It's not like you can say "yeah, we saw that coming and let it happen." Because THAT, sure as hell, will not fly with the people. And "yeah, we saw it coming and stopped it" is questioned as just posturing. When people say "scanning individuals in airports makes us no safer," what are they comparing it to?
Is it that they doubt the effectiveness because people are still getting killed by terrorists in planes? No. It's because there are no attacks, so they have no data to say "yeah... it's been effective."
The problem with this argument is that it can be used to justify any security measures, no matter how costly or stupid. Because maybe it's really very effective in practice but we can't tell you about it?
You're basically saying "trust us, we're the government." It's the recipe for total unaccountability.
So no, they have to justify that the costly and stupid security measures actually work. Or we'll have nothing but costly and stupid security measures that don't actually work.
How exactly do you want them to justify. Your demand is too vague to be even considered. How do you propose, they should advertise every thwarted terrorist attack, without alerting the other terrorists?
All security is plain unproductive overhead, which is compulsory in the presence of adversary.
>>You're basically saying "trust us, we're the government." It's the recipe for total unaccountability.
You're basically saying, "don't trust the govt" and that is the recipe for total anarchy, which is heaven for terrorists.
How about they stop doing it and if the level of terrorism remains in the "still kills fewer people than bathtubs" range, we realize we didn't need it.
> All security is plain unproductive overhead, which is compulsory in the presence of adversary.
All security is compulsory? Madness.
Security is risk management. All government activity is risk. You spend a dollar on surveillance technology instead of scientific research that would have led to safer products or life saving medicine and people die. You take a dollar from the taxpayer who now can't afford those products or medicine and people die. Government waste kills more people than terrorism. To say nothing of the people bad governments kill much more directly.
> You're basically saying, "don't trust the govt" and that is the recipe for total anarchy
Only if by anarchy you mean democracy.
Comparing terrorism to bathtub is foolish at its best and outright dangerously misleading at its worst. Tomorrow you can say `if the level of terrorism remains in the "still kills fewer people than old age" range, we realize we didn't need it.`
Statistics can be (mis)used to justify any claim.
One reason why people find terrorism more dangerous than heart disease, cancer, etc is this - bathtub and cars are NOT human beings and thus do NOT actively not tolerate difference of opinions amongst other groups of people and do NOT engage in acts of "killing other people for difference of opinions" while human terrorists do engage in such killings and do constantly search for opportunities to kill people with different opinions.
>How about they stop doing it and ...
Define "it".
Do you want to compare it to numbers instead of things? How about we not worry this much about it as long as the chance of the average person being killed by it is less than 0.1%. Or here's a good one: how about we limit the amount of money being spent on it in proportion to how many people it kills. Spend a trillion dollars fighting heart disease and a billion fighting terrorism instead of the other way around.
> One reason why people find terrorism more dangerous than heart disease, cancer, etc is this - bathtub and cars are NOT human beings and thus do NOT actively not tolerate difference of opinions amongst other groups of people and do NOT engage in acts of "killing other people for difference of opinions" while human terrorists do engage in such killings and do constantly search for opportunities to kill people with different opinions.
And what of it? A lion has a difference of opinion with you about whether you're its dinner. Do we need to spend a trillion dollars and have a war on lions? What about Streptococcus? It's alive, it adapts, it wants to kill you, another trillion dollars?
> Define "it".
Mass surveillance. And pretty much the entire TSA.
The point about lion is good and that's why our ancestors had spent a huge amount of resources (money, time, hunters etc) to "eradicate" lions. Due to our ancestors' efforts and the consequential huge spendings towards this eradication, today we don't have to worry too much about the opinions of lions. Today the lions are rendered as what we proverbially call "toothless tigers/snakes".
A similar argument can be made about Streptococcus or (any such bacteria/virus or even any other such animal) and humans want to be in charge of things so much so that their opinions and thence their consequential actions do not become a significant danger/hazard to the humans.
Many fanatical animal lovers do hate this idea (of humans wanting to be in charge/control of other animals) too. But that is a different story.
Now with terrorists, the things become different in a very important manner. Lions and other animals are different species and thus their eradication problem doesn't first pose a very difficult "identification" problem. To deal with human terrorists, first we have to "identify" them and their sympathizers who can/do provide safe harbour to them and thus help the terrorists in their intended terrorist actions. This "identification" problem is what requires mass surveillance. This brings "cancer" to my mind, as in case of "cancer" also we face a very "identification" problem: problem of identification of dangerous cells.
Hope this helps.
But the identification problem isn't unique. It's true of every crime there is. Criminals don't come with tags labeling them as a terrorist or a murderer or a pedophile. And there is nothing you can ever do to eliminate 100% of all crime. It's about the most cost effective way to provide enough deterrence to keep the crime rate low. And mass surveillance has a huge cost in privacy and in money and in security itself. It's a terrible trade off.
> This brings "cancer" to my mind, as in case of "cancer" also we face a very "identification" problem: problem of identification of dangerous cells.
You're kind of making my point. Cancer kills way, way more people than terrorism. Why are we spending more resources fighting terrorism than cancer?
Correct. But terrorism (inspired by hate ideology or religion) is significantly different in a very important respect from other crimes you mentioned; that is, the terrorist(s) generally find support and shelter amongst large number of otherwise normal citizens inspired/driven by the hate ideology or religion whereas a murderer or a pedophile generally doesn't find such shelter. That's why
>>You're kind of making my point. Cancer kills way, way more people than terrorism. Why are we spending more resources fighting terrorism than cancer?
No, I am NOT making your point. I gave the cancer example to point out the problem of identification. But I am not entirely against you here. You may say that we must spend some more resources to fight cancer but if you say we must curtail on mass surveillance and other anti-terrorism measures to do cancer fight then I don't agree.
>>And mass surveillance has a huge cost in privacy and in money and in security itself.
Privacy is important but NOT as important as survival itself.
That's why what?
> You may say that we must spend some more resources to fight cancer but if you say we must curtail on mass surveillance and other anti-terrorism measures to do cancer fight then I don't agree.
But why not? If spending a dollar fighting cancer saves more lives than spending the same dollar fighting terrorism and we don't have unlimited resources then why should we make the choice that causes more loss of life?
> Privacy is important but NOT as important as survival itself.
Privacy is security. The information they're collecting is inherently dangerous. It's much easier to use it to plan an attack than to defend from one. If you're looking for a needle in a haystack, more data is more hay. But if you're trying to burn everything down then it tells you who is vulnerable where and when. The only way to prevent terrorists from breaking in and accessing the data is to not collect it to begin with.
And terrorists aren't even the main threat. Surveillance of innocent people makes them vulnerable to anyone who has the data. Cartel hitmen, sexual predators, Richard Nixon, take your pick.
I will not agree with your dumping of Richard Nixon with crime cartels and sexual predators. In general, the US democratic government system has proven to be much more successful and benevolent than any other system in the world, including the much touted communism (USSR, China, N. Korea). What I mean to say is Richard Nixon is hardly a threat as compared to Mao or Stalin.
Granted, there is a small non-zero chance of an innocent getting hurt in some way due to privacy issues, but that doesn't and shouldn't mean we should abandon surveillance and deprive ourselves of important and timely information and put many more innocents to risk.
>That's why what?
(Oho sorry, but I guess, the rest of the words got deleted.) That's why surveillance of such hate groups (e.g. Wahabi mosques or extreme left/right groups) is also mandatory.
Some people probably also assume that higher perceived level of threat that justifies tighter security is not a result of natural development, but of direct action by governments when carrying out their foreign policies.
The vicious circle of "we go and do good in the faraway, they blow us up, we tighten local security and do more good in the faraway,…" begs to determine causation in this correlation.
2) Finding real plots are too hard so they entrap people and even then, they don't find many.
3) They aren't spreading around their "successes" because they are absurdly few and borderline entrapment.
4) Homegrown threats are a greater danger and largely being ignored.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/25/us/tally-of-attacks-in-us-...
> But the breakdown of extremist ideologies behind those attacks may come as a surprise. Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as many people have been killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims: 48 have been killed by extremists who are not Muslim, including the recent mass killing in Charleston, S.C., compared with 26 by self-proclaimed jihadists, according to a count by New America, a Washington research center.
> Non-Muslim extremists have carried out 19 such attacks since Sept. 11, according to the latest count, compiled by David Sterman, a New America program associate, and overseen by Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert. By comparison, seven lethal attacks by Islamic militants have taken place in the same period.
> The contentious question of biased perceptions of terrorist threats dates back at least two decades, to the truck bombing that tore apart the federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. Some early news media speculation about the attack assumed that it had been carried out by Muslim militants. The arrest of Timothy J. McVeigh, an antigovernment extremist, quickly put an end to such theories.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/nsa-program-stopped-no-ter...
> A member of the White House review panel on NSA surveillance said he was “absolutely” surprised when he discovered the agency’s lack of evidence that the bulk collection of telephone call records had thwarted any terrorist attacks.
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-ha...
> And even before Snowden, the NSA wasn’t able to provide a single substantiated example of its surveillance dragnet preventing any domestic attack at all.
https://news.vice.com/article/the-line-between-fbi-stings-an...
> A report released this week from Human Rights Watch highlights how, consistently, FBI sting operations are over aggressive and premised on the racist profiling of Muslim communities — that old building block of our contemporary national security state. Based on 215 interviews and focusing on 27 post-9/11 cases of alleged terror plot thwarting, HRW's findings call into question the very legitimacy of the FBI's counterterror work. The authors go as far as to call a number of stings "government-created" terror plots.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-entrapment-...
> But the issue is one that stretches far beyond Newburgh. Critics say the FBI is running a sting operation across America, targeting – to a large extent – the Muslim community by luring people into fake terror plots. FBI bureaux send informants to trawl through Muslim communities, hang out in mosques and community centres, and talk of radical Islam in order to identify possible targets sympathetic to such ideals. Or they will respond to the most bizarre of tip-offs, including, in one case, a man who claimed to have seen terror chief Ayman al-Zawahiri living in northern California in the late 1990s.
http://www.wired.com/2013/02/american-muslim-terrorism/
> Since 9/11, Kurzman and his team tallies, 33 Americans have died as a result of terrorism launched by their Muslim neighbors. During that period, 180,000 Americans were murdered for reasons unrelated to terrorism. In just the past year, the mass shootings that have captivated America’s attention killed 66 Americans, “twice as many fatalities as from Muslim-American terrorism in all 11 years since 9/11,” notes Kurzman’s team.
> “Until public opinion starts to recognize the scale of the problem has been lower than we feared, my sense is that public officials are not going to change their policies,” Kurzman says. “Counterterrorism policies have involved surveillance — not just of Muslim-Americans, but of all Americans, and the fear of terrorism has justified intrusions on American privacy and civil liberties all over the internet and other aspects of our lives. I think the implications here are not just for how we treat a religious minority in the U.S., but also how we treat the rights & liberties of everyone.”
But I agree that this is a problem we can't bomb our way out of.
Alas, the spying is apparently targeting mainly the innocent civilians and is mostly ineffective against criminals.
There doesn't seem to be a "Goldilocks" amount of data. Or if there is, intelligence services seem to have no interest in finding it if it means restraining themselves.
For any city, I could give the advice: avoid the airport, trains stations, the metro, and famous tourist attractions.
On the other hand, these are typically the places that you need and want to go if you visit a city, so it's anyway better just not care. The risk is very, very, very small.
But they did see it coming. From what I gathered from the response of many Brussels residents and airport personnel, the question was "when", more than "if".
Knowing how Belgium handles their minorities in Brussels, it's not a big surprise.
The fact that this happens now is neither a surprise. Salah Abdeslam has been caught, and there were messages that he wanted to cooperate with the Belgium police. Whether it's true or not, if they were planning something, and he knew about it, waiting was not a real option.
Could you elaborate? Is this a banlieu situation?
Belgium has big problems between the Flemish and French speaking parts, and particularly in Brussels it's politically very complicated. For some city wide measures, they need like 26 police commanders to agree. I don't know the numbers, but it's very complex to get all people in line. And I'm not talking about the people in the street, this is about city councils, police departments etc.
Brussels itself resembles the EU in this respect.
This article discusses the mess that is Belgian governmental organization: http://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-failed-state-security...
Looks like it's not working too well. Surveillance services have gained mass resources since 2015 in France and that did not stop the December attacks at all.
I also feel governments today are under much more scrutiny than they have ever been. Are we at a place were a new Bin Laden is going to get a new Bush to launch a war. Who knows? But people are much more aware of the costs than in 2001.
Still security responses aren't mature/sophisticated enough to prevent such tragic incidents, and must be given some leeway to evolve.
- Bringing more eyes and ears in the form of social workers and community policemen in problematic neighborhoods.
- Provide better education/work opportunities for immigrants.
- Better cooperation between municipalities and Muslim organisations/mosques.
- Deradicalization programs.
Of course, implementing such policies takes time and it's much more popular to present the 'easy solutions' (more surveillance, closing borders, etc.).
France has been doing pretty much the opposite, investing money in surveillance and special forces instead. Belgium has kind of ignored problems.
That's part of the problem right there that people segregate into enclaves and have little contact with each other's communities.
Edit: getting more downvotes, without any of the downvoters caring to justify them so far, so I can only speculate as for the reasons behind them.
I'm wondering if the downvoters (I'm guessing from the USA) are aware that my views are already a law in many of the liberal democracies of Europe? There are laws which put you in jail for saying certain things, and they are enforced (there are people who are doing time just for saying things).
Meanwhile, people are dying. That is exactly how some people see it, and exactly how I see it. I'm not emotional, I'm logical, and I expect government to protect us from evil individuals/groups. Arguably, it's not there to foster some sort of "long-term" sustainable co-existence between different cultures.
First, you establish security and root out potential problem groups. And once that's happened, and you have almost non-existent danger to the local populace, then you can start worrying about integration and grey-goals such as "peaceful coexistence" and "de-radicalization". And I don't say that as a means to single-out immigrants, or foreign groups. This reasoning should apply just as much to dangerous elements that are within, and part of society currently.
Just before Christmas last year:
French police have foiled an attack targeting police and army personnel in the central city of Orléans, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Tuesday. Two men have been arrested.
...
Cazeneuve said 10 attacks had been prevented this year in France, which suffered its worst atrocity for decades last month when Islamist militants killed 130 people in Paris.
http://www.france24.com/en/20151222-france-terror-plot-foile...
Exhibit A: The Mossad is generally considered one of the best intelligence services world-wide.
Exhibit B: There are still frequent terrorist attacks in Israel.
https://twitter.com/mattocko/status/712227775805988864
TATP (acetone peroxide), the type of improvised explosive favored by terrorists because of the easy access to ingredients, is uniquely difficult to detect but there have been some recent advances in this area [0]
Most of these attackers use vests that carry 2-10kg of TATP, or backpacks with 10+ kilograms. They are required to load these devices up and travel to their designated target, the hope is that with explosive detection you could pick these guys up or minimize casualties in the same way you could identify a gunman on CCTV.
It wouldn't be a panacea - but it could form part of a broader set of new tech to assist with these cases
[0] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925400511...
Moreover, the bomb was set off outside the secure area. It is VERY likely that existing security measures got more people killed because there are dense crowds waiting to clear security. This exact type of attack, outside the secure area, was predicted long ago. And there you have it.
Any security lines are actually past passport control, and I've never seen them particularly packed.
Metros and mass transit are generally the most lucrative target, as we see here, and as we saw in London 10 years ago.
This consisted of a small interview on what I've been doing in Israel, where I am going to, with whom and who packed my stuff. This all was before even entering the actual terminal building.
People interested in killing others will just go for the easiest place, so they will just bomb the line at the scanners entering the terminal.
I talk to a lot of frequent fliers, and almost every one of them has said that there is no point to a terrorist trying to bomb a plane any more. The easiest target for terrorism is simply the insecure portion of an airport. We saw this today in Brussels.
Besides, to defend against suicide bombings, the dogs would have to encounter everyone before they enter the airport checkin area, otherwise the bomber could just detonate once the dog start barking (or whatever they do to mark that they've found something).
You have to stop the issues at their source: why did people who were born and raised in Europe radicalize in just one or two years? And why did the community they lived in not see or report that this was happening?
Unfortunately, by the time there's a bomb at the airport, it is too late unless "James Bond" is on the scene.
The core issues here need to be addressed.
Yes, we should have security and even bomb detection tech in select public places... but that's secondary to what needs to be done to fix this mess.
a) People would bitch more because it would take forever to get into an airport. And,
b) It isn't practical. What's next, stopping you at your car or bus before you park?
People demand security but don't want inconvenience. And if security fails, they point and say "it's ineffective." Even if it stops 80% of attacks, unless it's 100% people will bitch. AND if there aren't any attacks, can they really claim that they stopped one unless they publicly acknowledge every attempted attack?
As a result people have to bunch up outside the terminal, making them even more vulnerable than they otherwise would be.
Any true improvements would have to come from streamlined pre-screening, e.g. chemical detectors (or dogs?) in the concourse sniffing things out without making people stop or bunch up. Hard to do.
Ah, and don't forget the European border policies regarding (mostly Syrian) refugees...
Many believe that getting rid of Assad will end the Syrian refugee crisis. Others observe that when the Saddam and Gaddafi heads were cut off the snake grew ISIS.
And so it goes.
The only difference between Assad and the other remaining dictators in the region is that the US was heavily invested in getting rid of Assad -- and then Russia came and basically ruined their plans indefinitely.
If there's one Muslim country whose government is in dire need of being overthrown it's Turkey -- but sadly Erdogan has learned from his country's past and made sure the military won't turn against him anytime soon.
Fast forward a few years and she has completely turned around and regrets her former opinions.
This doesn't really prove what is the correct approach, but I think speaks about the fact that we often make decisions based on some vague ideals as opposed to practical and realistic outcomes - and we are sometimes wrong.
But we're not completely anti-west, we enjoy the freedoms and religious autonomy we're granted and we enjoy the cultural mix that "the West" affords us.
It also doesn't mean we wish to maim and murder the innocent (on either side of the argument!) in order to make our point. I think 99% of us can agree that groups (like ISIS) who think it's acceptable and act to torture and kill the innocent to make their political point need to die in a hell-fire and be damned to all eternity. Or maybe that's just me.
Oh, completely agree with that.
The only problem is that this description fits not only ISIS, and its opposing government by Assad, it also fits the US friendly Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, and the US government itself, and anybody else that has the intention of doing anything there.
It's like the spy agencies and law enforcement are always highly competent and can never do any wrong.
They get fired if they break rules, fail to obey standard operating procedure, do not fill tick marks correctly on a paper.
They work in a system, and the system has responsibility, not individual people who work for it -- unless they neglect or break rules and procedures.
Why is this a bad thing? I feel safer with more police presence but maybe that's just me.
Police have a bad habit of harassing populations (several riots in France were a result of policing practices such as asking everyone for an ID). It helps to contribute to send a message of unwelcomeness to people who are likely already disillusioned in the system.
It's unlikely that more police could stop attacks. Maybe deal with the aftermath/manhunts better. But it sounds like more precision operations (including human intelligence) will go a lot further.
The security theater was specifically about TSA and other untrained (or minimally trained) symbolic gestures. Actual policing is not theater.
Does it work? The cost and human rights interferences are easier to take if more police works, but there's no evidence that it would.
Belgium certainly does. Its failures in counter terrorism have lead to the Paris attacks and now these attacks. At least that is the understanding I have gleaned from twitter conversations of CT experts
"One Belgian counterterrorism official told BuzzFeed News last week that due to the small size of the Belgian government and the huge numbers of open investigations — into Belgian citizens suspected of either joining ISIS, being part of radical groups in Belgium, and the ongoing investigations into last November’s attacks in Paris, which appeared to be at least partially planned in Brussels and saw the participation of several Belgian citizens and residents — virtually every police detective and military intelligence officer in the country was focused on international jihadi investigations.
“We just don’t have the people to watch anything else and, frankly, we don’t have the infrastructure to properly investigate or monitor hundreds of individuals suspected of terror links, as well as pursue the hundreds of open files and investigations we have,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said. “It’s literally an impossible situation and, honestly, it’s very grave.”"
See http://www.buzzfeed.com/mitchprothero/belgian-authorities-ov...
A lot of people could see it coming, except for the naive PC people
Better than most people that didn't have the privilege of being there in the first place.
Also access to better education and social support, which most people in the world doesn't have
> they blame everyone but their own actions
Yes, that's the main excuse of people who don't make an effort and expect everything from society (including several 'natives')
- we need more surveillance rights and money for the secret services
- we need more police and higher spending
- and possibly bomb some country (Syria is en vogue)
What won't be said is:
- How come this happens again without anyone having seen it coming?
- What does it say about the success of the Western anti-terror foreign policy adopted ~2001?