Or even put up a serious threat of one

Tech workers especially have little excuse, since it’s a matter of leaving that work laptop closed

No one in tech seems to remember SOPA

Workers seem oblivious to what recent teacher strikes achieved

Hong Kong protests in the face of a tyrant

Y’all bloviate all over your screens

Who is more exceptional?

Now, does all that snooping and invading countries increase the background desire and willingness for bad guys to do terrorist-type things, almost certainty.

Shit like this is said all the time on HN with absolutely nothing to substantiate it.

The logic is that active, dedicated terrorist groups already know: "They literally get a drone strike for having called a known terrorist or for going to a wedding other terrorists with cell phones go to."

The reasoning that knowing this information you would be very careful about what you communicate over the internet is very sound to me. To convince me that this reasoning is incorrect would require an abundance of data to the contrary.

I think terrorists make mistakes (or take risks), and I'm not convinced that we catch all of those either.

Was the US being irrational with nuking of japan?

The claim directly conflicts with the supporting anecdote.

And here it has led you astray. Terrorist organisations have propaganda mouthpieces, and use social media like any other. One of my previous jobs involved building network analysis tools to identify and locate terrorists combing through their Twitter feeds.

For some, you could easily identify the point in their lives when they were radicalized, and trace connections to others who were also, and identify the people they had in common.

Inductive reasoning opens room for questions, not answers, because it does not account for unknown information.

Thank you so much for saying this.

Actual terrorists were found because of using cell phones or internet.

Yeah. The truth is that groups like ISIS use Telegram pretty heavily. Same with some of the Persian threat actor groups, Hezbollah, others.

The logic goes like this: It would be utterly stupid for terrorist groups to rely on digital communications simply because of how well locked down the various government agencies have made it. We assume that they are not utterly stupid.

I don't think it's a crazy statement or needing further justification. I doubt terrorist groups are that sophisticated but I would assume they have plugged the simplest holes.

"Terrorists don't use digital communications[0]

[0] Example of a terrorist identified and killed via surveillance of their digital communications"

What the above is talking about well known, even privacy-aware people tend to not use digital communication that much, no facebook, or other social media, no smartphones. In the post-Snowden era, I am not sure why somebody thinks otherwise.

3 letter agencies have the means, the reason, the legitimacy, and the resources to penetrate every type of telecommunication, the worst-case just trojan the entire GSM infrastructure if necessary. The USA conducted thousands of drone strikes. What do you think drives locating the target?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/obama-drone-strikes/

Yes. In fact I don't know of a single terrorist who doesn't use digital communication of some kind.

I'm slightly confused because you seem to be justifying your belief that no terrorists use digital communication on the back of examples of terrorists identified and killed via surveillance of their digital communication use

Terrorists don't use cell phones because terrorists use cell phones?

Theatrics to make it look like they are doing enough. Truth is, if someone immigrated or gets radicalized without detectio, the IC is relying on them not having good opsec. Spying on everyone (instead of with a warrant) , E2EE subversion,and these silly laws won't give them additional capacity when the actual terrorists and mass shooters that slip through already have bad opsec,don't use mainstream platforms or E2EE

Then why is terrorist content discussed so much in content moderation circles, specifically the fact that content moderators are viewing it so often it induces PTSD in them?

ISIS has put out high definition videos of executions. That's the opposite of "not touching digital comms"

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/12/21255870/facebook-content...

The original incidents are terrorism, and the people doing them are targeted.

I don't think you're being fair to the context. They've been showboating killing online for decades. But showboating should not be conflated using digital communications to coordinate their efforts. I'm not saying they don't use digital communications. But this is hardly proof of that.

How long did bin laden evade capture? 20-30 years? And did they catch him because he used the internet?

They are not. Terrorism is supposed to be a political tool. Whereas school shooters are often just deranged or troubled people lashing out.

You either need to narrow the definition or carve out explicit exceptions. If you are carving out exceptions, the definition is just “people we don’t like”.

I guess that is pretty close to the definition prosecutors like to use in the US.

That they're similar in this manner doesn't mean that we can't have laws and law enforcement because they're inherently violent and tyrannical or anything, but it does inform how seriously and dispassionately we should approach their means and ends. I don't think that it's particularly radical to call an abuse of judicial power terrorism. What else to call, for example, a judge who robs entire communities of their youth in exchange for backroom deals with private prisons?

You have no evidence that most school shooters communicated such a goal (although there might be an outlier). Or if you do, I'm curious what it is.

Terrorists have a tangible goal, typically coupled with demands, not some hidden intention you make up to shoehorn a person into the definition. Even Elliot Rodger, who had a "manifesto", did not communicate any sort of demands or goals.

Unfortunately, the narrative that resulted colored later discourse with less-than-accurate assumptions about the nature of mass school shootings. They're overwhelmingly not carried out by bullied loners, but instead by entitled, ostracized bullies who aren't stopped because they don't fit the American conceptualization of who commits violence. To that point, even high-profile black and brown mass shooters tend not to be gangbangers or whatever, but men with military or law enforcement backgrounds.

Inst that simply because men with military or law enforcement backgrounds are more violent in general?

I cant recall one who would act like normal person and multiple disturbed ones.

Not everything bad is terrorism. A mentally ill person going on a murder-suicide rampage after beijg ignored by a girl is not a terrorist. A person acting in their self-interest in a way that contributes to systemic racism or oppression is not a terrorist. Hunting or threatening people of a certain race or gender or orientation or hobby to scare them and others away is terrorism. Blowing up buildings to pressure decision makers into a policy change is terrorism.

Maybe manipulating a single individual via threats or minor violence could be considered small scale terrorism (but their are better words, like harassment or abuse or stalking or assault).

So like the shooting of a black church by a white supremacist explicitly for the purposes of espousing white supremacy?

> Hunting or threatening people of a certain race or gender or orientation or hobby to scare them and others away is terrorism.

So like the lgbtq club shooting, or the black church, or the 1989 shooting specifically targeting women?

(+) “minority” has apparently been redefined to be 60-66% whenever the goal is to stop congress from doing something reprehensible.

Trying to change the behavior of a group of people by using violence is what I’d consider to be terrorism.

By that definition, some school shooters would qualify as terrorists. When they target a category of people (like athletes) who haven’t bulled them, they’re trying to scare all people away from becoming athletes.

I’d say, if you target specific people who directly hurt you, you’re seeking revenge.

If you target a category of people, you’re saying that those people who haven’t done anything to you are targets and you’re trying to influence their behavior through fear.

The fact that it strikes fear into the rest of the nation is ancillary. They're usually more interested in the notoriety they gain than trying to create some kind of policy change.

This really is similar to jihadist terrorism,jihadism took away american's privacy and mass shooters with gripes against american socio-politics have americans living in trauma over active shooter drills and gun toting teachers. Not only are they both terrorism, they both won!

Al-qaeda is eradicated but they won, I fear many would credit 9/11 as the begining of the end of america. Much like insurgent warfare,terrorism will be studied as a means of warfare where due to extreme imbalances on weaponry and digital surveillance the only way to fight is by terrorizing your enemy. War is horrible but terrorism is a cancerous form of war where destroying your enemy does not translate to success.

I would argue most school shootings are also not terrorism. They do create fear, but my impression is that the intended goal is revenge rather than fear. It would be hard to frame them as terrorists; most of them leave behind notes expressing a clear desire for revenge but mentioning no kind of policy changes they want.

I do think most of the race/religion inspired mass shootings were terrorist acts though. Their goal seemed to be spreading fear in those communities.

Won what? As far as I know, they didn't achieve their goal of driving out the Americans out of the Middle East. The loss of privacy and rights is incidental to their goals.