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Comment by readhn | Hacker News Reader

- Terrorism is not a problem at all! -

Instead of fixing the real issues this country has: poverty, homelessness, joblessness, hunger, drug abuse, health care accessibility, affordable housing accessibility - we prefer to look for a boogeymen outside of the country.

Around 500-1000 Homeless Americans die from hypothermia per year, 2000-4000 Americans die per year from hunger, 35000 people on average die from drug over dose, over 500,000 people die from heart desease so in the last 15 years we lost just to these causes - around 8million people!

According to a September 2016 study by Alex Nowrasteh at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, some 3,024 Americans died from 1975 through 2015 due to foreign-born terrorism. That number includes the 9/11 terrorist attacks (2,983 people) and averages nearly 74 Americans per year.

8million+ people dead vs. 3000? So where are the real issues?

Why do we allow the government propaganda machine to fool us?

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I always have a hard time interpreting these statistics.

I understand the numbers of terrorist-related deaths versus non-terrorist one are staggering as displayed above, but if we stopped funding these security measures at airports (scanners, staff, etc), what could the number go up to?

Are these 3000 deaths so low because of the security measures? If we were to remove/loosen security measures at airports, how could we even estimate the impact in number of terrorist-related deaths?

Are these fears of possible ramp-up of terrorist attacks (if security measures are loosened) unfounded?

To my mind, it is not about funding or not funding security at airports/borders/etc. It's about if terrorism poses enough of a threat to be worth compromising our standards of governance. We can fund and support security in these zones without suspending our civil liberties and we should.

Moreover, it's not actually about fighting terrorism. I'm sure some individual TSA agents (the ones who don't get their jollies from groping ten-year-old boys [1] believe they're doing the Lord's work, but most of this policy is just about keeping people's necks under a boot and harassing minorities. People fleeing war-torn countries with suitcases are not going to fly planes into the World Trade Center, as certain media outlets or politicians would have you believe, but we keep enacting policy like that. Not because those in power actually believe it, but because they simply hate Muslims. They hate people whose religion is different, whose skin color is different, whose gender is different, whose sexuality is different.

[1] http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/29/tsa-punishes-boy-who-left-...

I guess look at the numbers before the security measures were introduced

It isn't really an either/or sort of situation. The question is more that are we actually doing things to help?

It seems that having some border control is prudent. Just having it in place reduces violence, if I remember correctly. It is kind of like closing your front door and having a lock does quite a bit to reduce property theft.

Outside of taking prudent measures, I'm not sure it helps at all, especially considering most terrorism is homegrown. In fact, there is a chance it makes some relations worse and more likely to produce radicalized individuals - at least as much chance of increasing other terrorism if we stop the screenings completely. If terrorism is indeed the evil we are fighting, perhaps some of the money might better spent to take care of some of the social ills. After all, these are the things shown to help reduce homegrown terrorism.

These 3000 deaths approximately zero relation to security measures.

The US government was informed about the 9/11 hijackers and the Boston city Marathon bombers etc. But, they get 99.99% false positives, so such information is basically worthless unless it results in conviction. Further the 9/11 hijackers used weapons no more deadly than what people are still allowed to bring on aircraft. If there where enough terrorists to matter they could have repeated 9/11 any time in the last 10 years. The most 'useful' security measure from 9/11 is a 'secure' door that locks which directly relates do another crashed aircraft making even that if anything a net loss. http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/26/europe/france-germanwings-plan...

That said, like the 'war on drugs' it has nothing to do with the actual 'threat' it's all just politics.

And it's not exactly like they need weapons either, a determined person trained in unarmed combat will easily kill/maim someone just using their hands.

and they probably could easily buy 50% of the seats in one airplane...

The only real improvements in security since 9/11 in my mind are that cockpit doors are now reinforced and passengers know to fight back.

Everything else is just a show of force to make people feel better.

If you clicked on my link that door has already cost 1 aircraft so it's not a pure win. http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/26/europe/france-germanwings-plan...

Passengers fighting back only works if they know there is a problem and the attackers are in the passenger cabin. Once the attacker is past that door they can ignore them.

Agreed. There is always going to be risk. Especially if the pilot has gone rouge. But the chances of passenger(s) taking over a plane like on 9/11 had drastically decreased because of awareness and those doors.

>Especially if the pilot has gone rouge

What have you got against pink pilots?

I feel every seat should have a switch to allow passengers to vote. A majority vote should either open the pilot's door, or put an emergency autopilot in charge which will try to land at the nearest airport.

I think the best option is to remove pilots in the first place. If physical access does not let you take over the aircraft then there is little meaning to attacking aircraft vs other random crouds of people.

US military drones have actual weapons and they are not hacked so that part seems to work well.

That door combined with the airline allowing someone to be alone in the cockpit. I don't know if it's a regulatory requirement or just a practice but U.S. airlines don't leave a pilot alone. I think this practice predates the adoption of reinforced doors and is a sound one, whatever ability you might have to get through a non-reinforced door is going to be hard to follow if a suicidal pilot goes into a nose-dive.

Time and again, many agencies have shown enraging incompetence despite a lot of funding. No I have no links, I just read the news for 10 years now.

(Let's not even get into 9/11 because numerous reputable sources have proved beyond doubt that the intelligence agencies had a lot of actionable info months or even years before it.)

And don't pull the card "you never hear about the prevented attacks" too, because the US government is very quick to flaunt and brag about their over-funded agencies catching the occasional boogeyman.

The Joker explained it well. People are not afraid of violence, we habituate to it very easily and it's everywhere. They are afraid of unpredictable violence.

That homeless guy is going to die of hypothermia from being out in the rain? Makes sense. He should try to get out of the rain.

Thousands of women are killed by their ex-boyfriends every year? Makes sense, some guys are crazy. Good thing I don't date guys like that.

Someone might bring a gun into Starbucks and shoot random people? Good lord what is the world coming to! Take all the guns away! Islam! It's those creepy loners again!

You're describing the common psychological stance very well. But are you advocating that we continue to think/feel this way?

There are plenty of legitimate complaints to be made about our current situation, but this line of argumentation isn't one of them. The whole idea that the number of deaths from a particular cause determines precisely the degree of threat from that cause is silly. Swimming pool drownings kill many times more people per year than terrorists did on 9/11 but it's perfectly appropriate that there's no war on swimming pools but a war against terrorists.

What other measurement of threat can there be? When something as statistically insignificant as terrorism is given far more resources than serious issues killing millions (as many health issues do), it is obvious that threat management isn't the real reason for the attention.

Any parent who doesn't teach their children to swim is asking for terror, IMO. Majority of drownings are absolutely avoidable.

Even more strawman fodder: Influenza related deaths spiked to over 40k(50k?) in 2000 & 2004. I don't blame the previously worst President in modern times, although I wish I could.

That's not true. If swimming pool drownings were a comparible threat to readhn's examples then we would of course work on fixing it, by introducing programs to help teach people about safety around pools and such.

I don't disagree some of the TSA searching doesn't necessarily decrease the chance of successful attack, and that the searching methodology isn't necessarily comprehensive.

But I felt bringing death caused by other problems (homeless or even reckless driving) is a strawman. First, terrorism IS a problem, both domestic and foreign. So whether we have more people dying because of hunger or not, isn't going to affect the searching policy in airport. We have to discuss death by drunk driving and death by terrorism separately. Is government prioritizing homeless issues? That's different from is TSA search effective. They are two completely different issues.

Absoluely, there are credible threats, LE & intelligence are tasked with mitigation & prevention for just causes. However, checks & balances of power are supposed to curtail gross violations of citizens' inalienable rights and policy makers' self-interest. Those C&Bs have been underminded and eroded by legal bribery, aka lobbying, and revolving doors between industry/guv. Profit motive seems to be more of a driving force than fear when you look into policy makers' financial statements.

At first glance, Chertoff seems to be the poster child of "confict of interest", but he is the new norm, just one of the many who abuse their stations.

many people fear death by random, terrorist acts more than they fear death by any of the causes you mention because they feel they exert some control over those causes, but not over terrorist acts. many people believe terrorist acts are hard to understand, predict and avoid.

and, aside from that, many people really really really hate the notion that a terrorist, often from a foreign country, can kill people in their own territory, a place they consider "safe". people find this particularly disturbing because of the direct human malevolence involved. people are one of the scariest things people can face.

when we simply reduce these types of deaths into counts, we lose some of that human perspective and what makes people live their lives in fear and anger.

How many Americans does ISIS want to kill? How many would they kill if they weren't prevented from doing so?

I'm not sure it's reasonable to stipulate that the surveillance we conduct actually deters ISIS. I think the answer to your question is "statistically, not many".

The Brits had special golf rules drawn up for playing through the Blitz. We need to grow up.

> I'm not sure it's reasonable to stipulate that the surveillance we conduct actually deters ISIS.

I'd say its a reasonable assumption. ISIS's goal is to actually succeed, not to get caught by surveillance before an attack.

> We need to grow up.

And stop trying to prevent terrorism? That's not growing up. While the Brits were playing golf during the Blitz, they were also investing vast amounts of money and lives into shooting down German planes.

The comparison you're drawing is between the RAF and the harassment of Muslims in the US. Lord only knows what the other leg of your Manhattan Project metaphor would be!

later edit

In case this actually needs to be said: in the course of prosecuting a war against terrorism (itself a spectacularly bad idea, lending itself as it does to a perpetual state of war), we've invaded and more or less conquered Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and are in what any reasonable person would call a state of war with Syria and Yemen. You can look at a map of west Asia to see what that adds up to.

I'm not drawing a comparison to harassment of Muslims.

I've had similar experiences and I'm not a Muslim and CBP would have no reason to believe I was.

And I resent you trying to use claims of racism to derail a discussion about reasonable precautions.

I think you might resent the story, which is about "claims of racism", and not so much this comment thread.

I'm used to people using incidents taken out of context to justify claims of racism.

Sometimes, they don't even check the details, as when they pushed the story of an Olympian who was detained due to Trump's travel ban without realizing it happened under Obama.

response to later edit

We haven't conquered Libya. In fact, the Obama administration pulled out and left the country in chaos and more vulnerable than ever to terrorism.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36013703

And Montgomery's Market Garden operation failed, too. What's your point?

Mine was simply that it's ridiculous to claim that the US has taken terrorism less seriously as a military objective than the UK took theirs.

> it's ridiculous to claim that the US has taken terrorism less seriously as a military objective than the UK took theirs

Then what was the point of saying that the Brits had rules for golf during the Blitz?

Obviously, that regardless of what our military might be doing, our societal and public policy responses to this threat have been comparatively juvenile.

I agree with you about one thing. The war on terror is a mistake (or a plan to make money). "Terror" can't be fought by the military.

Only "societal and public policy responses" can stop terrorism. What "mature" response are you suggesting?

Don't forget Somalia.

Not a great analogy. The threat of terrorism isn't on par with your country surviving constant air raids, and the benefit of shooting down a raiding plane is much more clear

This is fear mongering and doesn't represent the real level of risk. Furthermore it doesn't add much to the discussion.

Between bag checks and policing at stadiums, armored cockpit doors on planes, metal detectors, and descent passport checks backed by good intelligence most opportunities for foreign born terrorists evaporate. And practically it's impossible to stop lone, home grown terrorists when a rented van can be used as a weapon. So why search my phone?

It's not my intention to "fear monger".

I intend only to point out that when some claim "terrorism isn't a serious problem" they're using statistics collected while we do everything we can to prevent it.

No one is ever going to give the terrorists free reign to do what they want for a year so we can collect control data.

So we can only speculate about the consequences of not doing all we can to prevent terror attacks.

According to the Cato Institute [1], the probability of being involved in a terrorist attack by a foreign-born terrorist from 1975 to 2015 was 0.00003%, or 1/3,609,709. The probability of you being struck by lightning this year is 1/960,000.

Terrorism ISN'T a serious problem, compared to homelessness, obesity and other health issues, lack of access to healthcare (see: obesity and other health issues), minority rights (especially for Muslims and Mexican immigrants), labor rights, poor public transportation, etc. It just isn't. God, if people cared 1/10th as much about some of these issues as they did about "being hard on terrorism", imagine how much we could get done. Instead we're groping ten-year-old boys at airports in the name of "safety".

Edit: add source.

[1] https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa798_...

> The probability of you being struck by lightning this year is 1/960,000.

And most people take precautions to avoid being hit by lightning.

A one in a million risk of death is easily enough to inspire action to reduce the risk.

Does that include inappropriately frisking children because what if they're secretly lightning rods and they're going to kill us all? No. Because that's ridiculous. Just like it's ridiculous in airports.

Terrorists have been known to place bombs on children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_suicide_bombers_in_the_I...

You see where this is going, right? This is exactly why terrorism "works": because the kinds of people who will frisk children "because terrorists have been known to use children" can be goaded into doing just about anything in that fashion. That's the real threat from terrorism: not to our overall physical security, which even at their worst no terrorist group has ever threatened existentially, but to our psychological security --- which they demonstrably have threatened to that degree.

Whereas some people will object to any security measure on the grounds that "terrorists aren't a threat".

But if we actually followed their advice, terrorists would be an enormous threat because we'd take no steps to protect ourselves.

So far we seem to be objecting to the wholesale copying of phones, aggressive physical inspection of women with back braces, and the frisking of children --- each of which you've defended as vital to defending against the terrorist threat.

I feel as if you might be making my point for me.

Whatever exception you make - for children, for back braces, whatever - will be the exception terrorists will exploit.

If terrorists know you don't search children, they'll place bombs on children.

It's little use locking the front door while leaving the back door wide open.

I think you underestimate the difficulty in loading a child with explosives and successfully getting them onto a plane then detonating them in flight. There are so many places along the chain where this would almost certainly fail. We could easily make this a nearly impossible threat without abandoning our civil rights. We already have sniffer dogs, explosive materials swabs, backscatter machines, and layers of human intelligence before this point. If we're at the point where TSA has to grope everyone, why bother, the terrorists have achieved their goal, as we are no longer a free society.

Additionally I think you are vastly overestimating the number of terrorists out there trying to carry out these attacks. We didn't do much at all in the 1970's and 1980's beyond signals and human intelligence and attacks were very rare then. And this was when we were engaged in several proxy wars with Russia. There just aren't that many people out there that are both willing, interested, and capable of attacking US civilians in spectacularly deadly ways.

You are fear mongering. You are part of the problem, and people making you arguments are destroying our freedom of movement and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

To quote Franklin: "They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

> We already have sniffer dogs, explosive materials swabs, backscatter machines, and layers of human intelligence before this point. If we're at the point where TSA has to grope everyone, why bother, the terrorists have achieved their goal, as we are no longer a free society.

Perhaps I'm misinformed, but I thought pat-downs were only used on people who refused to go through the back scatter machines.

And I haven't seen sniffer dogs or explosive detection swabs routinely used on all passengers.

Insult me if you wish, but at least try to be honest about reality.

The pat downs are used for people who refuse, and arbitrary other people at the "discretion" of the TSA. As for the swabs, my carry on gets swabbed at almost every airport I go through. I can't remember the last time it wasn't.

And my main point was the even before the security theatre, at the height of post WWII global violence, terrorist attacks in the US were exceedingly rare and they still are. This suggests that we likely didn't buy anything for the sale of individual liberty.

> If terrorists know you don't search children, they'll place bombs on children.

Do they have the operational capacity to carry out thousands of attacks like this a year? You might as well say: "if we only lock cockpit doors, but don't weld them shut, well then they'll cut through them."

We make exceptions all of the time based on feasibility and cost/benefit.

Do terrorists have children? Sure.

Do terrorists have bombs? They seem to know how to make them with extremely limited resources.

What do you think they're missing?

The operational ability to successfully carry out sophisticated attacks with children and the will to sacrifice (many) children in this manner.

> Do they have the operational capacity to carry out thousands of attacks like this a year?

They don't have operational capacity to carry out thousands of attacks per year outside their primary area of strength by any means, and this isn't really all that relevant to attacks in that area.

So the question is: how much of an impact on their operational capacity to strike into, say, the US would it be to do this. Doesn't seem like it would be much.

The objective of terrorism is not to kill. The objective is to induce fear.

If you do not take a balanced approach at protection, you risk losing out the mind war. The result? The US becomes a closed country, no longer the land of the free much less the brave. The ultimate goal of terrorism is achieved.

My reference for correct behavior towards terrorism is the UK during the IRA campaign. Security was handled as a serious affair, but as silently as possible. Some fatalities were deemed innevitable, and reported as such by the media.

Yes, the security response to the Provisional IRA campaign in the 70s, 80s & 90s was often low key. IMHO the British govt didn't want the British population to be so alarmed that they'd demand NI be expelled from the UK. I've got to differ on the aim of terrorism in this case. Obviously the aim of PIRA was and is a united Ireland: a 32 county Republic. The twin watchwords of the PIRA campaign were endurance & infliction. Endure everything that your opponent can throw at you, and inflict maximum damage on them. Which tacitly recognises that the campaign couldn't be won militarily. So the bombing campaign aimed to inflict economic damage. Just the same aim as the bombing campaign organised by Nelson Mandela as leader of the ANC's MK military wing in response to the Sharpeville massacre in early 60s South Africa. A secondary goal is polarise public opinion, so that moderates are forced to take sides. Bloody Sunday, internment and the hunger strikes all drained support from non violent nationalism in NI and bolstered support for Republicans. However, there's no comparison between the ANC and the PIRA on the one hand, and ISIS, Al Shabaab, Al Qaed & Boko Haram on the other. The ANC & PIRA were rational actors pursuing limited and legitimate goals. Jihadi extremist see shedding infidel blood as an end in itself, and they're quite explicit about wanting world domination.

You assume that SIS, Al Shabaab, Al Qaeda don't have goals beyond killing, and I think that's incorrect. AQAP seems to mostly want Western interests out of Yemen and Saudi. Al Shabab are loosely Stalinists and seem to be looking to control territory in Somalia and Ethiopia with Islamic jurisprudence , and I think they have some land issues not dissimilar to the EZLN(though I'm not sure I understand that correctly). ISIS/DAESH seem to want to draw Western powers into a costly proxy war with the aim of toppling regional powers. As evidenced by their early successes they seem to aim to use this chaos to build a state and call upon adherents to their brand of violent and regressive Sunni(esque) philosophy.

While these groups are less sympathetic than the IRA, early ANC, or ETA(to an extent), it's a mistake, I think, to view them as wholly different, or less human.

*Edit to clarify, these guys are definitely assholes and we need to have strategies to counter their goals.

Well no; my last sentence was quite explicit about their aim being world domination. Al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, has been quite open about wanting a global caliphate. That why western Jihadis travel to the middle east to join them. That's what makes them qualitatively different than ANC, IRA, ETA etc. And that's why we should take them very seriously. If they were to get hold of weapons of mass destruction, they would use them.

I give you problem A that kills 500,000 of your people every year and problem B that kills <100 people every year. And half a trillion to solve this.

Where and how will you spend your money?

95% on problem A and 5% on problem B?

95% on problem B and 5% on problem A?

Why are we not addressing the issues that hurt and effect our daily lives the most?

Depends how effective the investment in each will be.

i can tell you that your ROI (saved lives) on addressing homelessness and drug overdose will be a lot higher than chasing some boogeymen in the desert.

> chasing some boogeymen in the desert.

Whom we are chasing mostly because of the instability we caused in the region in the first place.

> addressing homelessness and drug overdose

That's been tried before with little success. Some people will choose to use drugs no matter what the government does. Some people will choose to be homeless. Some people are mentally ill and unable to take advantage of government programs. Some people just refuse help.

What program would you suggest, that isn't being done, that would reduce homelessness or drug overdose?

http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic...

Great success. Do some research. Spend effort expanding programs that work.

> A similar approach was first tried in Los Angeles in the late 1980s and New York City in the early 1990s.

> Later, the Bush administration adopted the model, and cities and states started writing 10-year plans to end chronic homelessness.

...

> And even though many cities in the U.S. have also been doing this for a while, they still come to Utah to study why it's working so well here.

The article mentions several times that it's already being done. This isn't mutually exclusive with efforts to fight terrorism.

The problem with the fight against terrorism is that they use it to push other agendas... just like they do with the fight against pedophiles and such.

What program would you suggest, that isn't being done, that would reduce homelessness or drug overdose?

Just one of the 59 cruise missiles fired on Syria yesterday would fund intervening in and saving hundreds of lives - they cost $1.41 million each. Some people may refuse help, many, many people in these situations don't get help. Soup kitchens, treatment for mental illness, shelters, training, are all worthy causes which cost very little to run.

There are so many useful programs that could be funded, which are being defunded this year in order to prioritise spending on the military (already the largest in the world by some margin) and searching social accounts/mobile phones and storing passwords for who knows what reason (it certainly isn't to prevent terrorism).

> we prefer to look for a boogeymen outside of the country.

Looks to me like we're looking for bogeymen inside our country. This is what countries suffering hard times with poor leaders do when the real outside enemies are hard to find or don't actually exist.

well the way they make it look now the boogeymen can be anywhere! In your garage, in my kitchen, or in the picture gallery on that kids iPhone... Let us have a look.. this is for you own security, of course...

We forget that we hired these people to run the government, when was the last time we fired someone? I think its about time.

Because ego and thus hatred against perceived differences that assists mental seperation is so very deeply ingrained in your culture. Just look and see. It really is the root cause of all suffering, the concept of "I". It is what allows for illusions like "I have rights" or "they are attacking us" and everything that comes after it: Very, very naive and subjective perception that is regarded as absolute truth and even defended to great lengths.

"You are your own worst enemy". Only later in life we realize how true it is.

Most never do realize, it seems.

Us vs them

Home team vs visitors

Republicans vs Democrats

Christians vs Muslims

Protestants vs Catholics

Hutus vs Tutsis

Walmart vs Target

It's adverserial programming 101. Is xenophobia really surprising given how many divisions our cultures cling to?

>> Why do we allow the government propaganda machine to fool us?

my current working theory is that US citizens have helped their Govt hone the tactics earlier. The propaganda machine was then turned at other countries( US enemies and even allies)

And US citizens fully supported it then and even now.

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