Hacker News Reader

Comment by effbott | Hacker News Reader

True, but the risk of dying at the hands of these people is extremely slim. According to tabular data found here[1], which chronicles US terrorist incidents and assassinations dating back to 1865, only 5031 people have been killed by terrorists in the last 148 years. That comes out to approximately 34 deaths per year!

That number is trivial compared to other causes of death. Here's a sampling of some death statistics from the year 2006 [2]:

  Fireworks discharge:                           8
  Fall on and from stairs and steps:         1,818
  Bitten or struck by dog:                      32
  Contact with venomous snakes and lizards:      8
  Accidental drowning and submersion:        3,579
  Exposure to electric transmission lines:      93
  Transport accidents:                      48,412
  Contact with hot tap-water:                   32
  Terrorism:                                     0

You're more likely to be killed by hot tap-water than you are by a terrorist.

[1](http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/wrjp255a.html)

[2](http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/injury_and_death_statistic...)

View on HN

The problem with this sort of analysis is that there are EXTENSIVE efforts to reduce the amount of terrorism.

You might not like it, but the efforts are not trivial.

You're looking at the number of terrorism incidents AFTER efforts to mitigate them, and then concluding it's not a real issue. That's like saying that vaccinations aren't important because we haven't had a large number of Measles incidents lately.

We absolutely need better information, as citizens, to help weigh the relative success of these programs, but pretending to be sure that they aren't affecting the numbers is silly.

Good point.

Still, I can't help but hypothesize that the primary reason terrorism is such a rare occurrence in America is because intelligent people living comfortable lives without mental illness (read: the vast majority of the US) very rarely want to kill en masse. Or kill at all, really. If the opposite were true, I highly doubt our current counter-terrorism efforts would be good enough to prevent disaster after disaster.

For example, we were completely unable to predict and prevent events such as the Colorado theater shootings, the Newtown school shootings, the marathon bombings, etc. And the list of foiled Islamic plots since 9/11 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foiled_Islamic_terroris...) can almost be counted on two hands.

Our justice system promises pretty severe retribution on those who would commit acts of terrorism against US citizens. The threats of ostracism, humiliation, prison time, and execution act as deterrents, because we've proven again and again that they're basically inescapable. Consequently, most reasonable people don't even consider terrorism.

It seems to me that punishing the guilty is far more effective than spying on the innocent.

Rational, reasonable response. Kudos!

Thought experiment: imagine if half of these foiled plots had occurred. In other words, imagine if every 6 months or so we had a terrorist attack that killed a dozen people (and sometimes more).

Do you think the American public would take the HN line that it's still a very small number of total deaths, similar to the number of people dying from hot tap water? Or would they elect politicians with a very aggressive anti-privacy regime that would be "necessary" to eliminate these routine acts of terror?

At the end of the day, politicians are elected by the people, and I suspect that even the best politician would need to have a somewhat aggressive surveillance regime purely to avoid being replaced by someone who would throw caution to the wind in response to routine attacks.

I'm sure someone will respond that there are basically no real thwarted attacks, but I don't believe that. The Wikipedia article you posted reflects my sense of the frequency of attempted attacks. You can also claim that these attacks would have been thwarted without any surveillance, but that isn't my understanding of how law enforcement works in general.

What we should be pushing for is a far more open understanding, by the citizenry, of the scope of data collection and how that data can be used by law enforcement operations.

> Thought experiment: imagine if half of these foiled plots had occurred. In other words, imagine if every 6 months or so we had a terrorist attack that killed a dozen people (and sometimes more). > Do you think the American public would take the HN line that it's still a very small number of total deaths, similar to the number of people dying from hot tap water? Or would they elect politicians with a very aggressive anti-privacy regime that would be "necessary" to eliminate these routine acts of terror?

The conditions of your thought experiment are not realized but the American public still reacts as you hypothesise they would if terrorist attacks were a semi-annual occurrence.

People are fucking awful at reasoning about rare but dramatic events. This should come as a surprise to nobody.

>The problem with this sort of analysis is that there are EXTENSIVE efforts to reduce the amount of terrorism.

the question here whether there are EFFECTIVE efforts. As Boston Marathon shows - no. Like in other times and other countries, anybody who wants is still able to commit such atrocious terrorist acts, despite the EXTENSIVE efforts. Governments just like EXTENSIVE efforts.

That's like saying that if there are any reports of measles, the entire vaccination regime is a failure.

I agree that we need to know more about the efforts to understand if they're working.

I disagree that the small number of terrorist attacks is evidence that the efforts we're using to combat the attacks aren't necessary.

I have this banana in my ear to keep the crocodiles away.

There are EXTENSIVE efforts in place, but I am willing to bet they are less than effective. I'd like to see a comparison of how many real terror attacks there are on US soil post-9/11 vs pre-9/11. I'm willing to bet they are very similar.

I think the methods used to sniff out terrorism are the same as they used to be, except now government agencies want to spy on everyone instead of just suspected terrorists.

Not to mention that every method we know about to stop terrorism since 9/11 has been reactionary; it has been a reaction to something that already happened. Not something that could happen.

I feel no safer from terror attacks now than I did before 9/11. Truth is, I never worried about them before and I don't worry about them now. It just doesn't happen that often. As stated, I'm tens of thousands of times more likely to die in a car ride on the way to a building that will be bombed than to die in the bombing itself.

There have been long-standing and extensive efforts to reduce deaths in traffic accidents too (in fact over time far more extensive than our antiterrorism efforts), and yet in the month of September, 2001, 20% more people in the US died in traffic accidents than in acts of terrorism. Once you aggregate beyond a year, the risk of terrorism is insignificant.

If you don't believe that, let's stop enforcing traffic safety laws, stop requiring manufacturers to include safety features in their cars, and stop designing traffic intersections with safety in mind and see what happens.

I think, perhaps, that the problem with terrorism is that the distribution of terrorism event impacts is likely heavy-tailed -- i.e., the probability of one "black swan" event (nuclear, biological, chemical) is higher than a normal distribution model of event impacts would suggest.

But, to me, this means that the national security apparatus should be exclusively focused on reducing the probability of those most-terrible events, and instead leave the small-scale stuff to standard law enforcement. I.e., if the # of deaths is almost certainly < 200 (say), normal law enforcement procedures apply. If more than 500, then every resource can and should be brought to bear to prevent it.

Sorry for the derail but: How ... how do you get killed by contact with hot tap water? Is that like unexpectedly boiling water coming out on babies, the elderly, and the very frail?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com