I'm wondering this too. The person already killed a bunch of people. The person is dead. What more to they hope to gain? Some secret cell of others? Unlikely .. and if there is, why not regular warrants, wiretaps, e-mail searches, etc.

They already have sooo many tools they can use, both with a warrant and bypassing it via FISA. They had all this domestic spying stuff and still couldn't prevent the shooting!

They get nothing with phone access, so why even bother brining up compromising everyone else's security just because they failed to use all their current surveillance means to detect and prevent the shooting to being with?! You want more access? Why? That's fucking unbelievable.

I largely agree that they likely gain little from accessing the phone (though they may further understand motive/sources of radicalisation from what he was looking at before the shooting), but it would seem negligent not to check if they have access to it. It doesn't seem to warrant spending significant resources finding a way into it, though (unless they have reason to suspect the involvement of a third-party), or justify calling for a backdoor.

Probably to understand motive, and check for potential involvement of others.

And whilst they have a metric shit-ton of spying capabilities on US civilians, those are not really intended to avoid crime. (Maybe the shift of perception of what is terrorism might change that, though)

He posted a manifesto online. Think his motive was pretty clearly outlined in it.

So far as I can tell, the Dayton shooter didn't leave a manifesto:

> The Dayton shooter left no manifesto.

https://www.vox.com/2019/8/7/20758473/trump-invasion-el-paso...

> He posted a manifesto online

A manifesto isn't necessarily honest. It describes how shooters want the world to view their actions, not necessarily the actual motives behind their actions.

You're thinking of mass shooting 2019/247, not mass shooting 2019/248. (Yes, we're up to more than one a day on average now)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_th...

I find lists like those very disingenuous. For example look at source 25 "During an attempted home invasion, shots were fired and four people were wounded". In other words, four criminals tried to rob a home but the resident of the house shot 4 of them and three of them are in the hospital and one has been released to jail.

I wouldn't categories that incident along with the two recent "actual" mass shootings.

So your challenging the definition of a mass shooting they use because it somehow doesn't cohere with your personal thoughts about it. But the problem of defining a mass shooting and that various definitions are controversial is mentioned in the very first paragraph of that page.

I cannot find anything disingenous about choosing an official definition and mentioning that it is problematic in the first paragraph.

I would characterize the home invaders as the "perpetrators" in that particular story and exclude them from the injury count, consistent with the language of that definition.

From the article: Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group that tracks shootings and their characteristics in the United States, defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, excluding the perpetrators, are shot in one location at roughly the same time.

Ugh, everyone loves to dredge up gun violence archive and use it as an authorative source and it's trash. They deliberately inflate the numbers of "mass shootings" by changing the definition from the FBI definition (itself occasionally modified for political reasons). The net result is that every half assed gangland drive-by with a handgun gets lumped in and people don't understand that. Outside of Chiraq and a couple of other places gun violence doesn't exist in any meaningful capacity. You're literally safer anywhere in America outside of those places than Western Europe. This is absolutely done on purpose to help push an agenda.

"Outside of Chiraq and a couple of other places gun violence doesn't exist in any meaningful capacity. You're literally safer anywhere in America outside of those places than Western Europe."

This is definitely not true. Guns are commonly used in domestic violence situations, or just random household accidents, in a way that poses more danger to Americans everywhere than that experienced by the vast majority of western Europeans (except maybe for those few in the equivalents of their "Chiraqs").

This is getting ridiculous. The reason why these classification of mass shootings was invented (by US Congress) is quite the opposite of what you suggest, namely to make sure that gang-related violence and "ordinary" shootings are included into the statistics Why? So politicians can point to cities like Chicago and argue that the police needs more powers instead of having to deal with the unpleasant reality of amok runs and domestic terrorism which cannot be prevented very easily and are often cited as an argument for tighter gun control.

Of course, you're less likely to get shot in Europe. If you start cherry picking locations, on the other hand, then I guess the US is 100% safe and crime-free, provided you take your mom's basement as reference area.

Yes, they use the official definition of the term "mass shooting", as it was adopted after 2013 by the US congress, which defines it as a shooting with 3 or more victims. Moreover, they mention in the very first paragraph that the definition is controversial and problematic, and they mention all alternative official definitions (e.g. before 2013) explicitly in the following paragraphs.

You probably have another definition in mind, since in your mind "mass shooting" is somehow associated with classic amok runs and terrorism. But how is that a counter-argument to using the official definitions and terms, as they are defined by US congress and used by police and the US judicial system? Why on earth would it be disingenuous for them to base their statistics on the official definitions?

Sure, some people think that e.g. gang-related gun violence shouldn't count as a mass shooting even if many victims are involved, but the US congress chose otherwise and the page makes it crystal clear that the definition is problematic.

> they use the official definition of the term "mass shooting", as it was adopted after 2013 by the US congress, which defines it as a shooting with 3 or more victims.

Is this your citation for the 2013 US Congress definition? (because I don't think it says what you seem to think it says).

https://www.congress.gov/112/plaws/publ265/PLAW-112publ265.p...

If not, please provide your citation so that I can read it and respond intelligently.

Wikipedia has an extra page on that, which I took as the basis of my comment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting#Definitions

To quote: " The term was originally defined as the murder of four or more people with no cooling-off period[1][5] but redefined by Congress in 2013 as being murder of three or more people."

Not only that, at the risk of repeating myself, the page you criticize as being "disingenuous" clearly mentions that definitions of "mass shootings" are controversial and provides 5 alternative definitions in the second paragraph of the article and then lists 7 data sources with definitions of "mass shooting" that either coincides with the one by US Congress or is more stringent (based on the pre 2013 definition).

The page also clearly states that "... only incidents considered mass shootings by at least two of the above sources are listed."

There is absolutely nothing disingenuous about this method.

What you and the people who downvote me cannot get into their minds is that there are official definitions that are used in statistics and that the listing on the Wikipedia page takes a slighly more stringent and narrower definition as a basis to safeguard against criticisms such as yours.

Again, you are of course free to re-define the term "mass shooting" differently from what e.g. the US Congress or Stanford University do, but this would not constitute a valid criticism of the list. How could it? Merely prefering your very personal definition over another one doesn't mean anything, especially if it deviates far from the official use of the term.

The term that you're quoting the US Congress definition of is "mass killing".

If someone commits a mass killing with a gun, then it becomes a mass shooting.

Frankly speaking, it's not clear what this thread is about. According to social constructivism, social reality might change by re-defining terms like "mass shooting", but according to my sense of reality the number of victims doesn't change at all. I can also see no reason why Wikipedia shouldn't base their lists on the 'most official' terms rather than making up their own, as long as they make clear that this includes multiple homicides by gun, which they do.

> If someone commits a mass killing with a gun, then it becomes a mass shooting.

Yes. This sub-thread started with someone else arguing that one of the entries on the list of "mass shootings" did not deserve to be on the list.

If the argument is "it must involve deaths to be a mass shooting", that incident also involved zero deaths (and zero innocent civilian injuries).

Wait, I was wrong. The definitions clearly differentiate between number of people shot and number of people killed, and the Wikipedia article is explicit about the sources used and the definitions used by the sources.

There is nothing wrong with the list, but there seems to be some metalinguistic dispute about what's the best definition of "mass shooting."

This dispute is merely about words.

While most forum disputes are about words, I think that @frittig makes a valid point in questioning whether the lawful shooting of active criminal home invaders ought to be considered a "mass shooting" just because there happened to be a lot of home invaders. So, yes it's about words in part, but also about concepts.

For my part, all else being equal, for every N criminal home invaders, the optimal number of home invaders repelled by lawful force without injury to innocent civilians is also exactly N. If you want to mix those relatively rare good mass shootings in with other bad mass shootings (the vast majority of them), that's one way to approach things. You could also keep a list of "Things that happened on Tuesdays in history" and it would be a perfectly self-consistent list.

You are apparently looking at this from the perspective of the victims only, but the burglars were also armed and shooting. They have been arrested for it: "... charges including first-degree burglary, conspiracy, shooting with intent to kill and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony" [Oklahoma News 4, emphasis mine]

> good mass shootings in with other bad mass shootings

I'd certainly say that's better methodology than trying to define "good" and "bad" mass shootings and then only list the "bad" ones. (I don't quite see what's good about this shooting anyway, but I suppose you mean that the crime was stopped.)

That's exactly what I mean. No injuries to innocents; dangerous crime (armed home invasion) thwarted.

This list gives me shivers...is the USA a scary, uncivilized country?

Violent crime in the USA is at rates about 50% of what it was 30 years ago. The USA is actually a much more civilized country than it’s been for a long time! We just hear more about the problems thanks to the ease of communication nowadays.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/03/5-facts-abo...

Yes, and it always has been. The murder rate per capita in the US has consistently been 5-10x higher than in Europe for the entire 20th century. Long before gun control, social safety nets, the drug war, or any other difference you might want to blame. The US is a low cohesion, high violence society.

As someone who grew up in the US, lived in the EU, Australia and NZ for a number of years, I can say on a day to day basis, it's still pretty much nothing.

The average American rarely ever has to directly confront violence. I've even spent years in major metropolitan areas and the majority of people don't walk around each day anticipating violence. My sister got mugged once, in our small home city, like 20 years ago. I've never personally been mugged or assaulted, but I did have one break in while in NZ (they took all my electronics) and I had a bicycle stolen in Australia.

I haven't lived in "bad parts of town" through (although friends told me I lived in a bad part of town in two places I lived in; but I really feel they were exaggerating) and in high crime areas I'm sure it's different.

But the portrayal the rest of the world sees of America is through a very limited lens. And German or Irish or Chinese person who comes to visit the US will see kids playing in parks, people in the cities walking to work or lunch, others browsing through stores or pumping petrol into their cars and it will generally looks pretty much like every other part of the mid/high income industrialized world.

I spend about 8 months/year in the United States (Silicon Valley) and 4 months/year in Israel. I do "feel" a bit safer in Israel than the U.S. (for example I don't like travelling in San Francisco. I fear for personal safety on the streets and on Muni, and you have to garage your car otherwise it will be broken in to).

But I don't feel like I'm going to get shot in the United States. I have never even heard gunfire in the U.S. (off the shooting range!) and I've lived in Brooklyn and Manhattan, too.

New York didn't even had a (public) police force until the 1850's, with 300k inhabitants. And there was literal brawling between competing police forces for during the first years.

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

The replies to this are baffling. Of course not. It’s a huge, incredibly diverse and heterogeneous country of ~300 million people.

>2019/247 >2019/248

Counting them like this is extremely depressing yet accurate.

I have no words that let me express my opinion of politicians that are willing to let this go on in a way that doesn't blatantly violate the rules of this site.

Did he? I thought that was the El Paso shooter.

Because saying "he's dead so this is the end of the matter" is unwise and it's worrying you're even asking this.

. Were other people involved?

. or other organisations such as extremists organisations?

. Did he have people egging him on (even if totally uninvolved otherwise), or was he a complete loner?

. Is there a hidden motive here that's not obvious?

. Further evidence of stable and rational thinking, or mentally unstable?

. Is it possible he was aided by legal loopholes, or some failures in process that need patching?

. Could he have left any nasty surprises behind?

. Does his behaviour indicate something that would allow prediction of similar crimes and perhaps their thwarting?

. Photos/films of something of interest like supporters, discussions of further action, whatever

In this case, once a crime is committed, all info needs to be gathered. I'm saying that as someone who is disturbed at extensions of state powers, but once there's a crime, I'm all for picking up everything and analysing it.

Sure it would be nice to have access to the phone, but it is just one of many pieces of evidence that may be gathered, and mostly it is redundant with other sources. If he used the phone for contacting co-terrorists there are trails in many other locations, unless he really knew how to hide his tracks, in which case it is unlikely that he would have left any trails on his phone either.

You may be right, but I'm not convinced.

> and mostly it is redundant with other sources

The main means of communication other than face-to-face is telephone calls and this newfangled web with its many features. Both are provided by a modern smart phone, which most people seem to live through. Therefore you can expect most to all non-F2F comms to go through the phone (typically; not necessarily).

So I can't accept what you say (yet).

> If he used the phone for contacting co-terrorists there are trails in many other locations

These being? You can move about freely in the states, and he was a domestic terrorist.

> unless he really knew how to hide his tracks

Agreed, but it seems most domestic terrorists are bad planners or stupid AFAICS. People like Ted Kaczynski seem to be the exception, most are idiots who will boast online or ask "how can i maek teh THTP" from google.

I care greatly about privacy but when there is legal cause as people have died, my feelings are the law must have access. It is a balance though, and USAins may draw the line differently from brits like me.

> I care greatly about privacy but when there is legal cause as people have died, my feelings are the law must have access. It is a balance though, and USAins may draw the line differently from brits like me.

I draw the line on the side of privacy. I'm absolutely fine with potential unresolved loose ends in a criminal investigation if it means we actually get to practice real security and gain all the privacy that entails.

Regardless of that, I'm not convinced that the actionable information they could obtain is unique to the phone; there are always several avenues of inquiry for evidence-gathering. It smacks of laziness by law enforcement to suggest it's somehow impossible without encryption backdoors.

> I draw the line on the side of privacy.

It's easy to be abstract - what if it had been your family & family? Or do strangers not count?

> there are always several avenues of inquiry for evidence-gathering

which you've not given, twice.

> It smacks of laziness by law enforcement to suggest it's somehow impossible without encryption backdoors.

It's difficult and I see what you're saying even if I don't yet agree.

The reason you're getting downvoted is it seems like you believe encryption should be illegal unless it has a govt backdoor. Encryption is just math, so it's a hard thing to criminalize and to enforce. Furthermore, if the government has a backdoor to all encrypted data then that means China and Russia and any independent hacker would be also searching for that same backdoor and once they find it everyone's screwed. It's really impractical to think that the government could enforce backdoors into all encryption and it'd be exceptionally dangerous if they required all US companies to comply with backdoored encryption. Not to mention the privacy implications of never being safe from government surveillance.

Nah, I'm pretty sure I'm getting downvoted because people don't want to answer questions like, what if it was people killed who mattered to you, or, exactly what other avenues of evidence gathering?

I get that elsewhere too - ask about the limits of self-arming and bingo, downvotes without answers, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20606212

It's the online version of turning away with an angry huff because they don't like where this is going.

OK, back to your point, and thanks for a decent response. The encryption issue is difficult and I made it clear I was ambivalent eg. "I care greatly about privacy...". I fully understand the implications of a legal backdoor, and I don't want it [x]. But if phones are the main comms tool now, and if further killings are pending and can be prevented, at least ask the questions.

So I'm wondering if there is some compromise or something. Some way of putting a backdoor in which a 2nd party has a key to (not the gov't). Or something. Yes I'm aware that gov'ts may unfairly lean on the 2nd party. Is there some way through this? Let's try to be creative.

Perhaps this is a mathematically way of proving, based on some assumptions, that I can't have what I want then we can stop wasting time on it and we can get on with the fight against government strong-arming.

Can we at least have a conversation on it without angry, downvote'y silences? This isn't a constructive. It gets us nowhere.

edit, add clarification [x] that if a compromise can't be found and I had to choose between the government having backdoors or not, I'd fall pretty rapidly on the side of Fuck, No. They will be abused. I probably know this better than you.

The truth is that hypothetically we already probably possess enough intelligence to pick out the whack jobs as a class but not which of them is definitively going to actually going to go off.

However we have consistently shown that we are often incapable of competently using that information even when say the family members of a terrorist call us on the telephone and forewarn us let alone when the worrisome info is buried in a mountain of data.

We don't need less privacy or better technology to gather intel. We actually need a smarter system and better tools to sift the mountain of data we actually already possess.

I'm not the OP but its hard to be particular about alternative means of gathering evidence that is itself hypothetical.

For example if you wanted to know who the person associated with he almost certainly communicated with people in a way that could be obtained by serving a warrant to his ISP.

If you want to know what influenced him looking at his web traffic would be advantageous.

Instead of working backwards from hypothetical lets reason the correct way. What evidence do we have that compelling evidence exists on this particular device.

> What evidence do we have that compelling evidence exists on this particular device.

None.

Now ask: what evidence do we have that compelling evidence DOES NOT exist on this particular device.

None again! We can conclude nothing either way.

Don't you think they need to make a compelling argument that actual evidence exists and is being denied to them before we all install backdoors?

You put up an argument which you haven't acknowledged was vacuous, and from that extrapolated that I somehow must want backdoors even when I clearly said "Fuck, No" to them in an earlier post[1] which you must have read because you replied to it[2]

Honest question, what am I supposed to make of this?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20661590

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20661645

Normal phone calls are logged by telephone companies, emails can be acquired from most providers, Google and other ad companies will have a pretty detailed history of general web use. In short, your phone does almost nothing without some server recording it.

> I care greatly about privacy but when there is legal cause as people have died, my feelings are the law must have access.

You can't have both, if there is a backdoor, it is always there, and it will be used for lots of stuff.

> You can't have [a backdoor] both [ways]

Agreed. In another post I said the same thing. That's why I'm against backdoors. If the cops want to access someone's account just because, well they can make sweet luuurve to themselves with an pineapple.

If that person has done murdered a handful of people I want the cops to get access, strictly permitted by a legal, independent entity that people can feel they can trust, as far as is possible. I'm trying to get a conversation going as to how that can be done, if even possible. It's not going well!

That is the definition of a backdoor, you can't have a piece of encryption that can only be broken if a court says so. You can have multiple keys, and give one to some entity of government, but there is no guarantee that they won't abuse it or leak it or lose it.

> you can't have a piece of encryption that can only be broken if a court says so

yes dammit, that's why I stated I'm against backdoors. I'm not stupid, prime factoring difficulty (or equivalent) is seemingly a fundamental feature of the universe not subject to the will of man, stop assuming I'm stupid.

> and give one to some entity of government, but there is no guarantee that they won't abuse it or leak it or lose it.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! they will abuse it! I said so! Has all sentience been sucked out of this thread? Has every last neuron here been devastated?

I'm fed up with this. Discourse here is like the offspring of The Golem and Sisyphus - witless strength of one and the relentless compulsion of the other becoming a novel synergy of turbo-futility where fuck all gets done but in increasingly impressive quantities.

People complain about society. Hint: we are all society.

DanG, if (ok, when) you're reading this, sorry about this. Flag away. I'm tired.

Anyone who wants to commit a serious crime with the help of others will physically destroy the evidence that leads to those helpers before committing the crime. Getting the phone data after the crime has been committed is not going to help preventing these crimes.

Terrorists have been on the radar of secret agencies and police in countless cases. Unfortunately, if the police interviews a potential terrorist or mass killer for "behavioral irregularities" or whatever you call it, this will only radicalize the person more and prevent nothing. Or, at least, it is not a very effective intervention. If there is no crime, the police cannot do much.

To be clear, the NSA could probably easily eavesdrop into all cell phone activity within the US and collect heuristic indicators, and it's very likely that they could predict most of these mass shootings quite well based on these indicators. The problem is that this would be unconstitutional and based entirely on thought crimes like "conspiring to commit a terrorist attack". The laws for this are in place and used against international terrorism, but they are highly problematic and shouldn't be extended to domestic terrorism.

Social workers and maybe mental health support by people who do not have to report to the police probably work much better against radicalization and decrease the probability of an incident. I might be wrong but my guess is that in the US almost zero efforts are spent by social services to improve the social situation of right wing gun nuts and de-radicalize them. Again, no need for getting what's on their phone.

I've heard he was a supporter of some radical political groups. Maybe they're looking for a link? Co-perpetrators etc.?

>Why is it important that the FBI can access that person’s phone?

To establish legal precedent.

Yes. They got the guy. There's not much question about him pulling the trigger. And he's dead. What's to find out?

Co-defendants or co-conspirators?

Is there any real reason to believe there were any?

His sister drove him there. For some reason she gets a pass.

If you call getting shot and killed by the gunman "a pass".

Until you follow all leads, you cannot discount them.

they will get them by the computer and by the websites.

There is no reason except for hard to use implementations that the computer isn't encrypted.

If you're fine with phone encryption, you gotta expect the same for computers.

why are you so sure about that?

They can't admit "crazy person with a gun" because they suggests that maybe fewer people should carry guns; better to find a narrative that lets then describe each one as desired: white person "angry, money problems" so change nothing; brown person "radicalised alien" , deport and toughen immigration".