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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

#111

Post by commandlinefan »

JohnFen wrote: post #93
commandlinefan wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> securing access to the pilot's cabin Well, no, actually it was impossible to get into the cabin from outside long before 9/11 (in fact, I think since the 70’s). The hijackers smuggled box-cutters on board and used the box cutters to kill stewardesses until the pilot agreed to open the door - after which they had full access to the plane.

> until the pilot agreed to open the door That's the problem -- that there was a door that could be opened. It seems to me that there shouldn't be. The pilots should have their own separate entrance from the exterior of the aircraft.

> should have their own separate entrance

I think they have to be able to get in and out to use the bathroom, though. And get some food.

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

#112

Post by refurb »

Razengan wrote: post #22
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.

Really? It doesn't even occur to you to address the issues that create "terrorists?"

There will always be people willing to use violence to effect change, no matter how hard you try and fix the issues they raise.

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

#113

Post by 54thr »

alexfromapex wrote: post #20
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.

It can be done, the intelligence agencies just need to find new ways to identify terrorists or prevent terrorists from causing harm.

What if the terrorists were intelligence agencies? How would we stop them?

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

#114

Post by npo9 »

nostrademons wrote: post #72
npo9 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 giv…

“We’re not catching them because they aren’t there” seems like a valid hypothesis, but I’m not sure I fully buy into it.

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

#115

Post by voldacar »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #24
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.

The structure of your statement has problems not related to the topic at all. When you take something away that never (or rarely) happens, how do you establish causality? Suppose I told you that taking bazookas away from people that live in the city prevents bear attacks? You might say that there aren't bear attacks in the city anyway, which would be true, but you couldn't prove it one way or another. Who knows, mayb…

> How much stuff do you want to give away for a 50% reduction in terrorism? And once you come up with that answer, how would you know if your giving those things actually was the thing that reduced it?

You are totally right of course, but the public "debate" around these kind of issues is so emotion-driven that this line of questioning is never explored. Humans generally want someone in power over them that will grant them safety and security, and a sense of certainty that nothing bad will happen to them. Any argument that relies on probability and the idea of trade-offs will never be effective in the public square of a democratic society

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

#116

Post by mpiedrav »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #40
mpiedrav wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasons behind the kind of terrorism for which mass surveillance is enforced (e.g., Muslim fundamentalists against American interests) have deep historical roots, too messy to be addressed. Britain and France had geopolitical and business interests in the Middle East since the 18-19th century. America since the 20th, when oil suddenly had all the spotlight. Fundamentalists are convinced that "the West" is the Devil o…

You're conveniently ignoring the fact that the US has historically ruined entire countries for multiple generations just to benefit itself. Maybe if we'd stop carpet bombing other countries we'd have fewer people that hate us. Most of the problems in the Middle East, at least with regards to them hating the US, are because the US did something to directly make them hate the US. Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan - at least…

I'm not ignoring those facts about the destructive role of America in the Middle East. What I'm alluding to is that fundamentalists hating the West have way more "historical ammo" for their arguments than just pointing at the US. It's just that the current biggest offender is America (which makes it the main target for terrorism). Before that, it was Britain.

On a grand historical scale, the Powers That May at any given point in time become the main offender against those having something of value. Next time it'll probably be China (beginning with the "Security Theater" [1] in Xinjiang).

[1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2009/11/beyond_secu...

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

#117

Post by pixl97 »

JohnFen wrote: post #95
falcolas wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between TLS and DNS over HTTPS, the number of things an ISP can reliably discern from your traffic is becoming vanishingly small. Once the TLS SNI plaintext hole is closed, it becomes smaller still. One can argue that IPs and ports matter, but if all the IPs you visit are in AWS (and their ilk) over 443 (including real time communication protocols), it becomes meaningless.

> but if all the IPs you visit are in AWS (and their ilk) over 443 (including real time communication protocols), it becomes meaningless. Perhaps, but what about all the traffic that doesn't go to AWS or use port 443? The vast majority of my traffic doesn't do those things, and very probably won't within my lifetime.

What exactly are you doing that isnt using TLS? That's not most peoples usage on the web.

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

#118

Post by wildmusings »

oAlbe wrote: post #106
JohnFen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> until the pilot agreed to open the door That's the problem -- that there was a door that could be opened. It seems to me that there shouldn't be. The pilots should have their own separate entrance from the exterior of the aircraft.

Is that actually the problem though? Or is it that you are still here discussing of ways to prevent airplane hijacking in a world where cows still kill more people that airplane hijacking terrorists? I don't mean to come across as condescending, I believe that as long as we spend our time talking about possible "solutions" to what-if, abstract problems, without addressing the real issues, we are just going to waste o…

This is a pretty absurd thing to say. Natural or accidental deaths are different than planned attacks. There is no shortage of murderous, suicidal people. If you made it easier for them, more of them would go for it. The 3 successful attacks on 9/11 contributed something like an extra 20% to the US murder rate. That’s not insignificant.

Also, we do spend an enormous amount of money on safety in the US. Why do you think the absolute cheapest new cars in the US are two to four times as expensive as new cars in countries that don’t have the same kind of safety standards (e.g. Mexico or India)? And because of the tort system, businesses spend untold amounts of money making their facilities and products safer in general.

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

#119

Post by indrax »

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"…

The most significant security response to the novel parts of the 9/11 attacks was done by the passengers on flight 93. It took an hour and seventeen minutes for them to get the news and adapt the strategy to hijackings.

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

#120

Post by LMYahooTFY »

manicdee wrote: post #109
jxramos wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Now go through them and weed out the plots that were actually sting operations where all the motivation, allies, funding and training came from three letter agencies in a million dollar operation to trick an angry young Muslim man into building a bomb instead of just graffitiing walls with ACAB.

I recall reading stories reporting that this was happening not long after 9/11. Do you have any other links to share?
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