Seems like it ought to be possible to have both, to some degree. I don't want the capitol to be a fortress, but they need to prevent stuff like this. I mean... the US spends massive amounts of money on the police and military.

I think it should be kind of like a non-Newtonian fluid. Walk in slowly and peacefully and it's ok. Try and punch it, it solidifies quickly.

American history[1] shows this probably isn't a requirement - beyond a foreign military attacking, which is clearly out of scope of policing, the other attacks were acts carried out by isolated people. "Storming the gates" hasn't happened before now.

I suspect the main reason that this hasn't happened before is that very large protests/gatherings are often met with a large show of police force to ensure the protestors know this isn't an option. Why that didn't happen today will be interesting to investigate. We all probably have a theory, but what comes out of the inevitable hearings on this will be interesting to see.

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/us-capitol-violence-histor...

They’re often not met with a show of police force. Here’s a picture of the Million Man March in the 1990s: https://images.app.goo.gl/WSvMYDK4asyav5HX7

There are hundreds of thousands of people behind the camera, going all the way to the Lincoln Memorial. You can see some security milling around, but no large show of police force.

The Million Man March's attendance didn't include people with an established history of bringing weapons and wearing body armor at ostensibly peaceful demonstrations.

That couldn't be further from the truth. A large group of Black Panthers armed with assault weapons stormed the CA capitol in 1967 as part of a protest.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/history/article148667224.h...

That was almost 3 decades before the Million Man March, and a completely different organization.

The Fruit of Islam weren’t there?

The Bonus Army protests weren't entirely without conflict.

I think the reality is that we could have prevented it. We just chose not to murder half the crowd. Preventing it without using lethal force requires a much larger force than you want to keep on hand.

I actually really like this analogy. I'm curious if there's there's a term for that kind of playbook for folks who are more familiar with building security.

The only analogue that comes to mind is in financial fraud detection: moving money slowly or in a predictable pattern (monthly rent payments etc.) triggers no alarms, but large or unexpected transfers raise alarms.

I remember when I left my last job that my manager cautioned me against making any large file transfers since it would trigger IT alarms about employees trying to steal the company's IP.

Clearly, he didn't think I was a threat, or if I was, that I would have been smart enough to do it long ago, and slowly :-)

If the people really want to overthrow the government, some jacked up defenses around capitol buildings won't stop anything imho, it just means the resistance will bring heavier weapons to match.

Occupying buildings is, honestly, pretty silly if your goal is to overthrow the government.

A few years(?) ago, Mitch McConnell's dinner at a restaurant was interrupted by protestors yelling at him. And that was after what happened to Gabby Giffords.

Targets with higher ROI are available to people willing to take, ahem, kinetic actions.

There are, for instance, buildings with large areas that are open to the public and other areas which hold large amounts of money that are very important to protect.

> I don't want the capitol to be a fortress, but they need to prevent stuff like this.

And they would have, had the Trump Administration not denied the D.C Mayor's request the day before for the D.C. National Guard to be deployed.

The Administration also delayed approval of requests by Virginia and Maryland to send Guard units to the Capitol in response to urgent calls for aid from Congressional leaders when it became clear the MPD and Capitol Police were overwhelmed.

Of course, it's a problem when the person inciting the insurrection has authority over important components of the security against it.

Do you have a source for this? I read that it was actually the other way around:

> A new report Thursday revealed that Sund turned down an offer from the FBI and the National Guard to help cops in the event of unrest.

https://nypost.com/2021/01/07/capitol-police-chief-steven-su...

They (the people inciting it) were literally dancing and having a party and watching the start of the chaos on livestream while it went down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZQDgBSSYjI

> I think it should be kind of like a non-Newtonian fluid. Walk in slowly and peacefully and it's ok. Try and punch it, it solidifies quickly.

I love that so much.

As a huge democrat (lower case d) I totally agree. Locking down the Capitol is antithetical to the notion of open democracy. Lawmakers and the law making process needs to be physically accessible by the People. This was what the Founders intended. Of course there is some risk here and Jefferson himself noted this.

That’s the price we pay for living in an open and transparent society. While I don’t condone or support what happened this week, the building belongs to the People and not the government and the People have every right to enter the building and demand accountability.

The way the US Capitol is right now feels very police-state to me compared to how it used to be. I have memories of running around the Capitol building with my Cub Scout pack including ending up in private areas. There were no assault weapons and we weren’t met with police. We were politely shooed away.

Today you cannot walk up the steps of the Capitol building. It’s fenced off and manned by armed guard. Last time I was there I stepped aside to let some people pass in a crowded area and crossed some arbitrary unmarked do not cross line but about 12 inches. I was physically grabbed by Police.

To quote Donald Rumsfeld “freedom is untidy.”

> the People have every right to enter the building and demand accountability.

the "People" can't just do whatever they want just because they feel like it. Can they go and bang hammers on nuclear warheads because the warheads "belong to the People"? Storm the doors of JPL and play horsey on the Mars Rovers?

When some subset of the "People" attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of the other 99% of the People, they are traitors, and should be erased from society.

The security risk is also less of a problem in a mostly rational society, which is what we have had for a long time. You'll get lone wolves, but finding a group of people so angry with a politician they're willing to conspire to kill them? Very, very rare. Violence is a last resort for people who feel totally powerless. So, in a dark way, easy access keeps politicians from pissing off their constituents too much.

Which is why the stream of "fraudulent election" lies is so dangerous. A person in a position that confers trust is telling people the government is openly defying them. For people who believe that, violence is the only logical way to affect politics.

Compare a similar issue with schools; in the 80s, teenagers left their guns in their cars while they went to class. Now, schools are basically a rights-free zone.

Totally agree, great point! The fear mongering is only useful for states to impose more draconian rules. Its likely if there are further lockdowns, and more livelihoods are destroyed during the Biden admin, more people will be revolting. We don't want to give them the moral authority to Tiananmen square unarmed protesters, just because they fear their own people

I think that's nonsense. Access to a lawmaker or representative in a village may work like that. When you represent a state of 20 million, access means making an appointment and going through security clearance. There is a voting mechanism, a free press and various other mechanisms to back me up if I am consistently deterred from speaking to my public representative. But I'm in no way expecting to just walk in there, unannounced, without security clearance, at any time of the day, to demand attention.

Might as well argue that you should be able to just walk into the white house and speak to the top public representative.

I also walked into my congressperson’s office when I was on a field trip as kid. The security was similar to going to the airport.

> Might as well argue that you should be able to just walk into the white house and speak to the top public representative.

Entirely different situation. The reason that people need to talk with the legislature is because those are the people’s representatives.

> Entirely different situation. The reason that people need to talk with the legislature is because those are the people’s representatives.

Totally different, were it not for the fact the president is also the Chief of State: The chief public representative of a country.

Besides, even if this wasn't the case, humor me and suppose it was (which it actually is), would you then conclude that the president should simply be accessible at will by 300 million Americans? It makes absolutely no sense.

Just because something is publicly accessible doesn't mean you throw all reason out the window. Plenty of national parks are simultaneously open to everyone, as well as require registration and some basic ground rules to entrance. Similarly, it's entirely uncontroversial to argue that accessing the capitol is freely available to all, but there will be some minimum security checks, and some areas (e.g. private offices or places holding confidential data) are off-limits. Virtually all democracies have no problem separating visitor's areas from private working offices, and implementing appropriate controls in both.

The notion that the speaker of the house's laptop could be casually stolen by people without heavy equipment walking in is a joke, pure and simple. Claiming it has something to do with the fact she's a representative thereby implying her laptop should just be freely accessible instead of secured by some basic measures, as some (not you) have done in this thread, makes no sense if you ask me.

> Totally different, were it not for the fact the president is also the Chief of State: The chief public representative of a country.

It’s kind of a stretch to frame it that way. The president quite literally represents the states, not the people. The US does not require that states assign electors by popular vote, states have chosen to do that. And in the past, they have chosen to do it other ways. Before the civil war, there were states that selected electors without conducting a popular vote.

The way the US government is architected, the legislature is the extent of federal representative government.

6 of the 13 original states held a popular vote for president Washington.

But to respond to the bulk of your statement: it was like airport security back when I was a kid, and I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t also be appropriate on any other typical (i.e. not a special event) day. Angry mobs should never make it to the building in the first place. Crowd control happens outside of the building.

I think you’ve mischaracterized the discussion.

Where did anyone say any of the things you are claiming?

The statement was simply that the People have a right to entry into the building and physical access to lawmakers and the law making process. Further, the statement is that access is a foundational principle to the US implementation of liberal democracy since our Nation’s founding. It’s so foundational that it’s also quite literally built into the building as there are galleries for public viewing of Senate and House proceedings.

It is also an ideal that we strive for like equality and justice. We recognize our union as imperfect yet these ideals are what drive us as a Nation.

Your comment I feel confuses implementation with the discussion of ideals. The implementation should follow the ideals as guiding principles with access being the default.

Lastly, historically the building and lawmakers were much more accessible. This was during my lifetime. We had lots of people then too.

No, now you're mischaracterising me. All this while I've spoken about implementation, I've never claimed that the public should not have access to representatives. I've claimed that it must be implemented according to the conditions necessary to ensure it is orderly and secure.

Indeed, access is the default. And in a village with a handful of visits and no armed psychopats plotting to kill your local representative, that default is all you need and may proceed as such.

But as you'll agree, the chief public representative (the president) lives in a different reality. Public unfettered access is a threat to his life. And while the public should have a form of access regardless, practically a 300 million to 1 communication relationship doesn't work, so you must implement it accordingly, differently. That's why most presidents had a habit of spending an hour a day reading letters from citizens, hosting debates, participating in public forums, holding press conferences, inviting people to the white house to discuss, speaking to various organisations representing people's causes etc. But walking into his office at 4PM to speak to the president? That's a joke. I'm fully aware that in a democracy a public servant works for the public, no need to discuss the ideal. I'm discussing the practical implementation, which is why I started with the village vs capitol example, which sees different outcomes on the basis of the same principles, which is exactly because the ideals are the same but the implementation cannot be. Similarly, you would organize access to certain parts of the capitol in a secure manner, e.g. those parts of the capitol holding a laptop of the speaker of the house.

In a post 9/11 world you cannot just say the capitol belongs to the people and access should be free (again, obviously talking about practice, not ideals, here), without concluding in the same breath that it should be freely accessible to any terrorist as well. And it's just an example. This week it were people thinking they were sent by Q or incited by Trump to de-facto participate in a coup (i.e. storming the capitol to prevent an elected official from being confirmed, while spreading propagandistic lies that the election was stolen, a direct attack on the democracy if you ask me). Next week it might be a psychopath thinking he is doing god's work. And yes, times have changed, if you're also interested in discussing how airport security used to be different back in the day, be my guest, I don't see the point.

Plenty of countries have well-functioning (and by many subjective and objective measures, better functioning) democracies, with high-level access to public representatives, while taking proper security and practicality measures.

> It’s so foundational that it’s also quite literally built into the building as there are galleries for public viewing of Senate and House proceedings.

You say some of these things as if access to public viewing of proceedings isn't the norm in countless democracies worldwide. But if I go to a viewing, I go through this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25690107

Not because I don't have access, but precisely because I do, as does everyone else, and that creates risks, which can be mitigated without reducing access. A basic measure which would've prevented the debacle at the Capitol altogether.

Edit: whooshed by his royal cleverness.

I direct you to the definition of tongue in cheek:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/tongu...

You don't need to fence the whole area off. Just a few reinforced doors at strategic places would have stopped anyone without heavy equipment. Also they would have been a place for the police to stand their ground.

Just all stairs going upwards should be easy to defend if the police stands their ground. Add a few police dogs and the officers wouldn't even have to engage themselves.

There was a smaller crowd trying to enter the German parliament just a few weeks ago, politically pretty close to the rioters of Washington. A whole three policemen were able to stop them by just consequently standing their ground, not armend beyond batons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc-56opg-Xg

I agree with the more open approach, but shouldn't her office have a simple keycard or combo lock on the door? Even Starbucks toilets have better security.

From the pictures I saw, she was still logged in and had the evacuation message onscreen. I'm guessing she didn't have 'require login after screensaver' option enabled. If the account is still logged in, this is a massive breach!

> I agree with the more open approach, but shouldn't her office have a simple keycard or combo lock on the door?

Congressional offices are frequent meeting spaces with people who do not work there. Their job, after all, is to represent the public. Locking the public out of their offices is kind of antithetical to the job description.

it was somebody else's account. Also, see @foone's thread here:

https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1346924327996772354

tl;dr: the government has appropriate computer security in place to prevent this sort of thing, and it's not clear what the deal was with that particular computer.

Yeah it’s definitiv a different desk than the ohne in the picture with the guy who broke into pelosis office.

how hard is <window key> + L to lock your screen?

When you hear the mob screaming outside, glass breaking, and are likely being told to evacuate by messages on your computer and security outside? I wouldn't bet that I'd remember. Not locking your screen is as expected as it is forgivable under the circumstances.

They should beef up security. And keep it open. And not so obvious.

The simple fact of the matter is that a violent riot stormed the capitol building and nearly overwhelmed local forces. Congress asked for extra help and it wasn't provided. Governors asked if they could send in the guard to help and the man whom stoked the riot gave no permission.

It's a fucking miracle that January 6th wasn't one of the worst days in the history of the US.

Um, the police waved them through. It was in cooperation with Capitol police. No 'overwhelming' necessary. Which is worrisome in a whole nother way. https://twitter.com/bumbera_steven/status/134727096998817382... <edit> video

8 second videos don't tell much of a story. That is them falling back because they didn't have enough people to hold the perimeter.

Here is a longer video of them at one of the entrances of the building: https://youtu.be/cJOgGsC0G9U?t=140

My mistake. It was a chaotic, violent situation. I shouldn't make snap judgements from cherry-picked shots. Sorry.

One gotta love a reply like that these days. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for being an awesome human being.

You've seen different footage than I have, then.

Look at the videos, no waving through going on, quite the opposite. One woman was shot by police and died.

They should have appropriate security when large events are going on outside. But I sure hope we do not see barricades between representatives and their constituents on a normal day. Democracies rely on trust in both directions.

This is a false dichotomy, though. There is an enormous gamut of security steps in between turning the capitol into a fortress, and locking the door to your office when you're not there.

Not trying to nitpick but they were specifically told to keep the doors unlocked, by security.

> I much prefer the approach taken in the USA, where our offices of government are accessible to the people that the government serves. It's very good that I can protest out front without worrying about that unfriendly man with his finger by the trigger to the Browning M2.

And yet your government offices abroad (embassies) are the most fortified I've ever seen.

I've been to several countries' embassies and the US one was like entering a secret nuclear bunker. There was airport-style security, and everyone I talked to was behind a massive sheet of bullet-proof glass; never mind the gates and moat around the building. This was in a small, US-friendly and highly developed country.

Then there's the excessive amount of security around any US governmental visit to a foreign country.

So I think it comes to a surprise to many outside the US that one of your main government buildings has less security than a museum even when all the most important politicians are inside.

But yes I agree, I think government buildings should be 'friendly'.

Most days that’s fair. This week however, they should’ve had the unfriendly man with the M2. This was a predictable problem to literally everyone but the people in charge of protecting the capital.

According to some reports, the problem was in fact predicted, and that's why the National Guard chose not to prepare for forceful confrontation. Not wanting photos of armed uniformed soldiers in state buildings or some such.

The same was true for BLM protests. So, why the different treatment? Racism is a popular explanation, but is it a true explanation?

I think more core to the issue is status quo bias. Cops are much more likely to agree or strongly agree to questions like “the current US system is fair and just” and similar pro-status quo ideas. Typically speaking left wing protestors are agitating to change the system, especially policing, which is why cops do not respond as well. Is it any surprise that cops respond worse to those protesting against the police, no matter the slogan, than they do against the “blue lives matter” crowd?

Oh, and cop organizations are run through with neo-nazis and white supremacists who have made a concerted effort to make inroads with police departments and military members.

What? This most recent was literally an attempt to take over the Capitol building, presumably to delay one step in the formal recognition of the next President, and perhaps worse.

there's more than a little suggestion that this was the intended outcome for the people protecting the capitol.

By whom?

This makes it sound like the people in charge of protecting the capital did not know that this was a legitimate threat. From the articles I've read, they did in fact help that it was a legitimate threat, which raises the question: why did they do nothing about it?

The only reasonable conclusion I can think of is that the security team had no worry that politicians would be in any danger (e.g. easy, isolated, fast escape routes) and that it would be hard to rationalize to bring out the troops/big security forces with a threat of violence for a group of people that was supported by the current president and a significant fraction of congress and the senate. The whole situation feels very strange and it feels like I'm missing some key facts.

I think there are many plausible (but not necessarily "reasonable") alternative explanations.

As far as I can tell, this event seems to have had an extremely persuasive effect on the psyche and opinions of the average person. Who might benefit from this change in the mental state of the population, and in what ways?

Most people seem to find the very idea of thinking such thoughts to be extremely unpleasant, if not downright inappropriate. But to me, this is simple risk management. The lack of this sort of thinking in society seems downright dangerous to me.

I sometimes wonder what the origin of such norms is - is it organic (a common characteristic derived from evolution), or might it be synthetic?

What? Who?

Hahah, I love the feigned confusion technique.

I truly am struggling to extract any coherent meaning from that comment. Democrats, controlling just the House – when Repulicans are running the federal gov't with the Senate and the presidency – have instituted this event? Some big capitalists maybe? Putin? The Jews?

The Democrat/Republican duopoly is mutually beneficial to both party. Grassroots populist candidates (Perot, Trump, Sanders) are a pain in the ass for both of them, as would future ones be.

Wouldn't it be convenient if a massive spectacle was to occur, whereby the US public could see in 4K HDR the danger that populist political candidates introduce to the system, how it "threatens our most sacred institution: Democracy.

And as luck would have it, along comes a massive throng of obviously angry and delusional Trump supporters, with well advertised (and well known to authorities) plans to descend on the US Capitol, to "rescue Democracy", or some such nonsense.

So, what do you do in a situation where you have hordes of angry (and possibly armed) political extremists heading towards a politically strategic location, on a particularly important day (in your democracy)?

Do you:

a) Beef up security

b) Not beef up security

It seems like option (b) was chosen. Depending on what variable one is optimizing for, this was a terrible choice, or an excellent one.

US embassies just about everywhere are like that. The one in Budapest has two inch thick metal bar gates and guards armed with machine guns. Lesson learned from the embassy hostage crisis in Iran.

Anyway, an angry mob of wacko rioters shouldn't violently force their way into the legislative's building. They should respect the outcome of the democratic vote and vote again in four years. Maybe if this was Iran I would say okay, people are fed up with the ayatollah and the revolutionary guards, but this is the US and the poor buggers are being manipulated, shot tear gas at and four of them got killed. For what? Absolutely nothing. The unfortunate officer died doing his job. This is very sad and scary, it looks like civil war brewing. A really bad thing to happen to a nation armed with nukes. Please do not let it happen, it is within your power to distance yourselves from these people and just say no to violence and vandalism.

> protected by unfriendly looking men standing behind heavy machine guns

Just a few months ago that is exactly what the steps of the US Capitol looked like [1].

Even when disabled people try to protest there they are removed by force [2]

They have no trouble keeping people out they really don't want inside, it seems.

But when people show up wearing body armour and carrying weapons, for some reason they are not stopped.

[1] https://twitter.com/oliviamunn/status/1346933669869481986

[2] https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a12466578/disabled-pro...

I agree. One of my favorite aspects of visiting DC is the remarkable extent to which ordinary citizens have access to the workings of government. Sure, there's some security, but mostly to keep things orderly, not secret.

So just a couple hundreds of people can protest in front of the building, enter elected official offices and steal laptops most likely containing very sensitive data (hopefully encrypted though)?

I agree with you but I think there ought to be a little more protection of that.

For national security buildings (e.g. the NSA) it is the exact same as your foreign country experience. The guards around the perimeter are very quick to engage and ask what you are doing if you meander around the outside.

The NASA HQ administration building off 4th and E just south of the Mall has no armed guards posted outside, and there's even a NASA public credit union in the building, which does not require passing through the metal detectors or security post just a couple doors away in the same open lobby.

It is visited by plenty of non-NASA, non-government ordinary customers who could easily blend in with official foot traffic on a busy day and make just a dozen paces to the main elevator banks or stairwells looking for an opportunity.

The NSA (National Security Agency) and NASA are very different organizations within government.

I misread the OP as NASA, which was careless but I still think the observation is worth noting. Also worth noting is that there is a museum on the NSA campus (National Cryptologic Museum) that anyone can visit without any clearance, and though there are vastly trickier chicanes to contend with compared to the access at NASA administrative HQ, merely visiting the cryptologic museum ushers one past several otherwise highly restricted perimeter zones.

Yes, it is understandable that security works that way in a building occupied by people whose job it is to keep secrets... but that is not the way security should work at a building of democratic representatives where their job is to be publicly accountable.

Yep, in India they directly detain all protesters anywhere near the parliament area and the immediate surroundings

The Indian parliament was attacked by heavily armed gunmen in 2001, so that's not so surprising.

Unfortunately we don't live in that world anymore.

There is a major opposition movement growing, and it pains me to say it but Trump was right in his last speech.

'This is just the beginning'