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Comment by leppr | Hacker News Reader

The "anonymous mail service with offensive names" could be made a standard indicator of a country's freedom of speech status.

Actually, that'd be a good research project: setup and host such a service in as many countries as possible, wait as they get shutdown (+6 points)/subpoenaed (+3)/ddosed (+1) and make a map.

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At a security conference a couple of years ago in Melbourne, a speaker said that for entertainment, he used to set up a Tor exit node and time how long it took to get the not-legally-enforceable ceast-and-desist letter from the authorities. Apparently he had it right down to a couple of hours.

Not responsive or relevant to this situation, in two very important ways: first, this isn't just any email service, a threat which cost millions of dollars was made from this service. Second, and more crucially, the service was NOT shut down.

I'll just answer by emphasizing two words in the comment you replied to.

    a threat which cost millions of dollars was made from this service.

...anonymous mail service...

    the service was NOT shut down.

...wait as they get shutdown (+6 points)/subpoenaed (+3)/ddosed (+1) ...

> a threat which cost millions of dollars

It was the reaction to the threat which cost millions of dollars. We should be careful to distinguish between the costs of terrorism and the costs of our reaction to it.

You might think differently if you were responsible for those children. Do you want to take the risk that it might be a real threat? How do you tell the difference between a real threat and one that isn't real? I'm guessing the people at the school district thought the small risk wasn't worth it, and decided to close the schools. Who would want to be labelled as the person who didn't close the schools if someone ended up getting killed? Even if the threat seems implausible, it must be a very difficult decision to make. There have been many bomb threats recently, probably mostly implausible, but for every one of them the airline acts as if it might be a real threat.

You might not, too. The LA district shut down. The NY district, which also received a threat, did not. Why? And why the difference in response?

I'm aware of that, and I don't know the answer. All I'm saying is that it was not necessarily unreasonable.

Why a difference in response? A few days earlier, less than 100 miles from the LA school district, 14 people were killed by ISIS-inspired terrorists who also had a garage full of pipebombs. What administrator in their right mind wouldn't be extra cautious with specific threats?

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