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Comment by AYBABTME | Hacker News Reader

What do people expect? It's either that or open war mongering. This administration doesn't want to be seen as a militaristic one, but the world doesn't stop being what it is because voters get tired of wars. So something has to give. More drones, expanded secret ops, more information gathering.

I don't like the idea of being spied on, not at all. But from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information. I'm kind of playing Devil-advocates, but it's naive to expect your government to provide you safety, lifestyle, freedom, without having to play behind the scene - or openly fight oversea - when the rest of the World lives a completely different story.

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But from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information. I'm kind of playing Devil-advocates, but it's naive to expect your government to provide you safety, lifestyle, freedom, without having to play behind the scene - or openly fight oversea - when the rest of the World lives a completely different story.

OK, for starters, let's assume that "national defense" is a proper and just role for government, and even be charitable and allow that "some" secrecy is necessary. Now, how does any of that argue for allowing the government to record call record for everybody in the US? What is wrong with having them identify an individual, or small group of individuals, that are suspected of $WHATEVER, and then go get a warrant, and then ask for the data? I mean, by casting a net so wide, it's obvious they're collecting a TON of data on people that aren't involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever... why should we be OK with that?

And that aside, to the extent that this is about the "War on Terror", ask yourself this: How many people in the US have ever been killed as a result of a terrorist attack? Over all time the number is on the order of a few thousand. Now every single one of those was tragic, yes, and I certainly don't want to diminish the importance of every single life... but when you look at the big picture, cancer, AIDS, car crashes, accidental slips and falls in the bathroom, accidental drownings in ones own swimming pool and even "being beaten to death by a cop" outrank "death by terrorism" in terms of scale. And is anybody seriously suggesting we should allow the State nearly unlimited power in the name of fighting accidental slips and falls, or drownings, or any of those things? No? Then why should we do it for terrorism?

And finally, shouldn't we consider that people like Ron Paul have a point, that a lot of the hatred for the US is probably "blowback" as a result of our aggressive, meddlesome foreign policy? Maybe one of the best ways to ensure security for our nation is to have a strong military - at home - and trade freely with everyone. After all, it seems to be far less common for strong trading partners to attack each other. Free trade, and less meddling in the affairs of other sovereign nations, would - IMO - be more effective at protecting us, than allowing the fracking NSA to grab call logs indiscriminately.

> How many people in the US have ever been killed as a result of a terrorist attack? Over all time the number is on the order of a few thousand.

Maybe because they're doing a much more effective job than we realize. Also I don't think you accounted for Pearl Harbor.

> And finally, shouldn't we consider that people like Ron Paul have a point, that a lot of the hatred for the US...

I think this is common misconception. I do not think the vast majority of the world hates the US. I'd be curious to see facts about this.

Maybe because they're doing a much more effective job than we realize.

Maybe. Unfortunately there's no real way to say. I mean, if I offer you a "tiger proof rock" and say that it protects against tiger attacks, will you accept as evidence, the fact that I've never been attacked by a tiger?

Also I don't think you accounted for Pearl Harbor.

No, I didn't. I don't think most people put that under "terrorist attack", as it was an overt action by an organized nation-state as part of an active military strategy. The Japanese weren't just trying to "sow terror", it was a tactical objective to weaken the US Navy so they wouldn't be able to impede Japanese objectives in the Pacific during WWII.

I do not think the vast majority of the world hates the US. I'd be curious to see facts about this.

I don't think the argument is that the majority of the world hates us (although it might be fair to say that a majority aren't terribly fond of us), but rather that - of the groups which are actively engaging in terrorist attacks directed out way - those groups are motivated by our foreign policy. I admit this view is not without controversy.

> No, I didn't. I don't think most people put that under "terrorist attack", as it was an overt action by an organized nation-state as part of an active military strategy.

Also, Hawaii at the time was not even a state.

The US actually hasn't fought a war on it's own soil since 1812.

(It HAS had numerous terrorist attacks on foreign soil, however - the Beirut barracks bombings in 1983 would be but one example. In fact, 9/11 was not really an isolated incident, but the next progression in a number of terrorist attacks against the US. It just happened to be the biggest one and the first one on US soil (not counting the failed 1993 WTC bombing)).

I completely disagree with this sentiment. I say ignore terrorism completely. Don't intercept calls, get rid of all post/911 airport security. We can't stop terrorism and we won't ever stop it.

A better question is: is it worth bothering? The biggest yield terrorism has ever had in the US was 911 where around 3k people died. So if you look at the last 30 years of terror we're talking around 100 people a year. A problem that costs the lives of 100 people a year isn't really worth considering so long as things like cancer and heart disease are out there. Instead of wasting all these billions on war and anti-terrorism, invest it in cancer research. Now that could have some kind of impact.

And, yes, if my loved ones were hurt by terrorists I would be devastated. Just the same as if I lost them to heart disease, cancer, a car accident, etc. But I'm not willing to give up anything (not security, not time at the airport, nothing at all) to stop something that is so statistically minuscule as to not be worth thinking about.

That is a reasonable policy choice, which is worth considering.

It so happens that law enforcement officials and national security officials and politicians do not think that the voters will accept 3 to 6 Boston bombings per year, without their careers being destroyed. Do they misunderstand the public mood?

>It so happens that law enforcement officials and national security officials and politicians do not think that the voters will accept 3 to 6 Boston bombings per year, without their careers being destroyed.

Take away the security apparatus and many of their jobs are gone whether there is an attack or not.

The presidency is one of those jobs.

off topic. I came across this post from you https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3170221

Would you still be interested in that service?

tom at blendah.com

For some. But most of the loudest voices are higher up the food chain, and do not directly benefit from the security apparatus. Most of those on the payroll as part of the apparatus must maintain some semblance of calm competence, thus they cannot participate directly into feeding the hysteria.

Implying mercenary intent absolves the voters of any responsibility.

Public mood is largely a product of what the media forms it to be. Look at how Boston was covered. How many days did they blather on and on about 3 deaths? If it had been three Boston people dying in a car crash it wouldn't even had made local news.

Of course some say the media is just showing people what they want to see but that is naive. The two are intertwined. Further, if no news agencies were allowed to report on terrorist attacks (as they are not supposed to report on self immolation) then the public wouldn't care because most people wouldn't even know about it.

> What do people expect? It's either that or open war mongering.

Or we could just stop with using fearmongering as a way to expand homeland security's budget. These agencies are doing whatever they can to expand their budgets. That is the game those players play. You aren't successful unless you expand your budget. And you can't expand your budget unless you make convincing fictions about all of the fear out there in the world.

> But from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information...but it's naive to expect your government to provide you safety, lifestyle, freedom, without having to play behind the scene

How do you call this safety or freedom? Our own gov't is more likely to harm us than terrorists. How many people do you think die from terrorists in the US a year versus innocent people being prosecuted (or molested by the TSA)?

The false positive rate is way, way, way higher than than the number of terrorists in the US.

It's either collecting call metadata on US citizens or open war mongering? I was going to say that you're giving a false choice but then I realized there doesn't really seem to be a connection between the choices you're giving.

"Everybody decides not to care about terrorism" happens not to be on the menu. Unless you have an idea how to make everyone not care about terrorism.

"from a security perspective, I understand the need for better information"

Quality versus quantity. This is about wholesale surveillance -- gathering as much information as possible on as many people as possible. That does not mean the information is better or even useful.

I bet it is very useful. If you have one or two suspicious persons who happen to be a member of a particular lodge, church, mosque, etc. you can probably usefully winnow down the list of associates to further investigate without a large and intrusive effort investigating the entire group.

People easily imagine the worst case scenarios, but the okay case scenario is surely more typical, e.g. when a man travels to eastern Pakistan to allegedly visit relatives for several months, the FBI can look at the 9 people he spends time with rather than creating dossiers on the 112 people who so happen to attend the same mosque.

(Whether and how the Constitution cares about the "good case", "okay case", "worst case" is a different question.)

The problem is that the scale messages makes even seemingly small false positive rates a big problem. Suppose you had a false positives only 0.01% of the time -- a ludicrously generous estimate. When you are looking at hundreds of millions or even billions of messages per day, that is far too much noise for the system to be useful.

Maybe the FBI/NSA is so good that they never see false positives. I doubt it, though, given how many non-terrorists have been harassed at airports, had their peaceful protest groups infiltrated by undercover agents, etc.

when the rest of the World lives a completely different story

What does this mean?

I remember reading about how Lebanon's cellular phone providers are deeply in bed with Hezbollah, as just one example. Likewise with the Taliban working in concert with AQ before 9/11.

My gut reaction is that I don't like this, but it's hard to argue that the U.S. is fighting an even bout with those who would enter the country and use its civil liberties to aid their terrorism planning.

Of course we expect that, the question is where to draw the line in areas where civil liberty directly conflicts with security.

>I remember reading about how Lebanon's cellular phone providers are deeply in bed with Hezbollah, as just one example. Likewise with the Taliban working in concert with AQ before 9/11.

Some tribal people, in a god-forsaken land, with a technical sophistication somewhere between cavemen and world war II, were "working in concert with AQ"?

Yeah, surely the US needs surveillance for all its citizens to counter that.

>My gut reaction is that I don't like this, but it's hard to argue that the U.S. is fighting an even bout with those who would enter the country and use its civil liberties to aid their terrorism planning.

What planning? After decades of external US intervention, invasions, wars, support for dictatorships (from the Shah to Pinochet) and weirdos (remember how Saddam and Laden were "allies" in the 80s?), there have been like 2 or 3 attacks on US soil, 9/11 included. Suburban kids with machine guns kill more people in their schools each year than most of those.

In 2001, 3000 people died from terrorism. In 2010, 600,000 people died from heart disease, 575,000 from cancer, 120,000 from accidents, 50,000 from the flu and 38,000 from suicide.

If 3000 people died each year from terrorism, would it be worth not giving up the freedoms we have? That would still be a very small number compared to the flu, which no one I know has a fear of getting because they think they'll die.

My point is, that where we draw the line is in the wrong place because of our irrational reaction to terrorism and its actual risk of death.

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