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Comment by sjtgraham | Hacker News Reader

Without answering whether the Iraq war is justified; justifiable tactics in a theatre of war != justifiable tactics at home.

The amount of intrusion and disappearing civil liberties is far too high a cost to pay to try prevent essentially unpreventable terrorist attacks.

I was surprised to read the other day that I have a better chance of dying from cancer caused by airport body scanners (1 in 60,000,000) than I do from dying in a terrorist attack (1 in 90,000,000). Lets "evaluate the risk/reward and ROI" of that program!

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Where did 1/90,000,000 come from? Is that per-lifetime, per-person-yr, something else?

Going just from 9/11 a rough estimate give 1:75000 U.S. citizens died, which is significantly different.

But besides, you're looking only at body count... do you think that if major terrorist events were happening with regularity that people wouldn't eventually start to take matters into their own hands?

Even with just 9/11 we in the U.S. saw a wave of anti-Muslim violence, which never really fully stopped. Just ask the Sikh worshippers in Wisconsin.

So part of that risk evaluation needs to include the propensity of the people themselves to lapse either to vigilantism, or to erect the police state themselves, in response to high-frequency terror attacks. The problem being that such a thing will hopefully never have enough evidence to fully support one assumption or the other.

Going just from 9/11 a rough estimate give 1:75000 U.S. citizens died, which is significantly different.

This is cherry-picking. 1 in 75000 died on a given day, but there have been tens of thousands of days where no americans were killed.

That's why I asked for the units, especially as your example is itself a different form of cherry-picking. Most people aren't concerned about being killed by terrorists on each individual day, they're rather not be killed on any of the days. If you include ten years' worth of days in your cohort then you could conceivably kill all Americans in the nation on one bloody day and still be able to say that it only happens 1 time out of 3650.

No, that's exactly what cherry-picking means, because you select the most significant data out of a small, irrelevant sample.

If you want units you should compare risks at least on a yearly basis per person, or on a lifetime basis per person. Then you will see how ridiculously low are the figures for terrorism. But we all know terrorism is not about killing many, it's about generating fear and inducing political effects. And it's used precisely for that by both parties (the aggressor and the victim).

I'm guessing that figure came from Cato's comments on TSA body scanners[1].

[1]: http://www.cato.org/blog/cato-comments-tsa-nude-body-scanner...

You know you can opt out of those scans? I do it all the time. I'm sure you know, but in case, it's no big deal to opt for the pat down. Just show up fifteen minutes early (yet it has only taken at most an extra 5 minute for me -- many times faster e.g. when a false positive on the machine shows up and you're instantly considered a terrorist even if you're a 45 year old fat ass going to the beach).

Exactly. I remember reading about how 12 000 americans die from gun-related homicide every year(not trying to push anti-gun agenda, just thought it's an interesting perspective,as both guns and terrorism are subject to a lot of debate).

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