No there isn't. That's the whole trick. It's a mind thing, as long as enough people believe there is a war on terror there is a war on terror, when they stop believing they'll resort to good old police-work and the judicial system to back it all up.

See Spain and the bombings there, the UK and the bombings there, India and the bombings there and so on. Everybody else seems to treat it as a series of acts by loosely organized and funded individuals that don't seem to have a common goal or even coherency about their deeds.

And the best bit: it doesn't work. You can't declare 'war' on lone wolves or small cells if they're careful enough. Any idiot (you, me, any other visitor here) could turn around and become a terrorist tomorrow, there would be no other outward distinguishing factor, just that bit that flipped in our heads. And by the time there would be an outside observable factor (objects going 'foom') it would be way too late.

The USA has held innocent people without a trial for over a decade. Some of those people were children when "arrested".

This situation weighs against every American and yet it's still ongoing.

If you stop eating involuntarily and your life is in danger because you have no food the government will just pat you on the back if some ultra right republicans have their way. Should all the poor announce that they are on hunger strike too?

So you can have habeas corpus or food security from the government but not both :) It is a dark joke. Not serious policy analysis.

    resort to good old police-work and the judicial system to back it all up.

And that is the crux of the issue. When you look at weak states like Mali or Nigeria do people really want a hands off approach ?

So depressing, the stated reason for invading Iraq was they had chemical weapons. While lately FSB advisers to the Syrian government have been tactically using sarin gas to repel the FSA and Sunni mujahideen from strategic defenses. I only mention this for perspective, not to start a debate about Syria.

And yes stamping our radicalism in places like Mali or Nigeria absolutely makes the US safer.

It is hard to say, given the secrecy that surrounds all this. Who are our enemies right now? Who is the government trying to protect us from? We are meant to take it as a given that there are terrorists out there and that the government is actively protecting us from them -- yet so far, we have only heard about plots that either succeeded, or that never had a realistic chance of succeeding.

We need to know the danger and how it is being addressed. If the government will not even tell us who is a suspected terrorist and why they are under suspicion, we have no choice but to assume that they are abusing their power.

Do you further, or alternatively deny that alerting those people to the fact that the FBI knows about them would harm the FBI's ability to stop them from harming people in the US?

This should be an argument of degrees and to what extent, not an argument about the existence of a threat in the first place, or that the government should be absolutely open about everything. Such a position is quite extremist and completely impractical.

No, but (a) that is irrelevant to the issue of NSLs, which are a purely domestic matter, (b) we are spending real money on fighting these hypothetical enemies, and (c) we have yet to be shown evidence that this money is being used effectively.

"Do you further, or alternatively deny that alerting those people to the fact that the FBI knows about them would harm the FBI's ability to stop them from harming people in the US?"

The FBI is not supposed to be conducting foreign operations. They jurisdiction ends with the borders of this nation and its embassies.

"This should be an argument of degrees and to what extent, not an argument about the existence of a threat in the first place,"

You are basically admitting that when it comes to the war on terror, nothing is temporary. We will always be fighting the war on terror. What rights we give up in the name of fighting terrorists will be permanently lost.

This is a matter of civil liberties. The secret list of suspected terrorists has come to include journalists, political dissidents, anti-war protesters, and so forth. Being on the list means losing your privacy rights, being harassed while you travel even within US borders, and potentially being assassinated by the government.

We need to able to judge this program and decide if it is something we want in our society. Secrecy is incompatible with that.

I asked in my previous comment, "Do you further, or alternatively deny that alerting those people to the fact that the FBI knows about them would harm the FBI's ability to stop them from harming people in the US?" Can you answer this?

I have another question: do you believe your/the public's judgement is going to be the best method by which to determine the efficacy of a counter-terrorism strategy, even assuming the program can be communicated in such a way so as to not compromise it's ability to be effective?

Was I supposed to assume that "somewhere in the world" meant something different?

"I asked in my previous comment, "Do you further, or alternatively deny that alerting those people to the fact that the FBI knows about them would harm the FBI's ability to stop them from harming people in the US?" Can you answer this?"

Sure: yes. Yes, the FBI will be impeded when they are held accountable for their actions and when their actions are not secret. This is no different from warrant requirements, Miranda rights, the second amendment, the right to an attorney, etc. A democratic society where civil rights are valued gives up some law enforcement power in order to preserve its democracy and civil rights.

"I have another question: do you believe your/the public's judgement is going to be the best method by which to determine the efficacy of a counter-terrorism strategy, even assuming the program can be communicated in such a way so as to not compromise it's ability to be effective?"

When you are asking to use my tax dollars to fight terrorism, you had better be able to convince me that (a) there are terrorists to fight and (b) that you are effective at doing so. Otherwise I want tax money spent building better schools, paying for universal healthcare, paying for scientific research, paying for competent public defenders, etc. Sorry, but you cannot scare me with hypothetical terrorists.

Since you are a fan of asking pedantic questions, I have one for you: do you believe that the war on terror will ever end, or do you believe that it will always be necessary to violate basic civil rights in the name of fighting terrorists?

That's not what I asked. Can you answer the question I asked?

> Otherwise I want tax money spent building better schools, paying for universal healthcare, paying for scientific research, paying for competent public defenders, etc. Sorry, but you cannot scare me with hypothetical terrorists.

The US is a representative democracy, so this is exactly what you are putting money towards, as is the intent when conceived. We don't live in a direct democracy because of precisely the answer to the question I had asked - the layman is incapable of safely guiding a government due to the layman's general ignorance. Representatives are selected among the layman population and then these representatives are educated and given the ability to make decisions on behalf of those who elected him/her. Your tax money is not yours to decide what to spend it on directly. You indirectly decide by electing someone. Oftentimes this upsets people mostly because it puts in perspective exactly how little control over their government any one individual has, but that's how it's designed.

No one gets to be king, not even you.

And to answer your question: no. There will always be people who want to hurt the US and the people who live in it. Obviously it's a constant struggle between those who care more about keeping us safe and those who care more about maintaining freedom for the citizens of the US, but that's a good thing. The struggle will never end, neither side will ever stop fighting, and the US will (hopefully) be better for it. Your extremist view is unhelpful and frankly not relevant. You remove yourself from the conversation by taking such an outside stance.

No, we do not just select people who then learn how the government works. We select people who will carry out our will. If you want more funding for scientific research, you vote for someone who works to expand that funding. We need to know what the government is doing in order to have an effective vote. Your idea of representative democracy is a sham -- the government acting in secret is not compatible with any form of democracy. There are limited exceptions during times of war, but we are not at war (not formally), domestic surveillance is not in this category, and even military secrets are supposed to be declassified after some period of time (so that we can review past decisions).

Of course, you leave no room for ever declassifying details of the counterterrorism program in your argument. You openly admit that the "war on terror" will never end.

When even the criteria for targeting people is a secret, there is no balance being struck. All your talk about representative democracy and striking a balance is meaningless in the context of such secrecy. This is not an "extremist" position, it is just liberalism -- the same political philosophy on which America was based.

It is an extremist position (and one that will get you absolutely nowhere, like it or not) to demand the FBI disclose information about ongoing investigations.

I don't think that's the position the parent is taking. As it stands now, the FBI does not disclose information about investigations, even long after they are completed.

Personally, I'm more worried about the Yellowstone Caldera. Its eruption is long overdue, and when it does it will damage the entire continent and kill millions.

Why isn't the government doing anything about that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Andreas_Fault#The_Universit...

"The 2008 Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF) has estimated that the probability of an M ≥ 6.7 earthquake within the next 30 years on the northern and southern segments of the San Andreas fault as 21% and 59%, respectively."

PS: A great way of comparing threats is to multiply risk times death totals over a decade. On that scale terrorists and eathquakes are a joke.

(http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001498.htm)

Wikipedia doesn't show many > 7 earthquakes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquakes_in_California#List...) (but maybe they have a weird inclusion criteria?)

Consider the 9.0 that hit japan in 2011. Despite 129,225 buildings totally collapsed, with a further 254,204 buildings 'half collapsed', and another 691,766 buildings partially damaged it killed under 20,000 people.

That said, we have invested a lot to drive the death totals down in large part because earthquakes and hurricanes are fairly common. In comparison we are spending far to much on terrorism and far to little on the rare but civilization ending mega disasters.

This stat is crazy. A low-end eruption (by far the most typical kind) at Yellowstone would kill few people in the U.S. The eruptions aren't that big and the Yellowstone downwind area is one of the least populated areas of the country.

Edit to add:

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/observatories/yvo/index.html

Now, if our monitoring of earthquakes was advanced enough that we could say, "hey, San Andreas is gonna go nuts approximately 3 days from now in this general area", we could meaningfully evacuate people and save lives. But we don't have that kind of prediction accuracy.

"The Decade Volcanoes are 16 volcanoes identified by the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI) as being worthy of particular study in light of their history of large, destructive eruptions and proximity to populated areas."

"More recently (since 2001) funding from the federal government for lahar protection in the area has dried up, leading local authorities in at-risk cities like Orting to fear a disaster similar to the Armero tragedy.[38][39]"

Even if your goal is solely to prevent terrorist attacks and you don't give a damn about domestic collateral, it is still not so obvious. The question is whether, with all the data in the world, there are signals in that data that are exclusively correlated with terrorists and terrorist activities. And, secondarily, whether data mining and ML techniques have found, or can in the near future find, those signals. If not, then, in Schneier's words:

"Piling more data onto the mix makes it harder, not easier. The best way to think of it is a needle-in-a-haystack problem; the last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through." [1]

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/02/opinion/schneier-boston-bombin...

We--by which I assume you mean the United States--are at war with whatever seems to be most profitable to the powers-that-be at the time, whether that is drugs, Muslims, or our own citizens. There is a very valid concern that such a policy of scaremongering and sly abuse of power could result in Bad Things (tm) if the beast decides that a war on one of us would be a worthwhile expenditure of time.

To pretend otherwise is foolish.

There are people out there that wish us harm, as there always have been. Part of the burden of doing great things is the acceptance of the fact that you'll be targeted by those less capable--and part of the requirement is that you bull ahead and don't let it bother you.

This is a good example of a knucklehead comment. There is no profit in fighting cave dwelling extremists who want to make sure girls don't go to school. Instead of wishing for the demise of the US you should be saying thank Christ the Americans are in charge. HN can be a bag full of stupid on non-technical issues. I am going to start actively campaigning for the US to stop paying for the EU's defense.

Unless you are making bullets, guns, body armor, etc. Never underestimate the US government's ability to do seemingly pointless things just to prop up certain businesses. We see that very same pattern of behavior elsewhere in the government; what makes you think the military is exempt?

You did not have to go and prove the point so extensively.

But anyway I have found that data based decisions and policies tend to produce better outcomes than emotional based ones.

I do find my theory sound - that currently in the world there is no terrorist organization (or even state actor outside of Russia/China) that is capable to deliver enough pain to convert the US to failed state.

The Russians were hammered terribly in WWI and WWII and survived - 20-40 million lives lost. Germany was razed and survived. Poland was decimated and survived. Japan got direct nuclear hits and survived as a state. Israel is under constant real treat for a tiny country and is doing fine.

9/11 was a black swan - a lot of systems already in place failed. The subsequent plots were all incompetent and much smaller in scale (which we are thankful for).

So the statehood of the US is in no danger. And there is tiny danger for the civil populace.

There may be a lot of factors that could turn the US into the Mad Max world - economic collapse, ecologic one, meteorites, IP laws gone berserk.

But the idea that terrorist could cause the fall of the US don't hold to basic napkin math.

Unfortunately you have to be able to monitor suspects and having some judicial oversight is the best solution we have come up with.

The problem is I think in the US that you have the FBI which have mostly a traditional policing role as well as CT and security so you get procedures meant only for serious cases available to you average copper.

Might have been better to split the FBI in two and have a federal police force and a separate version of MI5 - you have so many intelligence services whats one more :-)

This is kind of like asking, "How do you know who in a town of 10,000 people will murder their spouse?" When did America become a country where people who might commit a crime tomorrow are targeted for surveillance or other investigation?

Are you seriously saying if you where caught in a third country (and expelled) trying to cross to a failed state with an Islamic insurgency that the FBI should not be able to tap their phones which is what you are implying.

The abuses of power are already evident. The FBI has not limited themselves to surveillance of militants or their leaders. Peaceful anti-war protesters have been targeted. Leftist professors have been targeted. Programmers writing cryptography software have been targeted. There should be no surprise that the FBI has abused its power, because no conclusions can be drawn about the criteria used to select surveillance targets. The criteria, like the list of suspects, is a secret.

"Are you seriously saying if you where caught in a third country (and expelled) trying to cross to a failed state with an Islamic insurgency that the FBI should not be able to tap their phones which is what you are implying."

This is a hard sentence to parse. What are you saying? That I am claiming foreign terrorists should not be the targets of FBI surveillance? Well, this may be news to you, but the FBI is not supposed to investigate crimes committed outside US borders, with the exception of crimes committed within our embassies (and certain crimes committed on military bases). Yes, I am saying that the FBI should not be investigating foreign terrorists. Yes, I am saying that the only reason the FBI should be investigating a foreign terrorist is if they come to this country and commit terrorist acts or organize a conspiracy to do so.

To summarize it for you: Yes, civil rights and democracy trump the war on terror.

How do you stop another oklahoma city other than by monitoring far right extremists/ How much info woudl you require to track members of a group?

I agree the standard cops should need a warrent for all access and NSL letters should only be for serious crimes and by that i mean only terrorism or national security ones.

Personally I think the FBI should have been split two one to do the day to day cop stuff and the other to do what in other countries is handled by there security service.

I think this is really the key flaw in what you're arguing for. You're asking the wrong question. The assumption you're making is that there is a group of people wanting to commit an act of terrorism the consequences be damned, and we have to stop them. But you're closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. You're fighting terrorism in the wrong place.

Apply your logic to any other crime. Murder is a good example. How can we stop spouses from killing each other unless we bug everyone's home in real time? The answer is, we can't. Anyone can pick up a knife in a fit of rage and commit murder. Anyone can mix common substances to make a bomb and kill a dozen people. You can't stop them. Stopping them after they've already committed to doing the deed is too little too late.

What you have to do is to not allow anyone to get to that point. The normal law enforcement method of doing this is to deter with punishment: If you murder someone you will be convicted, so you fear the punishment and refrain from committing murder, and then we don't have to stop you because you stop yourself. Notwithstanding the occasional zealot, this works just fine for most types of terrorism: If the terrorist expects to be executed, most people don't want to be executed, so they're deterred from committing any acts of terrorism.

This is the part where people's heads explode. Some terrorists don't care if they die, so you can't deter them. The normal law enforcement method doesn't work, so people assume we have to come up with some new draconian method of actually physically preventing crazy people from blowing stuff up, as if that's ever going to work. But here's the thing: In order to martyr yourself like that, you have to either be batshit insane or extraordinarily dedicated to your cause, if not both. And the first one is a mental health issue having nothing to do with law enforcement. The way you fix that one is to get the mentally ill into treatment before they decide that God is talking to them through a dog and wants them to steal an oil tanker and crash it into a fertilizer plant.

The second one is the one that makes people angry because the solution looks too much like allowing terrorism to be effective. But the fact is that going into foreign countries and killing mothers and fathers causes children to become radicalized. Nobody sane is ever going to be willing to die in order to punish Americans for eating pork. People may be willing to die because you killed their family.

But doing the right thing is not "letting the terrorists win." Completely regardless of its effects on terrorism, we should not be killing innocent people in foreign countries (or anywhere else). Stop doing that and soon enough you discover a dearth of terrorists to have to stop.

The idea is that a judge will act on behalf of those who appointed him/her, who are in turn acting on behalf of those who elected him/her. If you want something to happen differently, elect someone different. That's your only mechanism for change in this current system.

...And some of them are IN the government. Where do you think Hitler came from? He won a democratic election. Also Mussolini. Where Stalin came from? From the government itself.

Government (centralized power) attracts power freaks as dung does to the flies. The mechanism democracy has for protecting itself is people's supervision.

They are destroying the feedback look of people controlling power. Out of sight, out of mind in democracy means there is no democracy at all, as people can't see what they supposedly control.

Most people don't object the government tracking individuals, what people object is the removal of the knowledge about it. If they inspect my house, I know it, why I can't with my digital info?

Mussolini led a coup d'etat to take a power.

And Soviet hardly had a peaceful start and Stalin played a part in that.

None of these exactly popped out of nowhere from within the government.

Last I checked none of the current 'western' governments rose to power via fear and intimidation.

That said, yes power attracts people who want power. I can't dispute that.

Why do you think this isn't happening presently? Are you aware of the IRS's targeted scrutiny of certain groups applying for 501c3 status? This does not directly relate to the NSLs being discussed here, but it is an indication of how politics enters government agencies.

Frankly, I would be surprised if these NSLs aren't currently being used for political ends, by whomever has access to their use.

I mean... it's like sending a police officer to a store where someone has threatened to rob it beforehand.

If the FBI wants to investigate someone who has said they're determined to kill people with a bomb, I don't have a problem with them surveiling that person.

If I attended a protest like Occupy Wall Street or something, and gmailed my friends about it. Then, a year later, was told that I can't board an airplane because I'm on a no-fly list.

Anyone remember this? This was 3 years ago.

"A US government-mandated backdoor allowed China to hack into Gmail"

"In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hackin...

In reality, you're more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than be killed by a terrorist. You're 1,000 times more likely to die in a car accident than be killed by a terrorist. And so on. And one reason why the U.S. has been targeted by more Islamic terrorist attacks than say, the liberal democracy of Switzerland, is that we meddle far more in the Middle East countries that terrorists call home. It's policy blowback.

On HN, especially, we should be able to do simple statistical calculations of what we really should be worrying about. You're more likely to die from falling in the shower than being eaten by a shark, but one threat gets a lot more media coverage than the other.

It is true that some fraction of terrorists would happily kill hundreds of millions of Americans, if they had the ability. So it makes sense to concentrate on existential WOMD threats, improve cargo container scanning for suitcase nukes, place radiation scanners in major population centers, fund defenses against biological agents, etc.

To its credit, FedGov is doing that. But it's also doing far more than that, domestically and abroad. HomelandSec "anti-terror" grants have been used to fund cultural centers, zombie apocalypse demonstrations, armored vehicles for one-stoplight towns, snow-cone machines, etc. And people involved in the HomelandSec apparatus have incentives to exaggerate because their salaries or funding levels or relative prominence are tied to the perceived nature of the threat.

The use of the public's fear of terrorism to push for new "security" powers and other unrelated goals -- what I would call "used for political reasons" -- started within hours of the 9/11 attacks. Worrying about "a few years down the road" is decades too late.

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500249_162-520830.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda_lin...

It is asserted that the first policy converges on a totalitarian state solution, it is also asserted that the second policy converges on anarchy. As neither of those end points are stable, I don't agree that they are convergent so much as inflection or transition points.

Everything is political, every decision that affects more than a handful of people are more or less political decisions.

There will always be some people whose freedom and wills be violated, whether through vote of majority or tyranny of the few.

In the eyes of those who truly believe freedom for everyone, the reality is bleak.