It was dependent on having modern technology, like a truck and cheap fertilizer; it's a lot harder to kill 168 people (and wound almost 700) with an oxcart and a crossbow. Even with a carriage and black powder you need a _lot_ of people to be in on the plot. (Black powder was not cheap, not deniable, and not easily transported or concealed.)
What about poison? or fires? I'm sure there's other means I can't think of right now Modern tech has made it a bit easier, but it was still fairly easy throughout most of history.
Face it people -- terrorism is a problem of technology.
What about poison? or fires? I'm sure there's other means I can't think of right now Modern tech has made it a bit easier, but it was still fairly easy throughout most of history.
Face it people -- terrorism is a problem of technology.
Exactly. Primarily the technologies of mass media and democracy.
Of terrorism, the newscasters on TV who sensationalize the act and the politicians who fan the flames for their own benefit are just as guilty as the person who blew themselves up.
(Though obviously, only the latter is guilty of murder)
200 years ago there were "plenty" of bombings and mass shootings orchestrated by groups of 1 or 2 people that resulted in hundreds of lives lost? Can you provide a few examples of this?
That's a rather artificial limitations, few modern plots are from 1 or 2 people with hundreds killed. Historical examples are generally things like fires not bombings / mass shootings. As an example of the risks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Meireki for example was extremely deadly, though estimates of ~100,000 dead where probably exaggerated. We have also forgotten a lot of this crap. EX: 40 to 81 peo…
> That's a rather artificial limitations, few modern plots are from 1 or 2 people with hundreds killed.
I've heard small conspiracies called out to justify mass surveillance. You don't really need mass surveillance of your own citizens unless you are concerned about very small conspiracies. Bigger conspiracies can be uncovered with more traditional detective work.
Freak fires are also not a great example. An arsonist cannot cause hurricane force winds to assist and push a fire through a city. This is effectively an act of God. The time bomb is a better example, though again I would ask for evidence that this was a fairly common event the way mass shootings and similar terrorist attacks have sadly become.
That's a rather artificial limitations, few modern plots are from 1 or 2 people with hundreds killed. Historical examples are generally things like fires not bombings / mass shootings. As an example of the risks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Meireki for example was extremely deadly, though estimates of ~100,000 dead where probably exaggerated. We have also forgotten a lot of this crap. EX: 40 to 81 peo…
> That's a rather artificial limitations, few modern plots are from 1 or 2 people with hundreds killed. I've heard small conspiracies called out to justify mass surveillance. You don't really need mass surveillance of your own citizens unless you are concerned about very small conspiracies. Bigger conspiracies can be uncovered with more traditional detective work. Freak fires are also not a great example. An arsonist…
> I've heard small conspiracies called out to justify mass surveillance.
The fact that something is a convenient and effective narrative for propaganda purposes doesn't mean it is a significant and common threat.
That's a rather artificial limitations, few modern plots are from 1 or 2 people with hundreds killed. Historical examples are generally things like fires not bombings / mass shootings. As an example of the risks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Meireki for example was extremely deadly, though estimates of ~100,000 dead where probably exaggerated. We have also forgotten a lot of this crap. EX: 40 to 81 peo…
> That's a rather artificial limitations, few modern plots are from 1 or 2 people with hundreds killed. I've heard small conspiracies called out to justify mass surveillance. You don't really need mass surveillance of your own citizens unless you are concerned about very small conspiracies. Bigger conspiracies can be uncovered with more traditional detective work. Freak fires are also not a great example. An arsonist…
200 years ago world population was 1/10th what it is today making most events more common now. Something like 5% of everyone ever born is alive right now.
In terms of most kills by a single person one sniper is credited with ~700 kills and a mounted knight in plate was expedition to equal 100 peasants on average so 200+ in exceptional cases seems reasonable especially considering the Spanish conquest of South America where in the 1500's where ~300,000 vs 2000 and the 2000 won with minimal casualties. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Inca...
Client-to-server encryption with central message routing [..] will be abused by the NSA and anyone else that can get their hands on access. And no amount of politicking is going to change that, as it hasn't changed anything about their blatant disregard of the law thus far. BTW, 'anyone else that can get their hands on access' will include foreign nations and criminals. [..] can easily be given a backdoor [..] that m…
How many of the NSA's backdoors have ended up in the hands of foreign nations and criminals, again?
So far, as far as we know, 100% of them. We'll need more data for an accurate picture.
The law does actually have ways of extracting cash from people even when it can't locate the cash in question. It's harder, and less effective, but overall it works more than it doesn't.
What about poison? or fires? I'm sure there's other means I can't think of right now Modern tech has made it a bit easier, but it was still fairly easy throughout most of history.
It was not easy to get enough poison to kill hundreds. You get some hemlock, dump it in a well, and it dilutes enough that a dozen people get stomach aches and one elderly person dies. It's feasible to pull this off on a larger scale, but you'd need a lot of poison, and therefore a lot of resources. Fires? I'm not sure it was that easy to set an out of control fire that would consume enough of a town to kill hundreds…
Pitch, or indeed much premeditation at all, wouldn't be necessary in a village with five foot alleyways and dried grass roofs. Additionally, tar was a common caulking material. Oh, and running water/chemical foam wasn't usually a thing. And, you know, no trained quick response teams, or well maintained roads and swift transit systems to escape on, or any way to tell the difference between the smoke that always hung around the fireplace and the smoke from the roof being on fire... I could go on.
That's entirely unprovable, given that we have no idea how many backdoors the NSA has, nor for the matter, are we even sure how many have been leaked.
Of course it is, but note that my comment did not make any statement about NSA backdoors and anyone mentioning those is just trying to muddy my argument by acting as if it did.
It's absolutely the default. Imagine you own a webmail company. You secure your SMTP relays with SMTP-TLS (let's pretend it works well) and your client connections with TLS again. Now your users are safe from random creepy flatmates, criminals with wifi sniffers, your telco and even mass government surveillance. But, governments can still serve a warrant on you to get email in a targeted manner, assuming they have a…
You use a weird definition of "mass surveillance" if installing a single tapping device that can snoop on every customer of a company (hundreds of millions, for the large providers) doesn't qualify.
No, I use the definition that makes sense given the Snowden documents: high capacity cable taps on the backbone itself, not FBI style taps on specific companies after getting the keys via some sort of court process.