Comment by K0SM0S | Hacker News Reader

Comment by K0SM0S | Hacker News Reader

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Honestly, given the near-unanimous stance, towards surveillance, of most governments in most developed countries (NA, EU, etc.) it's becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss their motivations as simply "stupid" or "misguided" or "power-hungry". I mean, it's impossible that all of them are uneducated about history (how surveillance is a double-edged sword that never fails to backfire), or just plain authoritarian at heart. "Because we can" isn't satisfactory either.

So there must be another explanation. I don't know what the Presidents / Prime Ministers / Intelligence Agencies of this world know, but if they all respond to current threats in the same inexplicable way, there must be some 'logical enough' underlying motivation.

Definitely pointing at a "rock and a hard place" indeed.

The other cold reality is that, for all the horror, terrorism isn't a threat to civilization, we're talking ~25k deaths/year worldwide (DoD/UN figures, cf. Wiki), which is orders of magnitude less than other threats like cancer or alcoholism or smoking tobacco (~2.5m deaths/year _each_). Terrorism is emotionally horrific, but demographically it doesn't even register. Nowadays it doesn't even really affect stock markets that much (e.g. in France, despite everything that happened in recent years). So based on the data we have as citizens, it doesn't make sense to spend so much (money, political capital, loss of freedom) to avoid so 'little' demographic/economic risk. Not saying we shouldn't fight against it, or protect citizens, but A) mass surveillance is a bad means to fight terrorism, good ol'fashionned spying is the way and B) the huge means (CIA etc.) are totally not proportional to the very risk we're trying to avoid.

So what's the _real_ reason for surveillance? What is it about Big Brother-ing citizens that is so necessary that the public does not know about? How is it even possible that after a decade and a half post 9/11 no official in any country ever talked about the _real_ reasons behind this apparent unbalance between counter-terrorist means and terrorism consequences?

I am everything but a conspiracy lunatic, so I don't accept the idea that people in power are organizing, all together, a dystopian reality a la 1984 --doesn't make sense to me.

So what gives? What are this rock and this hard place, exactly?

How is it inexplicable? When you're tasked with stopping individual suicidal extremists hiding within your citizenry, the obvious first step is "I need more information". There doesn't need to be any conspiracy or hidden threat, it is a natural and logical response.

Politicians aren't robots, obviously they care more about terrorism than tobacco. And they aren't spending political capital by setting up surveillance, they're gaining it. Obama took huge hits every time he said "ISIS is the JV", "terrorism isn't an existential threat", "chill out everyone". Imagine if he said he was diverting NSA funding to fight the tobacco industry.

Basically, if you don't understand politicians, talk to the people voting for them. The NSA exists because people want it to.

> When you're tasked with stopping individual suicidal extremists hiding within your citizenry, the obvious first step is "I need more information".

How about using the information that they have in the first place instead? They knew about a few of the attacks in recent years and didn't do anything to stop them. It's obviously a power-grab rather than an attempt to actually solve the problem.

> people in power are organizing, all together, a dystopian reality a la 1984

I'm not sure anyone believes that, really. And it isn't required in order to explain the explosion in surveillance.

In my view, it seems that increased surveillance throughout the world is a natural consequence of increased technology. If it's your job to stop crime, why wouldn't you digitize and automate?

The law is the last obstacle, and that is slowly being dismantled.

I.e.: The NSA is a paper clip making intelligence that has been given the task of stopping crime.

Basically that.

Paper clip maximizing is a widely known and very common failure mode for bureaucracies. Remember, they never get smaller.

(How did people deal with oversized bureaucracies in history? I mean before the XVIII century when no size became too big anymore? Was there any peaceful solution?)

> The other cold reality is that, for all the horror, terrorism isn't a threat to civilization

That's only because we fight against it so hard. If we stopped it would be like Syria or Iraq.

> it doesn't make sense to spend so much

So it's a "victim" of its own success.

All that money we spend is able to reduce it to this level, don't confuse that with it being at this level in the first place.

>> That's only because we fight against it so hard. If we stopped it would be like Syria or Iraq.

Any sources?

Syria and Iraq are not good enough sources for you?

I know what you are thinking "Those countries already had problems".

But you have some circular thinking: because they were not able to stop terrorism, they had problems, because they had problems terrorism got much worse.

If Western countries stopped fighting terrorism it would get worse, at some point it would get so bad the countries would be at risk.

Obviously in the real world no one would let it get that bad. But how bad is acceptable to you? 3 bombings/truck rammings per year maybe? 50 would be too much I'm sure.

Do you have some place you would draw the line?

I draw it at zero, which means, you need to spend a ton of money.

Look at Israel: They have not had a bombing in ages, so obviously they can stop spending money on preventing it, right? They have a problem with knife and truck attacks and I'm sure they are working how to stop it.

Once they do stop it, people like you will ask "Why do we need to keep spending money on this?"

I heard a security professional once quip "We should let a few attacks get through, just so they don't cut our funding." It's a quip - but there is some truth to it.

USA broke Iraq. Iraq had very little terrorism before USA broke it. Iraq exported very little terrorism to Syria before USA broke it.

I guess logic and common sense are lucky you didn't invoke Libya.

The UK successfully ended armed conflict in Northern Ireland through political means where armed force had failed.

Conversely, the US experiences regular mass shootings about which it does little but reactive measures.

In both Syria and Iraq the problem was caused externally. Syria in particular is a country full of foreign forces on various sides.

>terrorism isn't a threat to civilization, we're talking ~25k deaths/year worldwide

Hmm. Is mass surveillance a threat to civilization? How many deaths per year?

Like surveillance, the social cost of terrorism can't be measured straightforwardly.

I'm more inclined to fear organized dystopia than random acts of violence, but not everyone feels the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...

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