Comment by higherpurpose | Hacker News Reader

Comment by higherpurpose | Hacker News Reader

Congress is way ahead of you EFF:

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/228945-top-house-dem...

It's also interesting to see how American media is reacting to this attack, in a manner that's completely opposite of how the French media reacted, or other journalists in other countries.

Just like with the Sony threat, Americans seem ready to holds their hands up at any threat now:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/01/0...

The best way to hurt the terrorists is not to kill them. They want to die for their cause. It's to show that you are not afraid of them. Terrorist attacks are meant to create "terror" in populations, so the population or its government react a certain way.

The US gov/population is reacting exactly the wrong way to terror attacks. France or Norway (that massacre a couple of years back) reacted the right way. Being "scared of offending the terrorists" is exactly what the terrorists are going for, and if it works once, why not try it again when something else offends them?

So the US is now "soft on terror"? This isn't what I recall happened after the attacks on the WTC on 9/11 or on the Murrah Building in OKC. In one of those cases, the US launched a "global war on teror" along with an invasion of a country thousands of miles from home.

The US can be blamed for making a lot of mistakes regarding terrorism, but I don't think being too gentle is one of them.

I think he's specifically refering to news outlets not afraid of showing Charlie Hebdo's cartoons.

> So the US is now "soft on terror"?

I think its more an issue of being hyper-motivated by the fear of terrorism than being "soft on terror". Both cowering under the bed and sacrificing freedoms to domestic authoritarians while dropping bombs all over the world can be manifestations of the sensitivity to fear of terrorism.

but America hasn't had any real serious internal terrorist (using the term loosely) threats for 70+ years.

Europeans are far more used to violence like the PIRA/UDA in NI Eta in Spain and the RAF in Germany. For example I know two people going through the truth and reconciliation process in NI.

And if I had had to goto NI on business during the troubles I would have to be very careful about where I went and who I told who I worked for - the down side of working for "crown forces" let alone that I was the product of a mixed marriage.

> along with an invasion of a country thousands of miles from home

The U.S. didn't invade Iraq as a response to terrorism. They invaded Iraq because of the threat of "Weapons of Mass Destruction". Many people just assumed Iraq was behind 9/11 simply because the government wanted to invade them after 9/11, and the government did little to dispel that mistaken notion. And we all found out that Iraq having "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in the first place was a mistaken notion as well.

> The U.S. didn't invade Iraq as a response to terrorism.

Fear of terrorism was one of the reasons for public support of the war and it was heavily pushed in the pro-war propaganda.

> They invaded Iraq because of the threat of "Weapons of Mass Destruction".

In the run-up to war, both supposed direct ties between the Iraqi regime an al-Qaeda (and direct ties between Iraq and one of the 9/11 attack specifically) and the threat that if Iraq acquired WMDs it might transfer them to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups for use against the US were trumpeted. WMD and terrorism are not mutually exclusive motivations for war.

The supposed connection between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda (including a supposed link between Iraq and 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta) was still be trumpeted months after the 2003 war began, even just before the 9/11 Commission issued its finding that no such connection existed. [0]

[0] http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5223932/ns/us_news-security/t/pane...

I was talking about the war in Afghanistan more than that of Iraq.

You can be 'hard on terror' and mostly ineffective whilst making life of non-terrorists more miserable all across the board.

Remember that the "airplanes are hijacked and flown into buildings" model was neutralized on the morning of 9/11/2001. It only worked three times, the fourth time it was attempted, that same morning, it failed.

With that in mind, consider the massive overreaction to that specific type of threat. Entire government agencies were created to combat it, despite it already being solved.

No, it's not what I was saying at all. Here, Schneier probably says it better than I do (even though I found this post after I wrote that comment):

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2006/08/refuse_to_b...

Oh dear, you brought that up.

I predict the stream of CISPA defense comments from tptacek in 5, 4, 3, 2...

...unless he has better things to do (I hope)

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