenades. Just 10 suicidal guys with semi-automatic rifles. This seems stupidly simple to pull off and impossible to defend against.
In the article the Indians claimed that up to 37 people were involved in organising it. That's a pretty massive operation.
You can't just have 10 guys who not only have convinced themselves or other to kill themselves but also people to do a variety of tasks, like: coordinate the movements plan, recruit the other 9, get them to the right places with minimal chance of intercept, make sure none bottle out at the last minute, house them until attack, buy the grenades, etc. etc.
And that's just a list off the top of my head and more pop into it all the time. Like they also need the right clothes to not look odd, make sure they attack schools which are easy to get into, have maps to find the school. I'm sure there's much much more to plan in such an attack.
It's like saying that a special forces attack isn't backed up by a massive logistical operation. If it wasn't they'd be nothing special about them as they'd all be dead.
Think of the drug trade, which manages to organize far larger groups in disparate cities who actually have to transport large shipments of physical goods, and have to do it _repeatedly_.
There are backwoods meth labs that display at least as much coordination as would be required for the type of attack I'm describing.
You're asserting that no terrorist organization has the resources to coordinate a group of 10 people to act in concert.
Because as the article described they need to appeal to their sponsors as well. I completely agree with you that if the terrorist simply wanted to terrorize Americans the best way to do it is to attack suburban schools and small towns. However these types of attacks still require resources.
I think that the best comparison would be to American Universities: The best way to teach students is obviously to have the teachers focus on teaching. However many of the largest schools professors focus their efforts on complex new research and ideas that are difficult and expensive to pursue but that get the donors' attention, bringing the school prestige and money.
Attacking a school would probably be the easiest, most effective way to terrorize Americans, however simply because ti would be relatively easy (or at least seems like it would be) there would be no political or economic rewards for going that route.
If you believe people aren't acting rationally based on the information you have, shouldn't you first question your assumptions?
My own take would be that Al Qaeda is (generally) forced to import plotters, builders and attackers whereas the drug trade uses locals and thus enjoys innumerable advantages.
Simply: 10 lifers in a couple trailers in the back woods of Kentucky, buying, say, a few guns and cleaning supplies in bulk doesn't raise the same flags as 10 foreign guys, new to the area, with funny clothes and accents.
Further, there are plenty of people who know the tweakers are out there cooking meth or the local gang is pushing drugs. But they're such an ingrained regular presence, these people have normalized it into their life.
In any event, if it truly were easier to get 10 guys with guns to open fire in the US, I'd expect we'd have seen it by now.
Note that many people from the middle east can pass for Hispanic. My family is Egyptian and I occasionally get cab drivers who start talking to me in Spanish because I look Puerto Rican. But I agree with the rest of your comment.
This isn't just true for middle-eastern types. My girlfriend is Native American, and often has guys trying to hit on her in Spanish (especially true in Spain), even after telling them repeatedly that she doesn't speak Spanish.
I've entered the US several times without ever showing a passport or seeing a customs official. The US-Canadian border is pretty much open if you know the terrain. Officially you're required to report in but plenty of people don't bother, especially in winter when all the waterways that are open the rest of the year freeze over.
> Either terrorists are incredibly stupid, vanishingly small in number, or both.
Stupid for sure, if their stated goal is to bring down society, but they don't really want to do that, they are like petulant kids that crave attention.
9/11 was almost too successful in that respect, it could have easily caused the world to band together in to eradicating this once and for all.
Fortunately the Iraq war changed all that, everybody wins. The people that sell anti-terrorism equipment, the terrorists themselves and the media, the politicians too.
All those privacy violating laws that got passed in the last couple of years under the banner of 'anti-terror' wouldn't have stood a chance of passing if the general public wasn't kept in a continued state of anxiety.
Practically speaking, blowing up a plane is probably the most difficult option you could choose if you wanted to kill 300 people. Why not pick one of the other myriad unguarded 'soft' targets where people gather?
The point of terrorism is to terrorize and blowing up commercial jets is a force multiplier because many people already have deep seated anxieties about air travel. Most people don't know anything about aerodynamics or how jet engines work, so they don't naturally accept the notion that a tin can carrying them 8 miles above the ground is safe. But people grin and bear it anyway because our culture has created this social fact: airplanes are safe. But every time a plane blows up, all the nagging suppressed anxieties come back to the surface.
Hell, my wife almost became an aeronautical engineer and she still freaks out if I don't call her after landing even though she knows perfectly well that I'm far more likely to die walking to the subway that takes me to the airport than on the flight itself.
There's a reason that so many people drink both on planes and at airport bars. Many of them need to be liquored up to deal with their fear and anxiety about flying. And there's a reason why airlines never ever ever mention safety in competitive terms: they understand that a lot of the flying public are on edge and that even if taking a potshot at a competitor gets them a few extra customers, adding to the general fear will shrink the total number of flyers more than enough to cancel out any gains. A slightly bigger slice of a smaller pie is a bad deal.
IIUC the people who sneak across the Mexican border don’t just walk across; they hire guides who know the terrain and are constantly running back and forth. A terrorist from a third country, air-dropped into Mexico, wouldn’t know who to trust in this regard.
Even assuming they were incapable of finding their own way across, surely a copy of 'Rosetta Stone: Spanish' and a few thousand dollars would find them a guide.
Or why not Canada? Hundreds of miles of rural, unguarded border.
This would require them to get into Canada as well. Now instead of breaching one border, they're breaching two borders. Also, think of the states that border most of Canada...Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin. You think a few Muslim guys showing up near the border without transportation in these almost exclusively white areas isn't going to cause some suspicion?
actually I think the smaller terrorist attacks would be much more effective at instilling terror.
remember the dc sniper? After the first couple of people were killed, everyone started running in zig zags everywhere they went.
blow up a bus or a train once a week, and you'll shut down most cities. It doesn't even have to be a huge bomb. A few fire crackers that kill/wound 1-2 people and the media will do it's job in making people think it's the end of the world.
and if they can't get bombs/firecrackers, they can always buy a few automatic weapons at any gun store, and open up on a few trains/buses/malls. Same effect without the boom.
Terrorism is just overhyped, since media has nothing better to do.
Take 2009..let's list all the terrorist attacks in the United States:
2/4/2009 - Chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board wounded in a car bomb.(probably abortion related)
5/25/2009 - someone blows up a starbucks bench(0 casualties)
6/1/2009 - a muslim shoots up a recruiting station(1 dead, 1 wounded)
12/25/2009 - the underwear bomber(0 casualties)
So a total of 4 attacks, 1 dead, 2 wounded. And none of them were organized, terrorists aren't the evil geniuses that the media paints them as. In fact most terrorists. are basically just wannabees who've watched the news and want to be part of the "war".
You have a bigger chance of getting killed by a falling tree or getting hit by lighting, than you do of getting hurt in a terrorist attack.
Terrorism is just hype, it's a small criminal matter, that's not worth the trillions the United States is spending to fight it. It's all just security theater....make people think something is being done, when in reality nothing they can do can stop any further attacks. But the "terrorists are coming to kill you!" sure does work in getting the public to agree to anything you want.
I realize your trying to make a statement not a point but even if you don't believe that Iraq is a true war, and certainly even if you don't believe that we should be fighting in Iraq the Military is undoubtedly operating in a "war mode" right now: Troops are fighting overseas and the Military is preparing more troops to be transferred overseas to fight. That's what war operations are about, not declarations by Congress.
Link? Last I checked anyone with reasonable mechanical knowledge and a bit of metal working skill could do it. May not be "caveman easy", but easy enough to someone who can read a simple set of diagrams. This simple set actually: http://www.scribd.com/doc/3853405/AR15-Lightning-Link-Plans
Or, in a pinch, be good with a freaking paperclip.
The ATF's standard is roughly that it treats a gun as a machine gun (legal definition) if it can be made to fire automatically with about the same effort as making an automatic weapon given a barrel.
Since it's fairly easy to make an automatic weapon given a barrel (the metal working isn't that difficult) ....
Yes, there are lots of "plans" circulating, but that doesn't prove that they work. Selling bogus plans is the perfect crime because the buyer can't complain.
FWIW, I've had a standing offer for years to anyone to demonstrate a conversion and have yet to have anyone even try. (I'll pay reasonable costs plus $5k AFTER the demo. Yes, you have to front your expenses - I'm not paying for failures or fraud.)
Sounds like entrapment tho buddy. I've personally seen a few conversions (in a different country, but same principles) so I know they exist and can be done. How do you convince any taker that the fact that they'll essentially be breaking the law to win your 5k won't land them in jail before they can even collect?
> I've personally seen a few conversions (in a different country, but same principles) so I know they exist and can be done.
I've no doubt that readily convertible guns exist. My point is that they're (and the relevant parts) are regulated as machine guns in the US.
The "principle" is that the receiver doesn't accept the parts or the parts, and possibly the receiver, are regulated as machine guns. For example, M-16 parts don't fit the semi-auto AR-15 receiver.
I have no idea how such guns and parts are regulated in other countries, but wouldn't be surprised if the laws were different elsewhere.
After all, some other countries treat silencers as good manners they're strictly controlled in the US. (Yes, I know about the plastic bottle trick. It's hard to ban duct tape and a plastic bottle, but it is a single shot device.)
Follow up WRT to the MAC-10, as that's the most prominent case where the ATF shut down production of open bolt versions for the "civilian" market (civilians can buy machine guns if made before 1986, there are about 100,000 of them in legal circulation).
For the purpose of shooting up your local mall, the difference between a fully-automatic and semi-automatic AR-15 is not that great (it's not like you're going to be laying down suppressing fire), and you certainly can buy the latter without any real difficulty.
"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." -- The Dalai Lama, (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times)
I guess I don't understand how that quote relates back to what I said. Are you saying that terrorists should be prepared to lay down suppressing fire, and thus shouldn't settle for the semi-auto weapons they can easily purchase at most fine sporting goods stores?
lol: No I was just thinking of someone trying to '[shoot] up [my] local mall' and as a licensed concealed carrier I remembered what the Dalai Lama said.
I wonder about the tragedy that can be caused with easy access to deadly force. If/When the proverbial shit hits the fan, if many people around you have guns, a single irrational one could cause a firestorm that kills you in the crossfire.
If everyone isn't walking around with guns and a fight breaks out, you can run away. But you can't outrun bullets.
This is why I am concerned about open carry laws or even concealed gun laws.
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." — Jefferson
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." — Charles A. Beard
"[A]rguments from authority are an important part of informal logic. Since we cannot have expert knowledge of many subjects, we often rely on the judgments of those who do.
There is no fallacy involved in simply arguing that the assertion made by an authority is true. The fallacy only arises when it is claimed or implied that the authority is infallible in principle and can hence be exempted from criticism." -- An Authority [1]
Because they were famous and their quotes were pithy.
My question is, how come nobody ever gets shot in Japan? Guns are banned, there are criminals, but most murders are stabbings (or arson, etc.) If you listen to Jefferson, Japan would be a haven for dangerous gun-toting criminals shooting up anything and everything just to get some pocket change. But that is apparently not the case.
For starters, there was never a lot of guns in the hands of civilians in Japan so it shouldn't be that hard to keep them banned.
It's also risky to bring guns illegally into the country; to take that kind of risky one would probably have to be into other illegal, profitable stuff like drug trade. But there isn't a lot of drug trade in Japan (compared to US).
Anyway, I think it's very hard to use Japan on one hand, or Switzerland and Israel on the other, to argue about gun laws in US.
And the first result says, "The number of shootings in Japan fell to a record low of 53 in 2006." From the wikipedia page "Gun Violence in the United States", "In 2005 [there were] 10,100 homicides committed using firearms".
The US is bigger than Japan, but not 190x bigger. So if you are trying to disprove my argument, you did a bad job.
Obviously, but 190x less gun violence is a very large difference in the right direction. With 53 in a year across a country that populous, it's fair to say noone.
Japan has less crime period. Now, before you start saying that that's because of strict gun control, know that they have less knife crime, less fraud, less divorce (though it has dbl since 1990), you get the point. There is no ban on knifes in Japan and yet there are far less crimes commited with them. Your correlation is not causation.
Japan has a completely different demographic and social makeup. Shame plays a huge part of their culture. Traditional family values were the norm until recently.
I would argue that your thinking that gun control is the cause of low crime in Japan as misguided.
"Shootings [in Japan] rose to 66 compared with a record low of 53 in 2006, the National Police Agency said in a report. The figure was up for the first time since 2001. [...] The number of those who died from shootings rose to 22 from 2 in 2006, the report said. Those wounded numbered 18.
Gun-related crime had been rare in a country with strict gun control laws, but last year's string of shootings shocked the public and prompted the government to further strengthen its firearms law." [1]
Make a wager; will stricter gun laws help? Have strict laws banning drugs helped? (Heck, how did prohibition go?)
You say that Japan has less crime overall because of gun control; I say it’s a culture / demographic thing. Maybe we are both wrong. I think it is the traditional values of Japan, and I am not alone in supposing this.
“But [Ichita Yamamoto] also fears the increase in gun violence could be a symptom of something more worrying.
‘There are few people who do this kind of thing in Japanese society,’ he says.
‘There is no culture in Japan that we shoot other people.’
What concerns him though is that perhaps Japanese society is changing.
‘Japanese traditional values have changed, the concept of family is changing, relations between people are changing,’ he says.
‘A lot of people feel lonely or isolated, so this kind of incident could be something to do with changes of this kind.’
Shootings do, as the gun-owners complain, get blanket coverage in the media.
But while newspaper columnists and pundits are good at wringing their hands about the fact that gun crime is increasing, they are not so successful when it comes to agreeing what it reveals about the state of Japanese society.
And more importantly, perhaps, they cannot agree on what to do about it.” [2]
Yeah, very possible that culture is a big part of it. I would attribute a lot of it to that, along with the homogeneity of the population, which probably reduces the race-related tension which is so prevalent in the US.
I was mainly saying that your argument that the great-grandparent of this was using noone incorrectly was wrong. 53 in a country that large is a rounding error, as is the rise from 53 to 66 which you just stated. Statistical noise.
You can't really compare it with prohibition or the ban on Marijuana, either. Culturally, that seems like a much more ridiculous law than gun bans do - drugs and alcohol affect ones self, and people generally feel that they have a right to choose what they do to themselves. Bans on things that are addictive? Of course those will be broken. It's not a very good comparison.
I think you and I have different definitions of real difficulty. It's expensive, time consuming and you have to go through a background check. Yes, its possible, but definitely difficult.
It depends on the state and the kind of gun you're buying. Purchasing a shotgun in Oklahoma, for instance, just requires a trip to Wal-Mart and $200 or so.
For the purpose of shooting up your local mall, the difference between a semi-automatic AR-15 and a bolt-action hunting rifle is not that great, either. You'd get fewer bullets off but each individual impact would be worse (.30 caliber over .223) and if you aimed, and actually knew how to shoot, you'd probably do alright.
He doesn't argue that small attacks don't instill terror -- it doesn't serve the dual purposes of "inspiring" allies and donors while instilling fear in the target city/nation. Also, you must recall that you actually need people to blow up the bus, train, etc -- which is difficult to get in the US at least and they have to be able to continually do it.
I agree that terrorism is often over-hyped by the media, but that doesn't mean the threat is something to be ignored. The 4 pathetic attacks you bring up do show the current state of impotence, however we have to be vigilant. The opinions presented by many today would be quite different had Time Square been painted with blood.
A successful string of smaller terror attacks would absolutely inspire fear and impress donors. The trick is that it would have to be a string. And carrying out many small strikes is a huge practical challenge as an "other" operating in a foreign country.
After, say, the third pipe bomb in a middle-American mall/starbucks/bar, every single American in public would be watching anyone vaguely different-looking at all times. So the campaign is far, far more likely to be snuffed out before it got far enough underway to be considered a 'success' to allies and donors.
So I wouldn't expect to see anything like that from Al Qaeda unless/until they figure out how to deliver their device via a mechanism that: 1. isn't immediately obvious as a terror device 2. doesn't expose the 'secret' of the method after the first few attacks.
e.g. Malvo's run was only as long as it was because no-one was looking for a sniper firing from a vehicle and there was no evidence left with the victim indicating the camouflage.
I just plain disagree that it would impress donors. Much like how simple things like bed nets or drinking water wells don't seem to get press or inspire donors for aid to Africa -- despite their proven impact -- many dollars flow towards sexier causes like AIDS.
An attack method doesn't have to be super secret. It could be something as simple as pipe bombs in a backpack if they want to nickel and dime us to terror.
You may be playing "devil's advocate" here (and I thought of the same thing), but what about the complete lack of terrorist activity BEFORE 9/11 when we presumably weren't spending as much money?
If you go beyond the CONUS, the string of al-Qaeda successes around the world prior to 9/11 convinced Osama bin Laden and company that the US was a "weak horse" ... and boy were they surprised by our ferocious response to 9/11.
If we'd not made such a vigorous response at all levels, don't you think al-Qaeda's successes would have encouraged even more attempts?
It's not when I'm limiting my use of the phase to al-Qaeda, where they indeed used that argument ... and found out that they were fantastically wrong
AQ seems to have calculated pretty well actually. What you're missing is that the US acted precisely as AQ wanted them to act. They wanted the US to go nuts and overreact which would cause them to overreach, and that's exactly what we did. We wasted trillions of dollars on a pointless war in Iraq. Our pointless war killed a million people and turned another 3-4 million into refugees. That screamed to the world that the US is an irrational self-absorbed state that kills lots of people without caring. That has repercussions for our ability to get intelligence in the future.
In the process, we also convinced the entire world that we were much weaker than they ever thought. Think about it: the world's most powerful military was completely sandbagged by the remnants of a third rate army in an impoverished state for years. All our fancy technology? Most of it worthless. US soldiers getting killed one and two at a time every day for years. Our impotence made manifest.
We gave AQ exactly what they wanted. Many people in the Islamic world used to think that AQ was a joke before 9/11; we made them into our nemesis and thus elevated them to our level. Rather than saying "these are a bunch of criminals and we'll bring them to justice, just like any other criminal gang that kills innocent people," we convinced the world that there was a global movement which AQ represented and that we were going to destroy it. And then we failed at just about everything.
As for the general proposition, at the highest level, do you think weakness encourages or discourages attack?
I think anyone asking the question needs to go read some IR theory and history. Look, organizations make decisions based on their capabilities and their own internal dynamics. Was the US strong or weak in 2000? It depends. There is no objective answer because the question is ill-posed. So anyone can justify any answer. People in AQ who wanted to act convinced themselves that the US was weak. If the facts had been otherwise, they would have twisted those facts into justifying attack as well.
What you're talking about here is signaling theory and you really should read about it. Historically, governments have been convinced that by taking various actions, they were "signaling" or "sending messages to" their opponents. But years later when historians looked through the opponents' archives they discovered that those opponents never got the message. Or that they interpreted the message in ways that suited their own internal biases. Showing resolve and demonstrating strength sound good to people but are fundamentally misguided actions.
I have read about it, WRT to the Vietnam war, where Team LBJ's precisely calculated signals and finely tuned bombing did indeed not send the message intended to North Vietnam ... but perhaps it did signal something true.
And I of course disagree with your analysis of our post 9/11 response and how it was taken, and note your complete failure to address our invasion of Afghanistan and decimation of al-Qaeda in that region. That most certainly sent a strong and unambiguous "signal":
Kill "too many" Americans and we will break things and kill people, starting with you and your country. That worked too for Nixon and North Vietnam.
The fact that we got "sandbagged" in Iraq was certainly bad ... but you can't cite it in isolation with the fact that we then stuck to it until we got it right. Capturing and hanging Sadam also sent a major signal.
You're missing the point. Opponents will reinterpret signals according to their own biases. Since signals are ambiguous, that is easy to do. Consider this example. Let's say the US leaves Iraq tomorrow. AQ will get on the media boasting about how AQ forced the US out and how their departure is a sign of AQ's power and American weakness. Now consider that the US stays in Iraq for another decade. Then AQ will start boasting about its long term strategic brilliance in forcing this idiot superpower to waste trillions of dollars getting bogged down accomplishing nothing and this thus proves AQ's power and American weakness. It doesn't matter what you signal, other actors will interpret according to their biases, not yours.
And I of course disagree with your analysis of our post 9/11 response and how it was taken, and note your complete failure to address our invasion of Afghanistan and decimation of al-Qaeda in that region. That most certainly sent a strong and unambiguous "signal"
Look, not everything boils down to signaling. Killing AQ leaders accomplishes something in and of itself; it is valuable for changing reality and not for signaling. If you wish to justify such actions, you can do so without discussing the signaling at all.
In any event, AQ is still very much in business. And our strategic position in Afghanistan is incredibly weak. We have utterly failed to vanquish the Taliban. All we've been able to do is pump up an astonishingly venal and corrupt government that most Afghans hate. For the most powerful military in the world, we've certainly failed spectacularly.
Kill "too many" Americans and we will break things and kill people, starting with you and your country. That worked too for Nixon and North Vietnam.
Afghanistan is not Osama Bin Ladin's country. Saudi Arabia is. Afghanistan does not provide the funding or the networks that AQ relies upon. So, yeah, we killed a lot of people in a country where most people had no interest in attacking the US and in so doing we failed to eliminate AQ. Brilliant.
The fact that we got "sandbagged" in Iraq was certainly bad ... but you can't cite it in isolation with the fact that we then stuck to it until we got it right.
Our war killed a million people. They're not coming back from the dead.
And we didn't get much right. Our strategy involved paying off our enemies with money, weapons, and power. If we had given the German army tanks and cash during World War II and promised to stop fighting, things might have gone better, but I wouldn't call the result victory. And the plan never would have worked if our allies hadn't finished ethnic cleaning their opponents right around the same time. In general, plans that require ethnic cleansing for success are...bad.
* Capturing and hanging Sadam also sent a major signal.*
And what would that be exactly? That the US will start wars that waste trillions of dollars, kill a million people, create 4 million refugees in countries that didn't attack the US in order to...what? I think this proves that the US behaves irrationally. Trillions of dollars matter. One million dead people matter.
You are correct. I should have been clearer. Has there been a marked reduction in (US) terrorist-type activity after 9/11? It doesn't seem that's the case.
I'm not sure we can make a useful judgment here. After that stunning success (in the eyes of terrorists), you'd expect more people to try.
Also, you should normalize against the general level of world wide terrorism of this nature, e.g. start with early post-9/11 examples like Bali and Madrid, each of which killed about 200 people.
counter argument to that would be, if actual terrorism was being stopped, we'd hear all about it on the news. Terrorism is such a hot topic, that anything related to it, gets non-stop coverage for a week.
Counter argument to this would be that we (US) try to avoid broadcasting when we catch people involved in relatively clandestine networks so we can try to continue doing so.
I just wanted to note that Israel is a state which dealt with constant terror issues in the 1990's/early 2000's. There were times where a week hadn't even gone by between terrorist attacks (blowing up cars, buses, night clubs, shopping centers, etc...). Source:
I'm by no means an expert with Israel. But they're an excellent example of a society dealing with constant terrorist attacks, and surviving as a nation.
Can anyone on HN shed any light on how this affected Israeli society? Ideally before, during, and after terrorism? If possible, could you compare it to how the U.S. deals with terrorism today? What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong?
In July/August 2001 (before the 9/11 attacks) I visited some friends in Israel for a vacation. I was pretty broke so I didn't get to do a lot of sightseeing, but we toured around Jerusalem for a bit, visited the old city, and went to the Dead Sea. Very relaxing trip.
Israel has a very practical and realistic approach to terrorism, at least in my mind, because it's dealing with an entirely different type of terrorism than the US is; for that matter, the UK's issues with the IRA are more similar than the US's.
Everywhere we went, we had bag checks. They were always quick and painless, and everyone just took them for granted. At the entrance to a large store or mall would be a security guard; you'd show them the inside of your bag, and off you went. Likewise, there were soldiers hanging around in various spots; just like you'd see girls in skirts or guys in shorts, you'd see both in uniform, holding assault rifles. Most of the time they looked bored, and I'm sure they were. It wasn't like every street corner had a special ops team on it, but I saw them enough to get used to seeing them around.
Most telling, I think, is Israel's approach to airport security. There was a fascinating article in the Toronto Star about security at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, vs. Toronto's Pearson International airport, detailing why Israel has had no major terrorist attacks originating in its airports, which I strongly suggest anyone interested in anti-terrorism or airport security read through: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744426
Did you neglect the November 5, 2009 shooting at Ft. Hood that killed 13 people out of convenience to support your point or because you don't consider it a terrorist attack?
Even so, there's something insincere in a post that would mention a starbucks bench bomb, but not an incident that was perpetrated by a terrorist sympathizer that killed or wounded over 40 people.
I think the DC sniper is a bad example. Once they were caught, people stopped running around in zig zags, and only people in DC were worried at all. If a small terrorist attack needs to be running at all times, or at least once a week, then the terrorists will quickly run out of people. I don't think they're that effective.
1. they set a pattern where they were killing a person a day + they were using the same car.
2. he constantly taunted the police, made calls, left them notes, left them cards. Shouldn't be that hard to use forensics to find out who it was.
3. he was actually connected to one of the victims. a truly random no-connections sniper would have been much harder to catch.
And yes people stopped running after he was caught...but that's because they knew the guy was caught. If it's a "terrorist organization", getting a few terrorists wouldn't solve anything, since you'd never know if there were more lurking waiting a few days till the next killing.
You know how serial killers usually follow a set pattern, and that's considered evidence--so if they arrest someone and another killing occurs according to that pattern they assume they didn't catch the guy? I wonder if you can get a hit man on retainer to randomly pull off a "signature killing" in case you get arrested.
More to the point, a terrorist cell should totally be able to cover for a single sniper or sniper team[1] that got caught. Imagine if they caught Malvo and Muhammed and all of a sudden someone else at a DC gas station got shot? Now instead of a couple nuts you have a shadowy and mysterious terrorist organization and as soon as you catch one another one pops up and shoots people in the face.
[1] Interesting fact: even in the military, snipers don't work alone usually. They typically work in teams of two. Also, they don't necessarily shoot people anymore, they might just observe or call in airstrikes. The term is "scout-sniper".
Because they wouldn't be 'sexy', a good terrorist attack plays the media as much as any other factor (number of people wounded/killed, timing and so on).
Killing people, especially in batches of 50 or so (sorry, that's not meant rude, just being analytical) is easy.
Doing it in a spectacular way ready for media consumption is very hard.
Terrorists have a real problem here. If they decided to simply butcher their way through humanity we'd have a much bigger problem.
I have a hard time believing that the same country that spent an entire day watching a tin-foil balloon float around because it thought a boy was inside wouldn't have a total media freak out over a 'terrist'-linked mall shooting.
Same here, the media in this country is nuts. CNN droned on for hours about the truck in Times Square - with no new information! Isn't it supposed to be news? Wouldn't a scrolling update or a blurb at the top of each hour suffice? It actually makes it hard to find out if the situation has changed when the reporting never does. All the major news broadcasts are primarily there for the purpose of entertainment.
I think part of the fascination with the balloon incident was that it was about a child, and that there was speculation that it was a hoax and people tried to figure out on which side they came down. The parents did a pretty good job of predicting the public response, I'm surprised they didn't end up in jail for that trick. Let's hope none of their kids ever really gets lost because I'm sure the authorities will assume that it is just another grab for attention with possibly disastrous results. Don't cry 'wolf' when there is no wolf...
The media would most definitely freak out over a mall shooting, but mall shootings are not that rare today (right now google news has 650 items linked to that theme), especially if it involved guys in non western clothing.
But it would not be on the same level as 'shoe bomber tries to blow up airliner', at least I would think it wouldn't be.
If the terrorists really were simply out to kill you, which route would be more effective do you think? Blow up an airliner with a relatively small chance of success with a bomb straight out of some spy novel or to smuggle an armalite in to the local mall and let loose?
Can you see malls with body scanners in your future?
Schools with body scanners?
I'm sure the people selling that stuff would have their wet dreams come true if someone tried that.
In NL here we had a craze some years ago where some crazy injected a few oranges in a supermarket with mercury. The media took it and ran with it, causing all kinds of copycat incidents.
The funny thing is that mercury is relatively safe as a fluid, it is when it is in vapour form or when it is part of a reactive compound that the trouble begins.
That didn't stop an all out panic though, fueled by an uninformed media milking it for all it was worth.
An entire day yes, but it very rapidly disappeared from the public consciousness. And it didn't change the behavior of government in the slightest (no anti-balloon legislation passed that I know of).
Yes, it was pretty 'sexy' media wise. Built in sequels.
As I said, Algeria is a good example of what happens when that sort of thing goes on all the time. People lose interest, try to ignore it.
If terrorism really becomes an every day occurrence it would stop to be news.
Look at Iraq, when stuff was blowing up all over the place people simply looked at the totals, the 'bodycounts', not the individual events. It became a statistics issue, but no longer a prime time news issue.
> Killing people, especially in batches of 50 or so ...is easy. Doing it in a spectacular way ready for media consumption is very hard
Depends on who those 50 people (or less) are. The attack on the Sri Lankan national cricket team bus in Pakistan was a type of terrorist escalation that Schneier didn't account for - celebrity.
Red carpets aren't guarded to the extent of presidents. Nor are most national sports teams (think Munich 1972) or Fortune 100 CEOs. Not a nice thought - but as you say, just being analytical.
One thing I wonder about, but have no basis for knowing, is whether it was easier ten years ago for Al Qaeda to convince the 9/11 attackers that they would have the adulation and gratitude of the Muslim community at large. At that time, terrorism in the Muslim public's mind was mostly associated with Palestinians fighting Israeli occupation, and the 9/11 attack was framed as a blow against U.S. occupation of the Arabian Peninsula. I'm sure many potential terrorists have since heard their friends, family, and neighbors comment unfavorably on the 9/11 attacks and their consequences for Muslims and for the image of Islam. That might hurt recruiting among people who are smart and social enough to be part of a large-scale attack.
Last year, Slate published an in-depth series of articles summarizing the various theories about why we haven't seen more terrorist attacks, e.g. the "Terrorists are Dumb" theory, the "Near Enemy" theory, the "Bush kept us safe" theory, etc.
The series was very interested and well-cited and echoes many of the points that Schneier makes in the OP and may be found here: http://www.slate.com/id/2208971/
I don't know about the US, but here in Moscow/Russia terrorism seems much more organized. We don't have amateur school shootings, we mainly get train/subway/plane bombings. In the past we used to have whole buildings demolished by bombs.
Apart from funding justification, it often seems like "Don't push on us here in Caucasus, or else we bring terror closer to you" message from terrorists to the government.
The part where he mentions Muslims in America do not support it is a good point to note. I have Muslim friends, and they have told me that even amongst the hardcore Muslims in the US, there are lots of talk about disagreement of US policy but no one ever talks or jokes about terrorist attacks. Even in private or just friendly talks.
On a side note another thing that I did find interesting that my friend told me was that the FBI visits Mosques frequently. Just to have friendly talk or to keep in touch. US intelligence works with local Muslim activist and Mosques more than people think.
Terrorism in America is a much lower threat than mundane factors such as traffic safety.
Terrorism, however, justifies the creation of counter-insurgence infrastructure (and supporting industry) which will be useful to the establishment as America de-industrializes. America will, at some point, face internal conflict as it implements the austerity measures necessary to continue to finance military campaigns, service debt (directly or via currency inflation), and continue to adapt to trade imbalances.
One factor that I think the post gets wrong is that it's hard to make a bomb. The NYC "bomb" that just fizzled is a good example. From the limited descriptions it sounds like that thing would never have blown up. Catch fire and burn, maybe. You can't just throw some propane tanks, a couple of fireworks and gas together and expect it to blow up. The Oklahoma bomb was a huge undertaking.
Also, the more time and effort you put into building a real bomb, the more likely you are to get caught - buying lots of (the right kind of) fertilizer is a telltale sign.
I suspect there is a missing qualifier there. i.e; "Bombs are easy to make if you have some common sense".
Bombs can come in all shapes and forms; I'm willing to bet the vast majority of people here (for example) could overcome the problem of a) building it and b) not using obvious "tell tale" materials. Off hand I recall Meth can be created out of "household" products and the reactions involved can be very volatile/explosive - that seems like the possible makings of an effective bomb right there.
(also; tracking fertilizer sales is probably not going to help you ID terrorists :) I bet the numbers are just crazy - also, any sensible terrorist will be nicking small quantities from farms etc.)
On the other hand terrorist converts acting alone are, I suggest, less likely to be able to do the correct research and construction.
You don't have to set up a lab; the bomb is produced by unstable chemicals. At the very least you could drive up a van and mix those chemicals together.
Because they need to keep doing more terrorist attacks, not perpetuate open warfare. If they turn the heat up too much, it turns into open warfare and the U.S. invades Afghanistan. If it stays infrequent and random, the U.S. only does a missile strike.
Put another way, if somebody tries to break into your network (even if they fail) every single day, you'll do something to stop it. If they try only every so often, 2 or 3 times a year, you might notice it and be alarmed a bit, but probably wouldn't do anything to stop it. Most likely because 2 or 3 data points isn't enough pattern to figure out an abatement strategy.
In Iraq the modus operandi was IEDs, dozens a day, so the U.S. poured enormous resources into defeating IEDs (billions and billions of dollars), that resulted in everything from signal jammers to the popularization of geospatial intelligence and social network analysis.
If the method had been infrequent, we would have just been on a heightened sense of alert all the time, but not sure where to resource defeat efforts.
There aren't more terrorist attacks, because the classification as "terrorist" is a false classification. In reality the same mindset, motives, situation, that allegedly drive "terrorists" drive the people who are committing murders of their friends/family/coworkers/random-people every day. When an act of violence is carried out by a Muslim-named individual with an ostensibly political motive, you classify that as terrorism, whereas the underlying psychosis that leads to the crime is the same as most other acts of violence. The manifestation of that psychosis has circumstances and external justification that are irrational, random, and individual to each person.
So this question is like asking, "Why aren't there more 5'7", 11 shoe size, blue sweater-ed murderers?" The fact that there are not more "terrorist attacks" is proof that the classification of "terrorist attacks" is an unnaturally narrow one, based on arbitrary features of the perpetrators.
>Note that this is very different than terrorism by an occupied population: the IRA in Northern Ireland, Iraqis in Iraq, Palestinians in Israel. Setting aside the actual politics, all of these terrorists believe they are repelling foreign invaders. That's not the situation here in the U.S.
Not so sure about that point, Osama's stated reason was US military bases in Saudi Arabia (viewing it as a foreign invasion) and support for Israel (viewing it as a foreign invasion).
I think that those situations are different from Al Qaeda striking the west, though I agree that Schneier's imprecise on the distinction.
The big difference is that those acts are local rebellion.
The actions by locals, against an "other" (or its agents/totems) within the locality, have little to fear from other civilians who might happen upon them plotting, training, preparing or delivering terror against the "other". And for the attack to be successful, it merely has to be "news" within the locality. You don't need to inspire/impress a command/support structure half-a-world-away. You just need to keep the support of others in the locality.
An "other" operating within a foreign country, however, risks exposure at every turn. Particularly within a country "alert" to the risk and when the "other" is trivially identifiable as such. And his attacks must be more about style, as he needs to inspire/impress people with no local context for a precise or less spectacular attack.
The media is completely messed up beyond belief though. In the UK there was a little girl went missing whilst on holiday, and whilst sad, she's had a massively disproportionate amount of reporting. Still stories in the papers about it now years later.
No. Terrorism is the deliberate murder of civilians (or threats thereto), in order to advance a political objective.
It's not actually all that hard to define, some people just try to deliberately muddy the waters.
- The Columbine shootings were not terrorism since they had no political motive.
- The assassination of JFK was not terrorism since the President is not, for the purposes of this discussion, a "civilian" (I might need to work on the definition of "civillian")
- If a warplane drops a bomb aimed at a tank and it hits an orphanage by accident, that's not terrorism since the civilians weren't the actual target. (Note: that doesn't necessarily mean it was excusable).
- The Fort Hood massacre and the many attacks by Al Qaeda against US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are not, strictly speaking, terrorism, since the targets are military rather than civilian (again this just a semantic distinction I'm making here, not a moral one).
Any other border cases we'd like to discuss? Note that by this definition terrorist attacks were commonly used by both sides in World War 2.
A crime's motive determines in part how you understand it and how you prevent it. Terrorism isn't random; it is focused on a particular goal and planned in advance. Unhinged mall shooters won't be stopped by coordinated intelligence gathering, and they can't be investigated for links to other such shooters. Any similarity between such acts and terrorism is superficial at best and requires that you ignore the crime's context. A media that doesn't distinguish the two will either trivialize terrorism or needlessly sensationalize random violent acts.
yes most of these actions are the work of a lone nut but the problem is the increasing impact that nut has thanks to evolving technology.
the ability to cause mass destruction is following a law similar to mr. moore's (albeit we are on the early, flat part of this curve). a century ago it was impossible to wipe out a huge population; 50 years ago the largest nations could do it. today the nuclear and biological options have added an order of magnitude to the club and there is no reason to believe this will stop.
rather than a vested political group that would themselves be subject to revenge it's the irrational individual that will inevitably prove most destructive.
I appreciate Bruce's attempts, but as usual, I'm skeptical about his presumed knowledge about every area of security merely because he's an accomplished cryptographer.
Security is a mish-mash of scattered fields related only by the concern that someone is going to do something undesirable. I have strong doubts that being a cryptographer qualifies you, automatically, as an expert in physical security.
We need to face the fact the reason there aren't more terrorist attacks is simply because there are not that many people in the world are genuinely willing to commit suicide while taking other lives. Schneier's not entirely wrong, but I think his reasons are peripheral.
Not to be too condescending, but it's pretty obvious you haven't studied information security at all (let alone read Schneier's work?). Saying someone is "only" an "accomplished cryptographer" really diminishes what is required to have the mindset that makes you a good cryptographer, amongst other things.
Actually I have 10+ years in the field, am a CISSP, and was a CISO in the financial services industry for 6 years.
Saying someone is "only" an "accomplished cryptographer" really diminishes what is required to have the mindset that makes you a good cryptographer
That's precisely the point of view I'm refuting. The kind of mindset you need to be a good cryptographer has little or nothing to do with being good at physical security, network security, or any other field of security. The reason: informations security is composed of disparate fields, related only by the need to maintain C., I., and A.
Because that's what Bruce's background and experience is in. He has never worked in most of the other areas -- he's never held a position doing physical security work. I've got reservations about "security" being all the same thing, and about Bruce being a presumed expert in every area of it. It'd be like a veterinarian doing surgery on a human. Related? Loosely.
If you define "terrorist" as someone who is actually going to attempt to take others' lives (and possibly his own), then sure. I'm not that sure this is what Bruce meant.
Terrorism is a tool of government to implement police state:
10 steps necessary for a Fascistic group (or government) to destroy the democratic character of a nation-state and subvert the social/political liberty previously exercised by its citizens:
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not
answerable to citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Treat all political dissidents as traitors.
10. Suspend the rule of law.
This pattern was implemented in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and any country on the road to totalitarianism.
Btw. For military industrial complex who gain from this 40% of US budget this never ending war with ghost enemies. These people are living by killing humans. For them there is no problem to stage such events. 1,3 million Iraqis dead based on total lie about WMD.
Of course if you say that Putin could use this type of methods during Moscow terrorist attack everyone would consider that this is totally possible but in USA such things could never happen. Yeaaah right! You are on the path to POLICE STATE and you afraid to face the truth.
The terrorist attacks tend to happen when the governments need to shift a public attention from their deep troubles. And this tendency is not limited to the third world like Russia.
