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Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

Freedom from terrorism is only modern times bogyman. A hundred years ago, it was anarchists! 50 years ago, it was communists. In 50 years into the future, a new fooist will replace terrorists and the same fight will start all over again.

I think what society need is some government reforms that require lawmakers to do cost-benefit analyses with tests and proofs. If they want to ban encryption, they should be forced to provide evidence that it actually work, and that the cost to society is less than current methods to fight terrorism. It would also likely get rid of many current inefficient methods, like security theater at airports.

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This. It boggles my mind how scared people are of terrorism, especially domestic terrorism. If you live in Pakistan, where suicide bombings happen all the time, I can understand being scared of terrorism. But in the US? Come on.

You know what I'm scared of? I have to drive two hours four days a week. I am much, much more likely to die in my car. Hell, I was more likely to die in my car while I was in the military. Most people know someone who either got injured or died in a car crash. It happens all the time. How many people know someone who died in a terrorist attack?

But we're surrendering our freedom for the latter, which is a ridiculous phantom bogeyman, while we vigorously defend our right to die on the roadways.

I was stuck in Boston airport for 6+ hours yesterday. The TVs at my gate were tuned to CNN endlessly discussing various terror topics, including some antagonist (Pamela Gellar) ranting.

That entire section of the airport (and I imagine many homes tuned to the same station) were absolutely saturated with a message of fear and us-vs-them. I think it's ridiculous, but I can easily see how for many people this is a pervasive issue. It might be the majority of the media they consume, in that they don't seek out much else or tune out the 24-hour media cycle or fearmongering or ratings attempts.

Even with high-profile, high-fear factor, violent events we're highly selective about what we freak out about. Last year a military installation shot down a commercial airplane, killing nearly 300 people. No military solution called for, no drastic measures taken, commercial flights are still flying over war zones today.

Why do we believe we should/could do something about all foreign and domestic crazy people (so called 'lone wolfs' like at Boston) and all crazy and motivated groups who hate the US because of our foreign policy in their region (and there are plenty of regions with negative perspectives) when we can't even prevent state actors from killing civilians?

Statistically in the US a person is more likely to be shot by the police than killed by terrorists.

Much, much more likely to die in a car crash, but you can't justify militarising your state in the name of traffic safety.

>>> How many people know someone who died in a terrorist attack?

You may not want to pose this question to a New Yorker.

I get your point, but it is a bit of a loaded question.

NYC population is 8.4M. Auto fatality rate in U.S. is ~12/10,000/year since 2001. If NYC follows US, then ~10k die per year in auto accidents.

The term "loaded question" refers to questions which presume facts. For example, "why did you kill him?" Is loaded because it presumes that you did kill him. The question you are referring to is not loaded.

That's not even remotely close, on either number.

There were 294 motor vehicle fatalities in NYC in 2013.

The US has been averaging about ~32,000 motor vehicle deaths per year the last several years.

Your 12/10000 rate would indicate 360,000 people per year; that's off by a factor of ten.

* http://dmv.ny.gov/statistic/2013nyc.pdf

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...

I knew a bunch of people who died in the wtc (Lehman), I was one tube behind the one that blew up in London.

I still think the best response to terror is to shrug it off and get on with your life. Spent 7/7 sat at a pub in the sunshine.

Yeah, similar experience here on 7/7 (although I fortuitously walked instead of getting the tube that day, I do know a bunch of people who were close). I wasn't far off the centre of Manchester when they did the Arndale either. All you can do, as you correctly point out, is shrug and carry on.

It may be a loaded question but his point stands, fear is not based on rationality or we would be spending tens of billions of dollars a year trying to prevent car accidents that is currently being spent "fighting terrorism".

He asked about people dying in a terrorist attack, not in clandestine government activities.

In support of this, please see September Clues on YouTube.

While we cannot say what exactly happened on 9/11, September Clues proves without a doubt what didn't happen on 9/11.

Auto accidents don't make the government look like they fell asleep on the job like 9-11 did.

Agreed, people need to find their balls and stop giving into fear.

The question I want to ask is, looking at the history of human society (especially in the 20th century), is it more reasonable to fear terrorists or totalitarian governments? Just in terms of absolute numbers of people killed, it seems that the latter wins by orders of magnitude [1,2,3,etc]. So assuming we want to prevent death and hardship (the precise reason this guy wants to restrict encryption), we should be focused on preventing the rise of totalitarianism. That means we should be extremely wary of all of this surveillance infrastructure that's springing up everywhere, and of any calls to make our communications even less secure than they already are. It's not that today's government is totalitarian or even has those tendencies, it's that we're making it easier for it to happen in the future, and that's a real danger in my opinion.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Calculating_the_...

> In 50 years into the future, a new fooist will replace terrorists and the same fight will start all over again.

Cryptoists. Or maybe I'm overly optimistic thinking crypto-users will first be targetted in 50 years time. Probably more like 5? Maybe 10?

Proving a policy change's future effects is generally impossible. Congress does have panels of people who write reports on the possible/likely effects of legislation. Not sure how frequently they use them, though.

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