The worst part for me (and I really am feeling bad about this) is that I should be concerned about the victims right now, but I can't stop thinking about what freedoms I'll be losing as a result of this.
I feel like at this point that we should be examining who did it, and what caused them to do it rather than how it could have been prevented with security measures. Get to the root of the problem and solve it there, rather than a surface-level patch. Was it a mental health thing? Was it spurred by our culture of violence and/or attention to violence? Was the attacker after a specific person? Certainly not easy to find out these answers, but would probably be effort better spent than checking trash cans.
I'm sure there will be some silly knee-jerk response that serves no good for the public and likely just inconveniences everyone. I'm also sure that people working in the government understand these short-term reactions are almost always useless. Why does it continue happening?
As for 9/11, that involved 3,000 people dead and the collapse of a major American icon. It killed more people than the Pearl Harbor bombing and involved direct costs and losses approaching $100 billion.[1] Jury's still out on whether it was a "silly knee-jerk" response or a reasonable wake-up to the threat of global islamic terrorism.
[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-57292565/cost-of-911-...
nor the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which may almost mirror this in terms of venue, injuries, & deaths. But, I think the fear is that we're now in a post-9/11 world where knee-jerk reactions are far more common.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiterrorism_and_Effective_De...
[1] The "terrorism" part seems to come from using the example of people like McVeigh to argue for procedures to keep people from defeating a death sentence by filing endless habeas petitions.
Much like free speech zones don't limit free speech rights, they just create stricter procedures for exercising those rights.
AEDPA was not just about habeas corpus rights. It covers penalties for conspiracies that involve explosives and for hacking into government computers. It covers counterfeiting activities. It covers law enforcement training and assistance. It covers international terrorist funding and investigation.
It is like an embryonic version of the PATRIOT act.
Of course; only those that restrict our rights should be so labeled. That, unfortunately, is what the majority of attempts to address security concerns do.
"The other stuff in AEDPA doesn't contract any rights, just addresses particular kinds of crimes."
That is a tautology: take away the things that are bad, and you are left with something good. Ignore the sections that reduce, restrict, or eliminate our rights, and every knee-jerk reaction just addresses particular kinds of crimes (whether or not they do so in an effective way is another story).
"The only thing that arguably contracts rights are the habeas portion, and that's more appropriately seen as improving habeas procedures rather than contracting rights."
More appropriate according to you perhaps, and perhaps the right wing politicians who passed and signed the bill, but it is hard to say that we are "improving" civil rights by restricting them. Restricting habeas corpus is not an "improvement," it is a restriction on civil rights -- or alternatively, a contraction of our rights.
The entire argument for restricting habeas corpus in this manner was this: people facing the death penalty might try to avoid being executed by exhaustively testing every technical detail of their case in court. That does not sound like a bad thing to me, it sounds like people are making use of their rights in a life or death situation. Far too many innocent people have been executed to claim that there are too many ways for death row inmates to stave off their executions.
AEDPA was drafted by the kind of people who think The Ox-Bow Incident is a how-to manual on law enforcement. It is the mindset that sees a man like McVeigh challenging his execution and says, "How dare he! We are supposed to kill him, because he is GUILTY!" That is not how America is supposed to work. The criminal justice system in this country is meant to ensure that innocent people are not imprisoned or killed even if it means allowing guilty people to walk free and even if it means using tax dollars to pay for guilty people to challenge their conviction.
See this:
"But within weeks of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Senate voted 91 to 8 to pass the Comprehensive Terrorism Protection Act of 1995, which cut back sharply on state death-row inmates’ access to federal court. This bill eventually morphed into the broader Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which President Clinton signed shortly after the first anniversary of the bombing. Standing on the south lawn of the White House, in the presence of family members of the victims of Oklahoma City and other recent terrorist incidents, the president declared that the new law “strikes a mighty blow” against terrorism." [1]
And also [2], which notes that a draft of the AEDPA also contained additional surveillance powers, among other things.
I'd definitely call the AEDPA a knee jerk reaction.
[1] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/homegrown-hu...
[2] http://books.google.com/books?id=H_RrLyV9rDUC&lpg=PA31&#...
Actually, I think they already do that, with bomb-sniffing dogs. But they have dubious reliability, and don't catch someone who's willing to place the bomb shortly before it detonates, as may have been the case here.
France, in response to terrorist attacks in the 1995 mandated that all public locations have transparent bags held by posts [1] [2]. I don't think that's a unreasonable compromise, considering the alternatives.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_container#Media
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trash_bin_in_Paris.jpg
A real pain if you've got food and rubbish to dispose of.
What it does do is solve a political problem: "What the hell did you do in response to terror attacks" in a way that does't compromise liberty much.
It does make it just that bit harder to stow a bomb, because now the bomber needs to have it packaged properly, and hope that the package doesn't a) ruin the bomb or detonating device and b) that the bomb doesn't slip out and become visible.
It also helps the police identify - they can just machete all trash bags and grab/dump the contents and sort - compared with opening up the can - which might in some areas be locked or difficult to open.
Compared with moves like the creation of the TSA, I prefer this kind of security theatre - at least there's some plot here. It's like locking out the pilot doors from the cabin.
The OP's point is that even if you can ensure 100% of the trashcans dont contain bombs for a reasonable cost, the terrorists will now just put them somewhere else.
That is a very important item that many will overlook. To the person bemoaning what rights they will lose, well its not like your going to lose more, just be reminded of ones you lost and did not even realize, like that of a working cell phone.
The attackers hid the canisters in trash cans in that instance as well.
Reaction to issues is tied to how much you can personally relate to the victims. It's also why 2 people dying in a stream in your neighborhood seems so much more relevant than 100,000 people dying in an earthquake halfway around the world.
Will it be all police cars, dogs and jersey walls from here on out? This sucks.
The video from the camera man on the ground at the finish line shows countless cops at the finish line. All that police presence did not prevent the detonation.
I'm not proud of my thoughts, and I'm not proud of the hundred or so sarcastic remarks that I've thought of since I first heard the news either.
I am genuinely saddened that this happened, and my most sincere hope is that whomever did so is apprehended quickly and that nobody else is injured or killed while that happens. At the same time, the explosion looks (at least to me) like Tannerite, and I'm also thinking that perhaps Tannerite is going to get banned, or regulated, despite being, basically, iron oxide; which would make such a ban pretty futile.
Are you suggesting that they should have some automatic kill switch implemented in advance which they can hit to show sensitivity? [1] Networks also run commercials to make money it's part of how they can afford to do what they do. Of course I've seen cases where networks don't run commercials on rare occasions.
[1] And why do they need to do this? Are you willing to pay for access instead so they don't have to run any advertising?
At just seemed crass at the moment. I admit that I was just having an overly emotional response at the time and do not fault them for it whatsoever.
At the end of the day advertisers don't want to be associated with certain stories, and there's a public good imperative that drives rapid, open access in these tragic situations that overrides commercial interest even if that were of concern.
So they build good will as the place to go when some major event has happened and you are looking for every morsel of information or discussion about it.
Sometimes people just need to realize that things happen and we don't have to pass new laws and regulations every time something bad happens.
Use the powers we're given smarter, less broadly.
It is easy to stand back at 100ft and say this type of crap, but the fact is, crazy people are all around us, and we should try to be proactive instead of reactive.
We as a society owe it ourselves to reflect on events such as this, and see if there was anything that could have been done to prevent it. If the answer is yes, then we SHOULD act. Does that mean freedoms need to be restricted, laws to be enacted? No, it could mean better technology, maybe better security, maybe MORE security.
I hope no new laws come of something like this, but if it means reducing the chance that this happens again, I am all for it.
Our rights are absolute, but we also need to compromise. We can't let ourselves become 1984, but we can become safer, smarter, more efficient with regards to security.
Our lawmakers know just as well as we do, that more laws won't fix events like these, but better messaging ("See something say something"), better trained police officers, etc.. these are things that are controllable, changeable, and have a hugely positive impact on preventing horrible things like this from happening.
Is it cold to point out that we are already living in an age of more security? There were paramilitary police teams at the marathon, ready to take on a small army -- but the attackers found a way to plant their bombs anyway.
When the TSA was established and billions of dollars were spent on securing our airlines, a tiny minority of people were saying that if another attack occurred it would not be on an airplane. Now we have seen another attack, it was not on an airplane nor anywhere near an airport. We do no need another massive security bureaucracy designed to prevent marathons or city streets from being attacked, because that will just push terrorists to attack something else. There are far too many ways to attack a country as large and developed as the United States to have a sprawling bureaucracy for all of them.
"I hope no new laws come of something like this, but if it means reducing the chance that this happens again, I am all for it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_by_whiskey
"We can't let ourselves become 1984, but we can become safer, smarter, more efficient with regards to security."
Every time we become "more efficient" about domestic security, we sacrifice our rights. What makes you think this time will be different?
Watershed events always create these emotional knee jerk reactions. As opposed to "well we can save lives by driving 50 mph instead of 70 mph but since that's legacy we aren't likely to not consider the impact on society as a whole by lowering the speed limit."
Sitting at the top like that it really does start to look like soap-boxing or attention whoring. Apologies all, I really didn't mean it that way.
The best thing to do if you disagree with the position of the OP's comment is to upvote other siblings. Personally, I think this discussion is interesting because it addresses in real time the implications of what this attack might be (if any).
Thank you, moderators.
Given recent history, there's little reason to feel that it won't and plenty to worry that it will.
But more importantly, having a thought you aren't proud of is no mortal sin, nor is publishing it honestly on the internet. You're supposed to feel conflicted and confused; something bad happened and we're all going to have a wide range emotionally-charged responses.
I've scrolled down and up-voted as many of those more valuable comments as I could. I encourage everyone who reads this far to go and do the same.
As I said, I thought this would be a "one voice among many" kind of post, not become the lightning-rod of this thread. Parent is right. Go read the better stuff.
Besides with a little luck this is North Korea and we don't have to loose any more freedoms (do we even have more to lose?)
Clearly my point completely flew over your head. I was only commenting on how ridiculous it was that tomjen3 claimed that we had already lost all our freedoms in the very same sentence that he mentioned a country that is far more oppressive than our own.
The facts will be fleshed out over time on the regular news, so I see less value in comments just parroting that. Rather, (if this is to be discussed on Hacker News at all), I'd prefer it to be about the ramifications of the event, and especially how it relates to technology, or laws/regulations that foster the development of technologies.
I'm a Bostonian (at work about a mile from the explosions), and I wish everyone would just cool their jets a bit until more is known about what's going on.
If it would be found that this is an Islamist terror attack the aftermath will be much more pronounced then a scenario where the blame will be on say some extreme right wing group.
Much of the lose of freedom we all suffer from is due to entrenched xenophobia becoming political agenda, it seems much harder to enact changes when the criminals are white Americans ala Timothy McVeigh or some horrific mass shooting
While figuring out who did this will be very very important, right now it's not something the public should worry about.
Also, fuck off with the "whining nerd" shit.
A bomb in a sports event? That's suffering people eat for breakfast around other parts of the world.
http://blog.tsa.gov/2008/01/lighters-nail-clippers-and-lithi...
http://blog.tsa.gov/2009/05/tsa-urban-legends-nail-clippers....
http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/12/tsa-response-to-claim-that-nail....
http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/12/updated-tsa-response-to-claim-th...
Losing freedom has the potential to affect me personally, so I'm more concerned about it.
And I don't necessarily agree it's too early to discus the consequences of this. The authorities on the scene are handling the immediate situation, and there's very little to be done from 2K miles away.
I agree. Chance are, the friends and family who are directly affected by this aren't going to be trawling through comments on HN--there are more pressing concerns.
The rest of us, and maybe this will sound equally harsh, need to divorce ourselves from the emotional impact if there's nothing we can do (or donate to the appropriate organizations if so inclined). Right now, there's little that can be done, and even less information still. That leaves the most objective option as what we're doing right now: That is to say the discussion of potential policy changes.
I'm not sure this event is significant enough to affect anything on a large scale (e.g. TSA on every street corner), but you do have to wonder what changes might be made to future marathons as a consequence. I don't necessarily think that's harsh as much as it is objective.
Once bit twice shy. Muzzle your fkng dog.