> For every attack that they "didn't see coming" there are, most likely, plenty of attacks that they "did see coming" and stopped. Even more likely is that we don't hear about these stopped attacks because they aren't sexy news. Or, when attacks ARE stopped, and it's published, people question whether it's just blustering by the government to justify their jobs.

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.

>>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 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?

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.

>... if the level of terrorism remains in the "still kills fewer people than bathtubs" range, we realize we didn't need it.

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".

> Statistics can be (mis)used to justify any claim.

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.

>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?

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.

> This "identification" problem is what requires mass surveillance.

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?

>>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.

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 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

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.

>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.

People are comparing it to the times when here was less screening.

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.

1) Surveillance doesn't work.

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.”

Right, but this was in Belgium.

But surely it will trickle back into the conversation in NA. Here in Canada, the Liberal government has been unwilling to commit to scaling back programmes put in place by their Conservative predecessors. I think it's a legitimate concern that an incident like this gives them resolve in continuing such programmes.