Snowden granted 1-year asylum in Russia, leaves airport
rt.com
rt.com
Since 1865, there have been 5,031 deaths and 22,125 injuries caused by terrorism in the United States. Source: http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/wrjp255a.html
5,000 deaths in 148 years.
In 2011, 32,367 people died in vehicle accidents. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...
There are all kinds of cancers that "only" kill 1,000 or so people per year that are deemed not worthy of research because they are so rare. But for terrorism, we sacrifice nearly inexhaustible supplies of money and time. We sacrifice our liberty, our privacy. None of it makes any sense.
Terrorism is nothing but fear mongering to effect an increase in power.
Here's another way of spinning the same data: There have been more deaths caused by terrorism in the US in last 15 years than in the prior 135 years.
Furthermore, I don't think your comparisons to deaths from car accidents or cancer are completely valid. Those are both phenomena for which induction works well (what has happened previously is a good predictor of what will happen in the future) because the events come from more or less stationary distributions. As illustrated by September 11th attacks, the number of terrorist deaths can double in a single day. There's no reason that this can't happen again with an event with >5k deaths in a single day.
For those who have read anything by Nicholas Nassim Taleb: Nicholas Nassim Taleb might argue that terrorist attacks are black swan events (impossible to predict, potentially very large impact) and that the comparision of terrorist deaths (a distribution from Extremistan) to motor vehicle deaths is not very valuable.
On the other hand, I don't believe the level of NSA surveillance is appropriate. I'm just trying to illustrate the amount of effort one puts into thwarting something shouldn't just depend on its previous costs, but also on the probability distribution of the event (and your uncertainty in that).
tl;dr: Terrorism is more like pg's view of a startup in that it has potential for explosive growth, while motor accident deaths are more like a well established medium sized business.
With every occurrence of a black swan event, you are made more resilient in preventing an event of a similar kind. So, now that we know that 9/11 can happen, we're now more mentally prepared than ever to prevent something like it if it happens again. Case in point, pilots now carry weapons and are much more likely to thwart attempts of hijacking. Passengers will also react more violently and vigorously now towards any sign of threat. Note that we actually have a few precedents since 9/11 in which hijacking of airplanes were thwarted in this manner.
And even if that does happen, so what? Even if an attack happens that dwarfs 9/11, it'll still be insignificant compared to the country as a whole, and not justify anything near the amount of money spent to fight it.
Barring the detonation of a nuclear bomb in a major US city, there's just nothing that terrorists can do that would really count for much, as long as we can avoid a massive overreaction.
Let's suppose that some terrorist group became skilled enough to bomb a major sporting event or other large concentration of people every six months or so. Not big bombs, mind you, just enough to kill a few dozen or a hundred people each.
By the strategy seemingly being argued for here, a "resilient" or "rational" America would just let the existing police do their work as best they can, maybe with some not-too-expensive Federal assistance, and simply accept the added risk of dying at major events, which, after all, is not that much more significant than the risk of dying in a car accident on the way.
Obviously, that is not the response we'd expect, and it's not because Americans are irrational or fearful. It's because this prioritization-by-mortality-rate policy logic is faulty. It matters that there's an agency behind these deaths. One thing our society values highly is justice, and that often requires a disproportionately expensive response to an unjust act, and not solely to buy deterrence.
> One thing our society values highly is justice, and that often requires a disproportionately expensive response to an unjust act, and not solely to buy deterrence.
A disproportionate response of the kind seen on 9/11 is mind-blowingly irrational, even if you call it pursuing "justice".
If you are so in the pursuit of "justice" you inflict a worse injury to yourself than you originally suffered, I'm not sure I can call it "rational" behavior anymore.
Especially if you're not doing it for deterrent effect.
The British provide the stereotypical example of my suggestion. The famous "Keep Calm and Carry On" slogan, of course, comes from their experience during the Blitz. (And yes, I realize it was never published in that time, but it still typifies the response.) The Blitz killed 40,000 civilians, but people did basically go on with their lives and let the government handle things, because that was the best way to do it. Freaking out wasn't going to help the war effort.
The British provide another example of the approach with The Troubles. Not so much in Ireland, really, but I think the response to the attacks in Great Britain qualify.
The British approach seems to work well. The American approach got us mired in two unwinnable wars, sank the country deep into debt, and wrecked the economy. I know which one I prefer.
Nuclear / biological / chemical attacks are the only high threat vector that terrorism presents. That should be the prime focus for anti-terrorism. The secondary focus should be terrorists like the Tsarnaev brothers that can hurt people on the level of the Aurora shooting. Neither of those threats require abandoning the first and fourth amendments to deal with properly.
The odds are strongly in favor of young children, via gun accidents, continuing to kill more people every year than what terrorists do on average.
It has to be noted that 9/11 and Boston both happened solely due to extreme government incompetence. Those two supposed black swan events should have never happened. They were not black swan events, they were sheer incompetence. The government failed at its job in numerous ways in both instances, and that's the nice explanation. Their incompetence was not because they lacked information on Average Joe citizen or because they didn't have my email meta data. They demonstrate that they're wildly incompetent at even basic security in multiple high profile cases, and yet they're given even more power. It's a failed approach top to bottom.
The NSA programs are much like our big security / security theater approach, and they'll be just as useless for the exact same reasons. It's trying to thread a needle with a hammer.
It could escalate into civil war though, or even regular war between nation states (especially if one nation selects random nation states to attack as a counterstrike).
Interesting reading on the subject:
http://reliefweb.int/report/world/2012-global-terrorism-inde...
A nuclear bomb over New York city, smallpox distributed in all Western major airports, or simultaneous nerve gas attacks in a number of major cities.
But if you want to look at the history of terrorism in our country, don't look to Al Qaeda or whatever. Start closer to home, with the Ku Klux Klan. They were unequivocally a terrorist group; indeed, their entire raison d'etre was terrorism.
As I pointed out in a thread yesterday, here [1] is an example of homegrown terrorism, absent from your list. Ben Tillman [2], who played a leading role in the murders (or, at least, who claimed to; perhaps he was too chickenshit to do his own dirty work) was rewarded for his efforts by election to the South Carolina governorship and, later, the United States Senate.
African-American participation in voting in the South was virtually nil from around 1880 to the 1960's. Why? Terrorism played a major role.
And yet, terrorism has been an extremely widespread and common phenomenon throughout our history, even on our own shores, which has been aided, abetted, and welcomed by government. It is, in some ways, easy to overlook because privileged Americans were not targets. But African-Americans have endured terrorism in this country on an overwhelming scale and with far-reaching consequences.
Although I dispute the statistics in the link I mentioned, ultimately I agree with the basic point: to be excessively frightened of terrorism, in its current guise, shows a lack of perspective both on statistics and on our nation's history.
>Anything can be redefined to terrorism
Wikipedia defines terrorism as "Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, often violent, especially as a means of coercion." Do you dispute that the KKK systematically engaged in this?
Bingo
http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=28375.0
Terrorism come in many forms, and the killing going on between gangs is just another form
If you were a black man engaged in any kind of political, economic, or social organizing, you stood a decent chance of being murdered by the KKK, which was implicitly supported by the white-dominated State. This created a system where people were too scared to even begin organizing, leading to all kinds of disempowerment and social malaise.
Those inner city gun deaths have the KKK in their genealogy.
The overall level of crime and violence in the USA has dropped dramatically over the past few decades despite the prevalence of guns. End the war on drugs in America and the place would be one of the most peaceful places on the planet.
Just last night -
"A 17-year-old boy was shot in the 2100 block of North Mulligan Avenue about 9:50 p.m. He was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in good condition with a wound to his thigh, Police News Affairs Officer Ron Gaines said.
Another 17-year-old boy was shot in the back near 70th Street and Perry Avenue about 8 p.m. He was taken to Stroger Hospital, where his condition was stabilized."
edit: Still terrorism and what they did was despicable, just saying that it wasn't their original purpose.
Please tell us more, with, sorry to ask, sources.
That surveillance systems of unprecedented cost and scope are built while this option is not even considered demonstrates very clearly that the proponents of both militarism and surveillance are not genuinely interested in preventing terrorism but in increasing their own power.
Unfortunately, like all this related to politics, the situation is complicated.
Are you sure this isn't an American point of view, assuming the POV of others?
I've always gotten the impression that Europe generally treats US military actions with disdain.
Maybe it's not reasonable for the US to base their foreign policy on how the US may or may not have been perceived circa 1945.
It's like saying Fort Knox has never been broken into, so let's stop wasting money protecting it.
By the way, this example is only meant to highlight the fallacy, nothing more.
I disagree. It's not a black and white "protect Fort Knox" or "Don't protect Fort Knox". It's more like saying Fort Knox has never been broken into, so let's evaluate whether we need 240,000 employees to protect it (number of employees in Department of Homeland Security). Let's evaluate whether we need to pat down everyone at an airport to see if they have plans to rob Fort Knox. Let's evaluate whether we need to eavesdrop on everyone on the Internet and record information about their phone calls to see if they're planning on robbing Fort Knox. Let's evaluate whether we need to invade two countries because people from one of those countries actually were able to steal a tiny fraction of a fraction of the gold in Fort Knox.
Our response to terrorism is unique and we treat no other problem like it, going even further than the "war on drugs".
The way I see it this is one example of how war on terrorism can kill more people than terrorism itself. I am beginning to believe that the best strategy to win the war on terror would be to basically just ignore terrorism and do only the most basic and least intrusive things to avoid terrorist attacks.
[1] http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-18/how-airport-...
I am not only talking about drone attacks which I believe might create more new terrorists than it kills. All that spying is going to cost you many friends in Europe and the rest of the previously US-friendly world and alienating all your friends is not the best strategy when you want to be safe.
I don't have any hard data on this (how could we measure that?) but I personally believe that those claiming to protect US from terrorism do more harm than any terrorist could ever achieve.
It does suck that more people die in car accidents but no single car accident can cause a billion dollars in damage.
You are effectively saying, "You must include X when considering A." You then completely ignore X when considering B.
9/11 caused the loss of 430,000 jobs
35,000 people die per year in car accidents. 9/11 happened 12 years ago. That means 420,000 DIED. That's worse than losing your job.
$40B in insurance payouts
Progressive alone pays out about $12B per year in auto accident claims. They're only the 4th largest insurer in the United States representing 8% of the market. If the ratio holds out there are approximately $150B per year in auto accident claims but admittedly I couldn't find a direct source for that. $40B in the last 12 years is a drop in the bucket.
I could go on and calculate the rest, but I hope you get the point which is your cherry picked (and made up) statistics don't hold a candle to other problems we have and relatively ignore.
Clearly there are psychological issues at play that makes us care greatly about large disasters, but that still does not make it rational to compare individual events to decide what resources to use to fight a type of event as a whole over long periods of time.
I'm talking about the sum total of all auto accidents over 12 years an the sum of all terrorist attacks over 12 years.
Even 12 years of auto accidents don't add up to one major terrorism event.
How so? 420,000 people died in car accidents. 2,700 people died in the biggest terrorism event to ever hit the U.S. So that's deaths. Economic impact - no brainer, car accidents have bigger economic impact. By any measure, car accidents have a bigger impact in aggregate than terrorist attacks in aggregate.
If there was another 9/11 or a Boston bombing happened every year, the country's economy would be massively screwed.
I don't even know what to say to someone that writes this.
Obviously 9/11 didn't start the Iraq War, President Bush did. He may have done that in a state of belief that the two were connected, but we should not repeat his mistake.
It seems odd to me to lump in how much we poured into terrorism over and above the direct damages, and not to lump in with car accidents how much money we pour into auto safety, road maintenance, and so on.
The general point is that we over-respond to trauma, both in our daily lives and a macro society level. Clean living is more important and has broader effects on your life than crime, but it is less sexy on the evening news. Just like car safety and terrorism.
> 9/11 caused the loss of 430,000 jobs
Security people do think about what motivated individuals can do. If some lunatic with a semiautomatic rifle can massacre dozens of people in a school or movie theater or shut down a major city for days, what could a trained group of fanatics do? There's a nearly limitless number of horrible things that can happen, and many of these things are real risks, just waiting for the right fanatic or lunatic to go for it.
The open-ended nature of this anti-terrorist campaign/effort/whatever reflects the open-ended nature of the risk.
That said, I think Snowden did a valuable thing. I think the approach the government has taken is too secretive and too much of an overreach. In an attempt to foil terrorists, we're undermining our democracy and the integrity of our institutions.
The risk is not "open ended" than any other risk. It can be estimated. Objectively, as many others have argued here, the response has been far more costly, destructive, and damaging to institutions and ideals we say we are trying to protect than the threat itself.
The powers-that-be need an everpresent bogeyman to keep us in control.
This is absolutely true. The shadow of terrorism that our elected officials claim to be chasing is nothing more than a way to vastly increase government intrusions into our daily lives in a publicly palatable way. Everything that is used to "fight terrorism" also happens to be used against our own citizens to pursue increasingly questionable prosecutions - thousands of times more often than used against real life terrorists. Our tax dollars are in fact being used to fund a war - but the war is against us.
One day we will consider spying just like torture, an immoral source of unreliable information.
And for so little benefit, they spend hundreds of billions every year, and get the ability to blackmail or threaten anyone in the world.
So not only is not "not worth it". It's an extremely dangerous monster that should be slain as soon as possible, before it gets to do much more damage than any terrorist could ever do.
- High variance : Even though deaths to date are low, there is a non-zero chance that someone will manage to pull off a very large attack (9/11 is an example, the next one might be a dirty bomb)
- Escalation : The point of terrorism is to create fear - if low level attacks don't promote fear the incentive is just to escalate until the attacks reach a point that does trigger a reaction. In other words - you're battling a human opponent and they will adjust their tactics to what you do.
Those are individuals.
I want to do everything we can to prevent the death of anyone who doesn't deserve it (Justin Bieber is off the list).
Now, our debate turns to "everything we can."
What can we do without defeating ourselves, and defeating the nature of our society, and becoming paranoid shut-ins?
My hypothetical question is this:
If an AI were watching our emails/texts/phone calls instead of people, and the data never made it to people unless the AI found a strong hit, would that be more acceptable?
Sometimes, I prefer the judgment of machines.
"'National Security' is the root password to the Constitution." -- Phil Karn
In 2011, 9,878 people died in drunk driving crashes - one every 53 minutes. Is that not considered wrongful death in your mind? That's twice as many people in one year dying from wrongful death than terrorism has killed in 148 years. If we were treating this wrongful death as seriously as we did terrorism, we'd require breathalyzer starters on every single car. Hell, we'd probably bring back prohibition.
Source: http://www.madd.org/drunk-driving/about/drunk-driving-statis...
Your lazy fake criticism of the statistics justifiably ignored.
Just waving around numbers is not correct reasoning from first principles!
Correct and proper inference should include present threats, beliefs and intentions of relevant groups. Do you account for that?
Just because an axe-wielding madman has not committed any murders in the past, you would not let him be on his own.
Just an instant before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, nobody in that city had been killed by an atom bomb. You would probably stare at the bomb dropping on your head waving around stats saying the bomb is not a threat to your existence.
"The past never repeats itself precisely; otherwise, historians would be rolling in riches." - James Gipson, Clipper Fund
Your comment is a one-way attack on sanity. It would take me a lot of effort to show where you went wrong. It takes you only a bit of effort to be wrong.
--cscurmudgeon
Terrorism has no value but vehicles do.
Unchecked terrorism, ostensibly, begets more terrorism. This is unlikely to be true with vehicle deaths.
Terrorism also has effects beyond the deaths and injuries it causes and I'd argue those effects are much larger than the same number of deaths in a vehicle accident.
A threat should be evaluated on more than just historical performance. I don't agree with fear mongering based on unlikely events, but (much like unlikely financial downfalls) their probability is more than 0%, and possibly that % is significant. Unfortunately this is something that takes a long time to get good at, and resources have to be spent to get there over years of trial and error.
the damage done by 9/11 is colossal if you look at the economic and emotional cost. Do you really think it's equal to 2,977 drunk driver deaths?
furthermore, it is impossible to measure exactly what is prevented from catching a single terrorist. if 9/11 was thwarted who knows if we'd even hear about it. We don't know what we don't know. so unless you have some insight into what is actually accomplished by anit-terrorism programs it's silly to make such comparisons.
Lastly, nobody is saying we should ignore driver deaths. we have the resources to focus on multiple problems at once.
It's like saying that your immune system's response to an allergen is justified, because just look at how terrible you feel when exposed to that allergen.
In any case, if you can reduce the immune reaction, that's far preferable. I don't see any reason why we can't reduce the overreaction to terrorism.
What negative value do you ascribe to 5000 people being killed by terrorists compared to 5 million people? Obviously, 5 million deaths would have a far greater effect on every day life and the ability of society to function.
On the other side, what value do you ascribe to freedom from government lies and spying? This is tougher, but it is generally assumed that the government performing such acts will lead to inefficient use of resources and services - resources that could have been used to prevent deaths in car accidents or raise the standard of society as a whole.
So at face level, the OPs comparison using statistics is fairly sound, and the changeover point is where the number of deaths or potential deaths switches over from one side of the argument to the other.
The OP is arguing that 5000 deaths is nowhere near the costs that the spying program has on society. This seems fair.
The arguments against the OP are that removing the spying program would increase the 5000 figure by orders of magnitude, or that the spying program has no negative effects. I disagree with both these arguments, so I think that the OP is probably right.
Statistics let you evaluate many things, including if the "cure" is worse than the "disease".
In this case, terrorism has killed 5,000 people in 148 years. The "war on terror" has killed 4,486 Americans in Iraq and 2,259 Americans in Afghanistan alone. Source: http://icasualties.org/
That's at least 6,745 Americans killed in a little over a decade to fight something that has killed 5,000 Americans in 148 years.
I'm purposely only mentioning American deaths to show how starkly idiotic what we're doing is.
But loosing ALL Internet and phone privacy, basic human rights such as the right not to be tortured and to some degree loosing the checks and balances of a normal democracy in the fight against a ghost is hard to swallow.
My attitude toward the NSA leaks is, "they should not be doing this." If terrorism killed millions, it would be, "they should be doing a better job of this." Numbers matter.
Regardless:
In 2013, 1,660,290 people are expected to be diagnosed with cancer.
In 2013, 580,350 people are expected to die from cancer.
Source: http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@epidemiologysurvei...
Did these people die by their choice also? Maybe they should have eaten more vegetables and exercised more? That's 116 times more deaths in one year than have died by terrorism in 148 years.
If we had 240,000 employees working on cancer prevention, screening, treatment and cures do you think we might be able to bring that cancer death number down by 1%? That would save 5,800 lives per year which is more than the last 148 years have killed by terrorism. (Department of Homeland Security has 240,000 employees, improving screening processes alone would likely reduce cancer deaths by 1% per year).
We also invest billions in cancer research and prevention. That has reduced the death rate over 20% in the last 20 years. 152,000 lives were spared in 2009 (http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20130116/cancer-death-rates...)
It's choices all the way down.
There's no way to make yourself safe from car crashes unless you confine yourself to your house. Even if you never drive, you are exposed to vehicular death simply as a pedestrian. There's no way to avoid it without becoming a hermit.
Meanwhile, it's pretty much trivial to make yourself safe from terrorism, if you wanted to. Avoid airplanes, avoid skyscrapers, avoid major cities. Done. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of Americans already happily live this way, although most of them don't do it specifically to avoid terrorism.
So just move away from the city, easy peasy. Your choice.
I think this logic is flawed and the argument is a weak one.
US citizen deaths caused by terrorism in 2011: 17 [1]
So no, it doesn't seem to have spiked apart from obvious outliers like 9/11.
If you look at the entire Western world as a whole, my guess is that deadly terrorism on the whole has actually decreased pretty dramatically since the 80's.
Snowden is a true hero in the sense of the word -- he is in actual, physical danger for what he has done for others -- however it is not a reasonable argument when people argue that terrorism is a non-issue because <body count> less than <some other body count>.
Do you think those who wish to do you harm don't want to exponentially increase that count? If various groups could get a nuclear warhead or dirty bomb, do you really believe they wouldn't use it? If they could sabotage a major city's water supply or a nuclear power plant, do you think that would be below them?
This doesn't seek to justify the NSA's all-encompassing surveillance at all (human intelligence is where it is at), however there is an actual possibility that they have actually preventing significant events. But the problem with proactive actions is that no one gives you credit for what didn't happen.
As an aside, to add to what others mentioned about the enormous costs and economic damage that resulted from 9/11, for instance, another reason terrorism of even the smallest kind sees a dramatic response is that it is terrorism -- it terrorizes a whole populace. If someone randomly shoots people in parks, there will be a massive response because the impact is on everyone.
Second, the issue is the marginal expenditure to marginal deaths. We spend tremendous effort and some freedom reducing auto accidents, and we reduce them substantially. We don't spend trillions more at this point, because we don't consider it worthwhile. Before 9/11, we had some level of expenditure (of effort, money, freedom) on preventing terrorism, and doubtless saw some reduction in terrorism over what it would have otherwise been, and had it down to some particular level. Since 9/11, we've been spending that plus trillions of dollars and more of our freedoms, and the most we can possibly do is reduce terrorism to zero - and even if the alternative were a significant increase in terrorism (something like 9/11 every other day, instead of - generously - once every several years) there would still be more room to save lives in these other ways.
Finally, 9/11 had an enormous cost, but a lot of the psychological cost is due to fear mongering from people who lack the perspective the numbers bring. Another large portion of that cost is due to lack of resiliency in the companies with offices in the WTC, and companies doing business with those companies, &c. The former is addressed through education and leadership, the latter by encouraging behaviors that will also help in the case of (say) a massive hurricane. None of this is served by a panicked focus on terrorism.
If the state can't prevent every murder, why would you expect that it could prevent every terrorist attack? Why does it make any actual difference whether deaths are simultaneous or distributed? Horrible things, intentional and accidental, happen every day, and they can't all be prevented, but you don't waste your time worrying about drunk drivers or lightning strikes, because they're spread out and you don't notice.
You make a reasonable and proportionate effort to protect yourself to the extent that you can, and roll the dice and pray to the extent that you can't. What makes terrorism any different than plain old murder?
To the first, it depends on what we have to trade away and on what we get in return. There will always be risks, because our resources are finite and the world is occasionally hostile. A 9/11 scale terrorist attack happening every few years is bad, but unless the resources we shift there make a bigger difference in reducing those threats they can make elsewhere, you should be "content" in the sense that that is the result of the policy that you should prefer. In this context, freedom/power can be viewed as an important resource: power in the hands of the security apparatus makes them more effective, but freedom in the hands of the people helps to protect against government abuses (in the extreme, tyranny - but things don't have to get there for it to be important).
Once you get into the business of having your government spend trillions of dollars and destroying other countries in response to a couple idiots, you paradoxically make terrorism more likely, because shifts in policy accompany it.
When no one gives a shit, there's no incentive for ideological terrorists to attempt any interesting attacks, leaving only the occasional madman.
"We spend $0 a year on defense against flesh-eating bacteria. Should I, as a citizen, be content with flesh-eating bacteria happening every few years?"
"We spend $0 a year on defense against maniacs going postal. Should I, as a citizen, be content with maniacs going postal happening every few years?"
David Foster Wallace says it better than I could: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just-ask...
Yes.
We spend $0 a year on defense against alien invasions. Should I, as a citizen, be content with alien invasions happening every few years?
What about the psychological cost of fearmongering about the possibility of 1984-style dystopias vs. the reality of violent attacks whether broken up beforehand or not?
I'm not saying the government should have the powers that it has now, but if you can "live with" terrorism then you can just as easily "live with" surveillance.
"Terrorism" on the other hand does not scale, especially with an adversary so technologically limited oceans away from US borders. Terrorism isn't even meant to scale, it's entire purpose to create a maximal psychological impact because the adversary does not have the resources to achieve any significant damage through force. Even if you look at Isreal's total deaths and injuries from terrorist attacks you'll see that the numbers are small [0,1]. Also, unlike increasing government powers, there is no evidence that terrorists acts on US soil are increasing.
[0] http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/terrisraelsum.html [1] http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/osloterr.h...
This is precisely why terrorism is not a big deal. The people are not the ones demanding rendition, illegal wiretapping, drones, nude body scanners, etc.
These things are being created the the corrupt public/private partnerships that the US Government has created b/c of poor oversight and little transparency.
Suppose you want to strike terror into the American population. There are so many simple attacks that are impossible to prevent -- you could bring a few gallons of gasoline into a subway car and light it, you could open fire at a mall on black Friday, etc. Event the crudest, least effective permutation of these kinds of attacks would cause significant terror, yet nobody does them.
I'd argue that there are simply too few people in the US who want to, and most who want to are incapable of the minimal functioning required to do so.
9/11 was a larger scale attack, but as we can see from other countries' situations, low tech, less lethal attacks are very effective too.
Nothing that the US Government is doing can prevent against terror plots from succeeding. That ought to be obvious to everyone. The idea that the government has somehow spared us from attacks on the water supply or nukes is absurd, since there aren't even any terrorists willing to try the simplest, lowest-risk kinds of attacks.
The counter-argument would appear to be that terrorists have an insane delight in over the top attacks that will be even more symbolic. But worldwide very little terrorism is like this, and so I view it as propaganda. When you think about it, most of the "terror" caused by 9/11 nationwide has been due to all the fear-mongering elected officials engage in.
As we should have learned back on 9/11/2001 when the last plane was thwarted by its own passengers, people are resilient and will adapt to protect each other.
Nothing? How utterly defeatist. People in all manner of ventures seldom act alone, and it is in those communications and networks that is precisely what the NSA (and the CIA, and the FBI, and the...) is targeting. Their wholesale capture is open to question, but it absolutely can thwart terrorism attacks.
Here in Canada we've had several potential terrorism events that were prevented by exactly that sort of action. Not by NSA type methods, but by someone in that network of associates coming under suspicion for some reason and it percolates out.
The idea that the government has somehow spared us from attacks on the water supply or nukes is absurd, since there aren't even any terrorists willing to try the simplest, lowest-risk kinds of attacks.
This is so profoundly broken of a thought process -- the "I have made my decision and I am sticking with it, logic be damned" -- that it isn't worth further consideration. It is a very good thing people like you have no part in safety and security -- by your failed thought process, things that haven't happened thus won't happen.
No matter what areas our government cracks down on, as long as we have any freedoms left, someone can exploit them to create terror.
You dismiss my point about low tech, low sophistication attacks. But think about how everyone reacted when mysterious (but eventually harmless) white powder was found in a few envelopes. Terrorism exploits freedom for great psychological effect.
To add to your own excellent examples, you could blow up the people standing in the security line at an airport. Which I guess they could solve by having a security line before you get to the security line. Which you could then blow up.
We're going to need a lot of additional security lines.
Terrorism and crime are side effects of living freely.
> "Do you think those who wish to do you harm don't want to exponentially increase that count?"
Not sure how that is relevant. In fact I take it more as an argument for how normal, non-expanded powers have been surprisingly effective at stopping worst-case scenarios.
And I didn't say otherwise. However that there are efforts to combat terrorism always gets compared to the traffic deaths/heart disease/cancer canard. It is a non-starter argument.
non-expanded powers have been surprisingly effective at stopping worst-case scenarios
Expanded relates to expanded avenues of communications and organization. The NSA moves into collecting data in avenues that "the other side" didn't have not too many years ago. The world evolves on all sides.
Further, as the critically important old saying goes: chance favors the prepared. There will come a day that a nuclear weapon gets in the hands of the "wrong" people (e.g. during a breakdown of the government in Pakistan, etc.). That chance event, which thankfully hasn't happened thus far, can have many possible outcomes.
Of course no one thinks those things. That's a straw man. There are a number of people who would be quite delighted to do each of those things. Everyone knows that.
But you're acting as if we're standing at that precipice--as if requiring narrow warrants to tap search histories will all of the sudden enable these people to obtain and deploy a nuclear bomb.
And the fact of that matter is: such events are unprecedented. There have not been hundred-thousand-death terrorist acts. You raise the possibility of them, but evidence suggests that it's actually very hard to pull off, and has been for a very, very long time, independent of various changes in surveillance technology and law.
IF (and it's a big if) terrorist attacks were to increase sharply in response to a strict interpretation of wiretapping laws, why couldn't we just deal with it at that time? Why do you want to deal with it now? The terrorism rates could increase 100x before even registering as a public health issue.
You're like someone who won't go on a date because they're worried about getting a divorce. Yes, sure, it's a possibility, but it's a long ways down the line, and we will have ample opportunities to try and solve each specific challenge along the way.
Little Boy and Fat Man would like to talk.
Unfortunately, 'doing nothing' is not in the dictionary of 'serious' managers, politicians or generals.
Do anyone really think that the US would spend the same amount of money catching a shotgun wielding mass murderer who robs liqueur stores, or the same shotgun wielding guy that has a terrorism manifesto posted on youtube but with no prior kills on his hands. Who of the two is more likely to have biggest kill count in the end?
Do some rough math on 9/11. 9 terrorists and 2977 deaths (331/terrorist).
The most prolific mass murders have "alleged" death tolls in the hundreds, but most are only multiples of ten.
The question was if a shotgun wielding guy posting a video on Youtube is more likely to kill more people than a shotgun wielding mass murderer who robs liqueur stores. To clarify, he doesn't have a time machine to suddenly transfer himself to 2001.
One simply has to extrapolate that all reasonable efforts to avoid terrorism aside, terrorism is simply the same result of liberated living as driving a car
There's so much wrong with how you framed your argument that I won't bother picking it apart. Again, I know you meant well and I'm on your side.
Just don't join a debating team quite yet.
P.S. And YAY for Snowden!
Putin's government is supporting the church, and promoting traditional family values. They have instituted significant money benefits for families with children, and as a result the much talked about decline in Russia's population has been stopped in 2013. For the first time in modern Russian history there are more babies born in Russia than people die of old age. http://www.amren.com/news/2013/06/russias-population-decline...
The laws prohibiting "gay propaganda" should be viewed in the context of these policies. Obviously, being gay as such is not illegal in Russia. There are gay bars in any large Russian city, and quite a few of celebrities have admitted to be gay. However, they have made it illegal to promote homosexuality publicly.
Then, there are economic policies of Putin that would make Reagan jealous. Russian government has adopted a flat 13% tax rate on all incomes in 2001. Not only this has made Russia one of the lowest tax jurisdictions in the world. Most importantly, the flat rate has removed thousands of 'tax exceptions' that is the source of economic inefficiencies and outright corruption in most of 'developed' countries. Here is a noted US conservative lamenting that Putin has achieved something he had worked on most of his life. "We won the Cold War, but Russia gets a flat tax while America is stuck with a Byzantine tax system based on class-warfare ideology." http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2003/03/russias-....
Finally, the 'freedom of press opression' and 'political persecution of opponents' thesis is in many ways overblown. Most popular Russian internet media outlets are openly anti-Putin (lenta.ru, slon.ru etc. etc.). The most listened to news/talk-show radio station (Echo Moskvy) is strongly anti-Putin, and a very popular cable TV channel (Dozhd) is also anti-Putin and anti-establishment.
And the trial of the poster-child of anti-Putin opposition Mr Khodorkovsky (who was imprisoned years ago on fraud and tax-evasion charges) has just been recognised as a 'non-political' by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) (read: Khodorkovsky was indeed a crook, and his sentencing was not influenced by his anti-Putin stance). http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-european-court-khodorkov...
Putin's government is also following Western conservative script with regard to intellectual property. Actually, today the have effected a broad-reaching anti-piracy law that would outlaw any internet site that publishes links to illegal movie download or torrent-trackers. To Putin's credit, the downloaders of illegal content themselves will not be prosecuted. So, parents of teenagers need not worry about gigantic fines etc.
Obviously, Putin is no friend to US conservatives, primarily because Putin is a nationalist and conducts an independent foreign policy. What is good for Russia need not be good for the US. And vice versa. But Putin may be good for those Russians that hold traditional conservative values. Hell, such people may feel Russia is the last bastion of true conservatism left in the world, while not being exactly a Pinochet-like fascist place.
Minus the extra judicial killing and prosecution of any serious political opponent.
Just to be clear, I don't try to judge Putin's russia through the "prism" of western media bias, I am sure he has done a lot of good for his country, but he has also done boatload of fucked up shit.
constant, evidence-based accusations of widespread electoral fraud
Accusations of fraud are mostly aboutRussian parliament elections of 2011. Pro-Putin party was accused of fraud in many districts, which I personally think is correct. (But, strangely enough, Israeli foreign minister, has found those elections fair and democratic... http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/lieberman-russ...)
On the other hand, most definetely Putin did not need any fraud to help him win presidential elections in 2012. He had an overwhelming support among common Russians. Forecasts by anti-Putin polling organisation Levada Centre promised him 63% of the vote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_presidential_election,_...), and he indeed got 63.5%. His closest competitor (a communist) got 17%.
To win elections fraudulently, Putin had to doctor close to half of the bulletins, which seems unlikely, given worldwide scrutiny of the election, and his own efforts to dispel doubts such as installing live webcams at every polling station etc.
Tl;dr Putin won because he is popular, not because of the fraud.
There are claims that Dr Kelly was killed by Tony Blair for opposing Iraq war. But I am not believing it either.
You aren't supposed to be aware, is the idea.
I don't think there is a lot of support in favor of Snowden in USA, don't be confused by internet activism. The reality is most people is US doesn't care about snowden or the implications of his revelations.
In the current US, anti-government activism is a foreign concept. You won't find a lack of people complaining about the government, but you won't find them on the street and make some noise untill there is some real change.
Even the occupy movement was largely a farce and it wasn't really against the government.
This is spot on. Most people here don't even know his name. To the ones that do, he is "that guy that leaked all those secrets." It pains me to say it, but it's true.
The odd thing is that with the recent House vote that almost successfully de-funded the NSA with regards to the meta-data collection program, it seems that a lot of our representatives were ahead of the population (or responding to the more activist elements of the population) on the issue.
>Even the occupy movement was largely a farce and it wasn't really against the government.
I was there that first day that it started. To be fair, the movement was largely about the relationship between the government and the private sector, not just the private sector.
Now after a decade of American led wars, invasions, drones... and now the mass surveillance program, we slowly start to realize that maybe things are not as good as they seem.
Perhaps, it's time to reassess the past established roles and look at the world afresh.
Again, name the country which is acceptable, possible to travel too, and out of US reach.
Snowden has to take whatever he can get.
And he has to run to Russia, a country that has much much worse human rights records (at least publicly, it is possibly that US government privately is much worse in human rights).
I think the people of the USA should ask their government what is the legal way to expose government wrongdoing, _to the extend Snowden did_, without being prosecuted and having to run for his life? I am afraid, currently no such law exist.
Why is there no chance of him getting a fair trial? Are you accusing Federal judges of being corrupt puppets of the Obama administration or something?
As to Federal judge's my understanding is that (might be wrong) most of these appointments are political in nature. And at least in case of supreme court the judges tends to align with their ideological bias and their interpretation of laws often wildly differs. Don't quote me on it though, just my understanding.
That depends on a lot of factors:
- are you homosexual
- ethnically caucasian
- A subscriber to Islam
- have a name that matches the name of someone on a no-fly list
- an 'enemy combatant' (ages 13 and up)
- an activist of sorts
Or anyone of a hundred other arbitrary criteria. Those could make the difference between a safe & secure life 'just' being harassed periodically by people in uniform or spending time in Gitmo or Siberia.
Actually, that matters in Russia a lot, too. Although, their meaning of the word is different (Russian Caucasians are people originated from around the Caucasian Mountains; that's where all the guerilla fighting is currently going on).
Well, if that isn't the best damned endorsement in history!
In fact I come from a country which used to be communist(Poland) and a lot of people(older people) say that it was fantastic. Obviously they don't realize that these policies pretty much ruined our economy and were unsustainable in the long run, but they don't care - they want their nice jobs, free stuff from the government and paid holidays twice the year.
It's a sad day because a citizen of our nation decided he needed to go to a foreign journalist instead of one of our own to break this story.
It's a sad day because that same citizen felt like he wouldn't get a fair trial in our justice system and might be treated the same way Bradley Manning was until he did get a trial.
It's a sad day because lots of decent, honest people who work in our intelligence services that are trying desperately to uncover the next possible attack are going to have to work much harder.
It's a sad day because those people are going to work harder because the leaders do not feel like they can trust the American people to understand and decide for themselves how much of their privacy they are willing to trade for the work that the government's intelligence services do.
It's a sad day because we demonstrated that we care more about the embarrassment of our duplicity being revealed than in the ideals of our commitment to civil liberties.
And I'm sad because I'm an American and I love my country and I want it to do better.
Glenn Greenwald is a US citizen.
2. He works for Guardian US, a US company based in New York.
3. According to the editor, it's actually easier for the Guardian to publish stories on this topic through their US subsidiary, rather than the UK, because free speech protections are stronger in the US, so the US connection is very important to them and they view themselves as a global media operation now (just moved to a .com domain for example).
The point I am trying to make is that Snowden took this story to a few local, bona-fide, 100% US-owned/operated/associated well-known media outlets and they passed.
He went to a UK-associated news outlet and got published.
When you're done focusing on the most irrelevant part of my post, please look closer and see if you can discern a forest amongst the trees.
Who is forced to live abroad, due to DOMA.
(That may not be quite what OP was trying to say, but it's worth mentioning).
Surveillance is about control; more nines of safety may or may not be a beneficial side product. There is no reason why mass surveillance would not expand to encompass other crimes: first murders and rapes, then tax evasion, then drugs and torrents, then joining "subversive" protest groups, etc.
I'm not sure there is any person or group trustworthy enough to own a unilateral monopoly on all knowledge.
So when everyone is talking about big political issues, all I can think of is all the mundane stuff he must be putting up with. Like: how much clothing does he have, and how is he doing laundry? And: Who's paying for his expenses? I assume his ATM card and Visa aren't good anymore.
Get a blini and some квас at Теремок, Edward. It's pretty tasty.
[1] http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BC
[2] http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BC%...
This whole story is not about privacy, spying or politics. It is about your personal inability to choose your phone company, internet provider, or a bank without confronting armed "state" which dictates what is allowed to you. Don't like NSA spying through Verizon? Build your own phone company. Oops, there are feds with an order to "cooperate".
Guns and violence are the problem, not all these abstract inventions like "rights" or "privacy".
So even with a valid passport, Russia would have had to make an exception to their normal rules.
What do you think is stopping Google from non-complying with an order to install a fedbox in their datacenter? Armed guys who would go in and confiscate equipment, or even put some managers in jail for "aiding the enemy". "Court order" is just a paperwork to justify concrete violence.
What stops you from not paying your taxes (when you dislike war, spying or whatever gov is doing)? It is armed people who would come in and extract your property from you. And they will always be slightly more violent than amount of self-defense you'd try to apply.
Your argument is silly. "Armed people" are just a tool to enforce policies enforced by governments. It is them, not the soldiers, we should be worried about.
I think one of the big injustices of our time we will look back to with disgust (like slavery 200 years ago) is not allowing people to go wherever they want to go. What gives us any right to deny people to live anywhere on the planet they want to?
It’s just that I absolutely do not believe that abolishing (all or large parts of) government is any kind of solution to this.
(And, yes, this would have often dire economic consequences for some. Just as abolishing slavery had dire economic consequences for some. Doing the right thing isn’t free.)
The whole point of my comments is that what is generally considered immoral (threatening and killing) becomes 180 degrees different when some man in a nice costume says so. Don't you think someone was bullshitting us?
In my view, murder is never justified. Even in self-defense. However, in case of self-defense, you don't have much choice (and people around might understand you), while guys in the airport don't have any kind of attack and everyone can be peaceful and nice to each other and walk their way.
"A general reminder whenever budget issues are discussed: the U.S. government is — this isn’t original — best thought of as a giant insurance company with an army. When you talk about federal spending, you’re overwhelmingly talking about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense. And the bulk of the insurance — all of Social Security and Medicare, about 2/3 of Medicaid — is for the elderly and disabled."
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/an-insurance-com...
So: the decisions of the armed dude are real, but "legal statement" is just a virtual abstraction invented to hide the fact that some violence will be applied.
What real armed obedient guys on the border?
Both my and your lives are 95% peaceful anarchy - we voluntarily interact with who we want and ignore people we dislike or disapprove of. The remaining 5% - is when some dudes in costumes brainwash us to comply with a well-hidden gun. Try to "disagree" by not paying your taxes and see what happens.
Make a thought experiment what would happen if you try to peacefully move to another country without a passport.
First and most important attribute of a sovereign is monopoly over violence throughout the specific sovereignty.
No guns no sovereignty. Thats how it goes.
As I said in my post the first and mandatory requirement for one to be sovereign is to have a monopoly upon violance within particular geographic region.
What you declare is absolutely irrelevant. You are sovereign if and only if you are firstly capable of defending yoursef from harm and second unleashing harm upon others within this teritory.
There need not be any justification for violence beyond whim of the sovereign. So if you walk outside the airport against sovereigns will, local sovereign may do harm unto you.
And it has absolutely nothing to do with morality.
Well done, Russia.
If some private contractor can walk out with "thousands of classified documents" how are we supposed to believe that the NSA isn't lying about their allegedly strict controls?
I think you're getting close to a key issue here: I think one reason the public (and, I'll admit, myself) isn't so outraged yet, is that there isn't (much? any?) evidence that shows widespread abuse of these programs. Yes, I'd like these NSA programs to be dissolved, but if you want me to show up at a protest, I need a better reason than that the government has access to my email. Because while unwarranted access my email is unjust, it would be a different story if there was evidence that this information was routinely used to actively suppress innocent people.
And I guess the reason I feel compelled to point this out, is because I think it explains why I haven't "lost faith in the system" when it comes to the U.S. government. As bad as these programs might be, I think it is important to recognize that there is a lack of tangibly bad consequences to these programs (so far!), and that we still have a chance to end them through the democratic process. And if that's the case, then all is not lost.... hopefully...
s/so far/that we know of/
And that's only if you don't consider the rape of the Fourth Amendment a "tangibly bad consequence".
If the US Congress passed a law suspending one's Miranda rights would you have the same attitude if the police didn't report any "tangibly bad consequences" they had observed? How you see these issues is a matter of perspective, and if you adopt the government's perspective you aren't doing your fellow citizens any good. Skepticism should always be the default response to any statements made by those in power concerning the proper limits of their power.
1. Purposely stole 4 laptops to sift through them, looking for anything he could use.
2. Never gained any access to the spying data... Only classified documents.
A motivated person like that, not being able to gain (and provide examples to us) of that spying data, goes right against your second statement.
2. He stated he had full access to the system as a contractor and could lookup details on anyone he wanted. I fully believe him. In his documents he has examples of the systems being used.
Bonus point. He has yet to release all the documents and has timed his releases very well. Expect more documents showing better examples to be released in the future when the US government has stated more lies that he can disprove.
I've been trying to find the source, but I can't, so scratch off my #1.
My understanding of it was the "theft of government property" charge was based on physical laptops, or their drives, being taken home... But I can no longer find that source. And all the media reports are alleging/assuming (though without any references or proof) that that charge is in relation to copying the data.
And the indictment is sealed.
I'd say that their security measures are a joke and I am concerned about how many other people can utilize NSA capabilities for personal reasons. Say, some geek who was picked on in school who decides to settle the score now that he's got the chance to dig up dirt on his tormentors. Or a jilted lover who decides to use NSA databases to stalk their ex.
We're supposed to just blindly buy the story from the Puzzle Palace after they've been caught out in more than one blatant fabrication or omission?
Sorry, not me, I can't trust people who deceive me.
They could bury previous whistleblowers and Manning but Snowden has finally made people sit up and realize while the TSA is groping your genitals at the airport, the NSA is groping everything else about your life at that same intimacy.
The sad part is, in 100 years nothing will have changed, it will just be hidden better and whistleblowers seized before they can get to the press.
It's funny how this whistleblower thing might turn into a mirror image of the torture scheme the CIA employed: the CIA would use other countries to ship prisoners to to have them tortured/interrogated in ways that the country where the capture took place or the USA would not condone on their own soil (but for some magical reason doing it somewhere else or even hiring people to do it makes it ok).
Now we get whistleblowers that move outside of the jurisdiction of the country the revelations are about. Cue a Russian whistleblower to flee to the USA for some symmetry.
If so, Hi Ed! Thanks for doing what you did!
They have a very low fertility currently, and there are plenty of correlation between places that accept homosexuality as normal (instead of only tolerating it) and low fertility.
Of course, correlation is not causation, but what you think the majority of russians will think about the subject?
Also, traditional families are much more stable, divorce rates with gay people are very high, you cannot rely on them to have millions of stable families.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/czechrepubl...
Reportedly "dangerous stand-off" meant that Russians pulled guns on the plane and Czech police withdrew in order not to escalate.
If you haven't read it, this is a great article on the subject: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/28/edward-sno...
ES: if you're reading this- Anything you want from the homeland? I can drop it off in a secure location, I'll be staying about 100km south of Moscow. /u/@gmx
China would probably be the only credible alternative, but the govt there doesn't really have the right attitude to give someone like Snowden asylum.
so the government propaganda does work :)
when the rest of the world bows to US threats and hands over official presidential planes for searching, there's not much choice is there?
and yes, the whole situation is very ironic, if you your views on the world come from western media
The news coming out of Snowden on the US is very fucking bad too.
So what happens if homosexuality is outlawed in the US and the NSA can dragnet every online thing ever?
Source? The man was a sysadmin for the NSA, not some script kiddie.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42127_LA_Times_Contr...
Imagine, Snowden does not go to Russia, but goes to Finland instead. Did it make your life any better considering what we know?
I mean these countries have huge interest in this guy. He knows intimate details about how the USA gathers intelligence. I mean I wonder what kind of info he has given (if any) to these countries. I am sure Putin would love to get a hold of those laptops he took with him.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend should be pretty obvious once you're running from a government that does not think twice about murdering their own citizens.
In the end, it worked out very well for him, because he ended up in powerful countries who weren't in a hurry to do the US Government any favors, but the implication that he's "aiding the enemy" by running to the US's biggest rivals is ludicrous.
I assume those countries already had their hands on that information (and more). If it was easy for Snowden to get his hands on it, it would have been just as easy for them.
This information falling in foreign hands isn't much of a problem I would guess. The real fear is more information leaking to the biggest enemy: the public. I would not be surprised if part of the dealing of granting him asylum was that he stop leaking to the public.