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U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

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Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#71

Post by godelski »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #48
datashow wrote: post #7

> "U.S. surveillance laws failed to counter terrorism" > "The patchwork of U.S. surveillance laws has proven ineffective at countering terrorism" Where is the proof? I can not find it in the article.

They haven't provide proof that it is effective.

This is the correct assessment. It is on those making claims that require the burden of proof.

The claim is that "sacrificing liberty is providing us more safety" __not__ "our sacrifice of liberty has been ineffective at providing more safety." The latter statement comes from the lack of proof from those that carry the requisite burden. The former claims were made when liberty was initially eroded. Now that we have had time and calmed down people are asking "was it worth it?" and no one has provided a compelling "yes, here's (with evidence) why".

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#72

Post by nostrademons »

npo9 wrote: post #23
president wrote: post #14

I'm not sure what the alternative is. Without some form of surveillance, you're never going to catch terrorists or other bad actors. You do, however, need to make sure there are strong checks and balances in place to ensure that people don't use it for nefarious purposes or for personal gain.

> Without some form of surveillance, you're never going to catch terrorists or other bad actors. The article: Surveillance fails to catch terrorist. Your argument: Without surveillance we cannot catch terrorist. My question: How are we catching them now? How did we catch bad actors and saboteurs before surveillance?

There's a base rate fallacy here: take a look at total deaths from terrorism in the U.S.

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

After September 11, the typical number of deaths from terrorism in a given year was...0, give or take a few, with a disconcerting uptick since 2013. Great, our efforts to curb terrorism are working!

From 1975-2001, the typical number of deaths from terrorism in a given year was...2. Wait, the massive surveillance state has saved 2 lives a year? What? We saved more lives by posting a guard at the Caltrain tracks in Palo Alto to keep people from killing themselves.

By the numbers, terrorism just wasn't a problem, because rational people don't blow themselves up to make a point. Mentally ill people do, and a significant number of mass shootings are not counted in the terrorism statistics but actually kill far more people. But by making terrorism into a big bogeyman that's going to kill you, it feeds into the interests of the media, of the state, and of the military-industrial complex, and so there are a lot of powerful forces shaping the discourse around terrorism that aren't necessarily reflective of reality.

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#73

Post by avip »

datashow wrote: post #7

> "U.S. surveillance laws failed to counter terrorism" > "The patchwork of U.S. surveillance laws has proven ineffective at countering terrorism" Where is the proof? I can not find it in the article.

Maybe you didn't read thoroughly? They brought an objective expert, and she said it could be ineffective but it's hard to tell because of reasons.

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#74

Post by jxramos »

datashow wrote: post #7

> "U.S. surveillance laws failed to counter terrorism" > "The patchwork of U.S. surveillance laws has proven ineffective at countering terrorism" Where is the proof? I can not find it in the article.

I thought there was a list of this sort of counter terrorism successes, apparently there is... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist...

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#75

Post by amatecha »

aquadrop wrote: post #65

The only measure that needed to be done after 9/11, and it's surprising why this very effective measure wasn't implemented before - securing access to the pilot's cabin. Everything else is overreaction cause by power grabbing by "security agencies" and politicians trying to score. The whole security system of today's world (especially in flying) is one pointless thing after another, holding on the a fear of "what if"…

Doesn't help when it's a pilot who wants to crash the plane. Further, that makes it impossible for anyone to intervene in that case.

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#76

Post by mLuby »

Shivetya wrote: post #69

Is there any country which hasn't had this result? I didn't know anyone who was fond of their own countries efforts.

Germany seems to be moving in the other direction. I assume they can do this because unlike the US, Germans can point to their own history with secret police and authoritarian states as cautionary tales.

Not that other countries couldn't also look to Germany's example, but that would require trans-national empathy so LOLno.

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#77

Post by homonculus1 »

dheera wrote: post #32

Most terrorists in the US happen to be white (and really just because it's the majority race), but the media and government fail to use the term "terrorist" if they are white. That in turn results in them being busy racially profiling against colored people and foreign nationals and overlooking a lot of culprits. Also, nobody is born a terrorist. They're overly fixated on catching terrorists instead of preventing ter…

The City of San Francisco designated the NRA of all groups as a terrorist organization. There are plenty of institutional actors itching to label white terrorism, even past the point of sanity.

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#78

Post by buzzy_hacker »

djrogers wrote: post #59
anarchodev wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the mis-selling exactly? Doesn't seem to me that they're saying using their VPN will make you impenetrable to dedicated actors with nation-state resources. VPNs do help maintain one small level of privacy (namely from your ISP), and if you're using one it's a good bet you'll be interested in other privacy concerns too. There are a lot of VPNs with really bogus claims on their websites but I didn't notice anyt…

> VPNs do help maintain one small level of privacy (namely from your ISP) So you've transferred the lack of privacy from one company (your ISP) to another (your VPN vendor). Heck - look what happened to Onavo - facebook bought them and reaped a treasure trove of private browsing habits.

Well your VPN has a commercial interest in keeping your browsing private.

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#79

Post by blurps »

baybal2 wrote: post #64
blurps wrote: post #44

Great informative article, but at times the posing is naive or supporting a certain narrative. For instance: The government goes after Islamic terrorists and Mexican illegal immigrants. So what to complain about? Mix cause and effect to pose the illegal immigrants as targeting based on race. Or pose the extremist religious as vulnerable Muslims, targeted on religion. Remove their status as far away from the cold-hard…

> far away from the cold-hard reality The cold-hard reality is that states who have established a system of domestic surveillance have sent millions of their own citizens to crematoriums. Sane nations have destroyed your political faction back in sixties. Pro-communist, race chauvinists who look up to Mao for inspiration were thrown in the garbage bin of history, and thank god for that. Very fortunately, America of t…

You are using the same tactic I described: State surveillance has the potential to turn us all into Nazi's, so state surveillance is inherently bad. How can I ever hope to support the good of state surveillance for national security when I have to defend the Stasi? I can't. You (God)win.

It is intellectually dishonest to pose the effort of governments to combat illegal immigration as a targeting of people based on race. It is a sensitivity trap that shuts down our rational faculties. Yes... all religious extremists are also religious. Most immigrants have a different race. Yes, being an undocumented immigrant makes you vulnerable. But deserving of coddling, because they happen to also share a protected variable? No.

Re: U.S. surveillance laws have proven ineffective at countering terrorism

#80

Post by dmix »

amatecha wrote: post #75
aquadrop wrote: post #65

The only measure that needed to be done after 9/11, and it's surprising why this very effective measure wasn't implemented before - securing access to the pilot's cabin. Everything else is overreaction cause by power grabbing by "security agencies" and politicians trying to score. The whole security system of today's world (especially in flying) is one pointless thing after another, holding on the a fear of "what if"…

Doesn't help when it's a pilot who wants to crash the plane. Further, that makes it impossible for anyone to intervene in that case.

Nor when we give licences and large vans/trucks to people who want to crash them. It's about managing risk and historically most hijackings have been by passengers and there is no significant loss to securing it with passenger jets having two pilots (ie, if one passes out), its win-win.

Meanwhile the vast majority of what the TSA and a significant-enough chunk of what security agencies do is pure theater, in exchange for a significant headaches and loss of privacy/dignity/time/etc of citizens who fund and technically support such organizations - and everyone else visiting the country as it deters plenty of tourism and business travel.

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