To do its job the border patrol must invade the privacy of people entering the country. Terrorists, drug couriers, and fugitives lie and hide things.

It's incredibly frustrating. I hate the experience every time I go through it. But I understand why it's necessary.

Is it really necessary though? Is the reason bombs aren't blowing up all over the US because of the swell job border security is doing, or might there be another reason? Perhaps the same reason bombs haven't been blowing up for centuries.

Certainly there are people who want to blow up bombs all over the US.

What's stopping them, if not our security services?

> Certainly there are people who want to blow up bombs all over the US.

Is there? How do you know this?

Would you say the number of such attacks has drastically fallen since 2000?

The number of people trying to attack us has drastically risen.

I think that is quite unlikely. Based on what evidence do you believe that?

Just based on my own experience having lived through the nineties. We didn't have any where near the number of attacks against the US and Europe then.

Excluding attacks on US military forces engaged in post-invasion occupations, I'm pretty sure there were more terrorist attacks (total and foreign-origin) targeting the US in the Nineties than the 2000s, or, on a year-for-year basis, the portion of the 2010s that we've seen so far.

The embassy bombings, the attack on the USS Cole, the WTC bomb attack, and the Oklahoma City bombing were all notable terror attacks on the US in the 1990s.

Only two of those in that decade were attacks on US soil, compared to the Boston Marathon; Fort Hood; Garland, Texas; Chattanooga, Tenn; the Orlando nightclub; the "underwear bomber"; the failed Times Square car bombing; and many more attacks overseas.

It's not clear how interrogations by border police could possibly have helped with any of the ones you mentioned.

Of course not, those are the attacks that none of the existing security measures prevented.

More domestic terrorists (and rattling off examples doesn't really constitute proof of that theory) don't show the necessity of draconian border control.

I lived through the 90s too. I think if you want to make this claim you need some actual evidence.

Do you find this claim hard to believe?

What terrorist organization wanted to attack us in the eighties?

What organization wanted to attack us in the nineties, other than the failed WTC bombing?

If that had succeeded, history might be very different. Success breeds success and the second WTC attacks on 9/11 inspired other terrorists.

> What terrorist organization wanted to attack us in the eighties?

Hezbollah (usually as "Islamic Jihad"), the Italian Red Brigades, the Red Army Faction, the Abu Nidal Organization, and the Japanese Red Army are among the foreign groups that not merely wanted to, but actually succeeded in carrying out attacks targeting Americans in the 1980s

The Armed Resistance Unit, The Order, and the Jewish Defense League are among the domestic groups doing the same.

> What organization wanted to attack us in the nineties, other than the failed WTC bombing?

This little group called al-Qaeda that you may have heard of carried out several attacks targeting the US in the 1990s, including the WTC bombing which killed 6 and injured 1,042.

Saudi Hezbollah also conducted a major attack targeting Americans, and there were several by Islamists for which no organization took credit or has been ascribed blame. This, of course, doesn't cover everyone who wanted to attack Americans, just those who actually carried out attacks that actually did.

There were also notable domestic terrorist attacks in the 1990s.

Yes, I find it hard to believe. You might have gotten that from when I described it as "quite unlikely."

I notice you haven't named the terrorists you believe wanted to attack us then.

The number of such people that make it through the visa approval process has not drastically risen.

I'd rather not treat this as a forgone conclusion and would like to see some data on how often these invasive measures actually yield results.

>Terrorists, drug couriers, and fugitives

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-risk_bias

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-risk_bias

Who is claiming any measure will reduce risk to zero?

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp....

Mocking reality is not an argument, even if it can create a popular TV show.

>Who is claiming any measure will reduce risk to zero?

No one. But some claim that the current risk must decrease, while it is much smaller than almost everything else.

The current risk is measured while the border patrol and other agencies do their job.

How many terrorist attacks would there be if no one was trying to stop them?

Perhaps there would be (almost) the same number of attacks. If you disagree you have to provide evidence in order to break into privacy of others.

BTW, NSA never prevented any terrorist attack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance#Purposes

Upd: Also, if the risk is already small, why we need even more privacy invasions?

Unfortunately the tools available to terrorists continue to change and so must the measures used to fight them.

> NSA never prevented any terrorist attack:

> The director of the National Security Administration today told Congress that more than 50 potential terrorist attacks have been thwarted by two controversial programs tracking more than a billion phone calls and vast swaths of Internet data each day.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/nsa-director-50-potential-ter...

Thank you for the link. But I wish I could believe that after so many unpunished lies from them...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/nsa-re...

> Unfortunately the tools available to terrorists continue to change and so must the measures used to fight them.

From what I know, the current problem is not the lack of information, but how well it is targeted. For example, we knew about the terrorists in France in 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2017_%C3%8Ele-de-France_...

Also, many think that the war on terror made more harm to the humanity then what we would have otherwise. At least such invasive war.

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

Not exactly a disinterested party, is he?

Can't help but notice this is an entirely different argument.