41–50 of 78 posts
9/11 was used as an excuse to create more mass spying on Americans even though 2,977 people died while 42,116 died from car accidents that same year.
The sentiment here seems pretty anti-surveillance -- but why the false dichotomy? Both are important issues. It just comes off as demeaning to the people that died in 9/11. So much vitriol here today, jeez.
Covered many times before. How Mark Klein told the EFF about Room 641A [book excerpt] ( https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-whistleblower-who-unc... ) 710 points | the-mitr | 4 months ago | 254 comments Room 641A ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A ) 333 points | hourislate | 6 years ago | 70 comments Room 641A ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A ) 248 points | llambda | 13 years ago | 44 comments Room…
9/11 was used as an excuse to create more mass spying on Americans even though 2,977 people died while 42,116 died from car accidents that same year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> even though 2,977 people died while 42,116 died from car accidents that same year I have trouble understanding your logic. A lot of trouble is made to prevent car accidents. We require driving licenses, we develop whole categories of law and do plenty of research to make driving safer.
Right, so we would expect the magnitude of the changes from 9/11 to be about 1/14th the magnitude of the changes we do to prevent car deaths.
Otherwise, this is surface-level insanity.
9/11 was used as an excuse to create more mass spying on Americans even though 2,977 people died while 42,116 died from car accidents that same year.
Only about 2500 Americans died at Pearl Harbor. I don’t know what automobile safety was like in 1941, but I’m sure it wasn’t great, then, either. I’m therefore not sure what weight this argument is supposed to carry.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, so we would expect the magnitude of the changes from 9/11 to be about 1/14th the magnitude of the changes we do to prevent car deaths.
We have a whole licensing apparatus and traffic policing as well as safety regulations for vehicles driven on public roads. It's not cheap.
You're right on licensing but I wonder how it compares to the cost of the TSA?
9/11 was used as an excuse to create more mass spying on Americans even though 2,977 people died while 42,116 died from car accidents that same year.
Mass surveillance has certainly gone too far, but comparing 3000 premeditated murders to car accidents is not really a logical way to argue that. We investigate murder for a reason, despite it being a much rarer cause of death than natural causes and accidents.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Fixing this broken language and attitude is a step towards ending these deaths. Is it? The person you responded to sees car crashes as an important issue to solve yet still calls it "car accidents". So maybe it's not that important after all. Nothing makes me saltier than language policing; I'd say fixing _that_ broken language is more of a step towards fixing issues than the actual language itself.
It's not about language, it's about culture. If you saw someone running through a crowd with a knife you'd expect them to be thrown in prison. But someone speeding through a neighborhood? Or dangerously overtaking a cyclist? No bother. If the person running with the knife hurt someone they'd be a murderer. But the car? Oh, it was just an accident .
If it's the first, I dunno - you're wrong. People aren't. If it's the second, aside from insurance fraud, nobody is trying to fuck up their day and lose a functional car in the process, maybe getting seriously injured. If it's the third, you're just being annoying and nobody will take your point seriously if you can't make it more saliently. If it's the last, go check out reddit. There are at least half a dozen subs where people post bad drivers and everyone in the comments is collectively grumbling.