Why Aren't There More Terrorist Attacks?
schneier.com
schneier.com
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.
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.
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.
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.
Or perhaps: civilization.
Thanks for the gut-check.
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.
No, there is quite some evidence behind that idea[1].
[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...
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.
You're probably right about bear-baiting. But there is plenty of organized dog fights and cock-fights around.
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).
Maybe you should study some recent history. The list goes on an on.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+israel+*+...
That is more people every year than have died of terrorism in any year during Israel's history, even 1948. http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2000/1/Terror...
Even in the most terrorism-stricken places on earth, traffic fatalities still dwarf terrorism.
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.
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.
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.
I agree, but by the definition of it as long as we have politics we will have terrorism, so there really is no defeating it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
* pay well enough that the coyotes would forget their principles
* provision their agents well enough to cross on their own.
In America there are lots of people who do this for fun; it's called backpacking.
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.
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?
The UK liquid terror plot resulted in 25 arrests: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plo... It was complex, required coordination, and failed utterly, resulting in 0 casualties.
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.
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.
If they had 18 people willing to act as suicide bombers, why not cruise ships or trains, where security is much lighter?
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.
1) They got tremendous publicity.
2) They substantially disrupted air travel. Heathrow was shut down briefly. The cost to industry (all industry) was substantial. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plo...
3) The long term effects (carry-on restrictions and other added security hassles) lingered for a long time (even now).
By that criteria, the shoebomber and underwearbomber were fairly successful as well, albeit not nearly as successful as the UK liquid plot.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
The alleged U.K. 'liquid explosives' plot resulted in 25 arrests: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plo...
My core question is: why would terrorists choose such a complicated, risky, hard to execute method of terror when easier avenues are available?
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.
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.
> 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.
Condition 'red' ...
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.
Or why not Canada? Hundreds of miles of rural, unguarded border.
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.
Actually, you can't, at least not in the US, and that's been true for decades.
Thinking that you can is like thinking that you can buy a race car at the local dealer because you see similar looking cars with the same name on TV.
> Take 2009..let's list all the terrorist attacks in the United States:
The Fort Hood shooting, which killed 13 should be on that list. So much for "all".
His "mole" status doesn't change his cause or tactics.
What about by illegal means? I believe that is relatively easy. Theft? And, also, non-automatic weapons are pretty easy to come by.
Indeed a better way to put it would be that it is easy to obtain an automatic weapon with relatively little planning/effort.
Or, in a pinch, be good with a freaking paperclip.
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.)
Since I'm not a LEO, it can't be entrapment.
> 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).
Sorry.
"Gun bans don't disarm criminals, gun bans attract them." -- Walter Mondale
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.
"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
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]
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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.
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.
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The US is bigger than Japan, but not 190x bigger. So if you are trying to disprove my argument, you did a bad job.
[1] 467 Homicides [2] * 81.8% involved firearms [3]
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Chicago
[3] http://www.examiner.com/x-2879-Austin-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2...
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]
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]
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.
the fort hood incident isn't on the list of 2009 attacks. Here is the wiki discussion about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_terrorist_incident...
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.
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.
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.
Counter argument to that is that it is because of the billions in spending that actual terrorism is such a rare occurance.
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?
Well, at least about the US being a weak horse.
As for the general proposition, at the highest level, do you think weakness encourages or discourages attack?
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.
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.
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.
"Suicide and Other Bombing Attacks in Israel Since the Declaration of Principles (Sept 1993)" - http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Pales...
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?
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
Yes, but think about the money that is being made by keeping the hype alive.
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.
Just a guy shouting in a crowd and everybody scared like hell
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.
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".
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.
See Algeria for what that world could look like.
A stickup of a convenience store 500 yards away killing two would have never gotten that kind of coverage.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
That said, I don't think my comments necessarily apply to the IRA, but Timothy McVeigh probably fits the bill.
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).
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.
Was columbine a terrorist 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.
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.
Perhaps we should call them "random unprovoked killings of civilians".
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.
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.
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.
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.
So, it's just not an appropriate time.