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Could British invention foil terror bombs?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#51

Post by GordonS »

mseebach wrote: post #44
junto wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wherever you have a funnel, you get a queue. You have people standing outside waiting for the bus, smoking a cigarette. People gather and there is nothing that you can do about it.

Then don't have a funnel, or have enough of them. I've never queued, except for maybe the briefest of moments, to enter an airport building, even though you always have to pass through a "funnel" (aka draft-preventing double doors[1]). Even the narrow automatic one-way sluice doors[2] increasingly popular as you leave the secure area of an airport only ever seem to cause a queue when some idiot tries to go back, and…

> I've never queued, except for maybe the briefest of moments, to enter an airport building

Probably because most airports don't have security before entering. For those that do, there are indeed large queues outside. Mumbai airport is one such example.

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#52

Post by rayiner »

d4nt wrote: post #45
rayiner wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't view the impact of death merely in terms of body count. If we did, we wouldn't care about serial killers or child abductions or people shot by police. We devote major resources to fighting terrorism not because of the body count, but because we feel it deeply unjust to allow terrorists to kill innocent people to make a political point, especially when that political point is an attack on fundamental prec…

I don't think the parent post was suggesting we don't care about it. Just questioning why we care about it more than, say, serial killers. > Terrorism isn't just an attack on people; it's intended to be an attack on our institutions and our society. The fact that you're calling it terrorism instead of murder, and that we're discussing this in the context of an OP about the development of new technologies to detect ex…

Terrorism and murder are two entirely different things. What distinguishes various types of killing is intent. Killing someone because they stepped onto your drug dealing territory is an act motivated by a very different intent than killing someone to make a political point.

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#53

Post by d4nt »

rayiner wrote: post #52
d4nt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the parent post was suggesting we don't care about it. Just questioning why we care about it more than, say, serial killers. > Terrorism isn't just an attack on people; it's intended to be an attack on our institutions and our society. The fact that you're calling it terrorism instead of murder, and that we're discussing this in the context of an OP about the development of new technologies to detect ex…

Terrorism and murder are two entirely different things. What distinguishes various types of killing is intent . Killing someone because they stepped onto your drug dealing territory is an act motivated by a very different intent than killing someone to make a political point.

I accept that people kill people for lots of different reasons. And that sometimes its sensible to consider intent (e.g. when passing a sentence).

But we've ended up in a position where killing people because they stepped onto your drug dealing territory will get you a mention on the evening news, followed by a trial by jury, while everyone gets on with their lives.

But killing people because you believe you're in a holy war will get you wall to wall news coverage for several days, any associates in foreign countries will be summarily killed by drone attack, and whatever particular tactics you used (shoe bomb, liquid explosives in drinks bottle, attacking outspoken news publication) will be memorialised across the globe within days in the form of updated security procedures or public reaction.

I don't particularly fear being killed by a religious fanatic, it's so rare it would be irrational to fear that. But I do fear the disintegration of my open and free society due to a social engineering hack called "Terrorism".

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#54

Post by nkozyra »

GordonS wrote: post #41
wildmusings wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, terrorism is a high-variance event and we can't extrapolate that future violence will resemble current violence. A single catastrophic attack, like a nuke in a city, makes everything that happened before irrelevant. 9/11 itself was a huge escalation, the most deadly terrorist attack in history by far. Future death tolls are limited only by the capabilities of the terrorists and our ability to stop them. They…

> Future death tolls are limited only by the capabilities of the terrorists and our ability to stop them. They would kill millions of us if they could This is rather sensationalist. There are infinite ways that anyone with a bit of intelligence could hurt or kill large numbers of people with small arms, explosives, chemicals, vehicles etc - and yet we see time and time again that terrorists usually display extreme in…

> The few terrorists that there are, just aren't very good at it.

Sure, but let's say we take the "stop freaking out about it" approach and it enables further mobilization. Suddenly those things change in a hurry.

> The idea of terrorists getting hold of a nuke and actually being able to use it effectively is, frankly, ridiculous.

Unless a terrorist organization is able to morph into a pseudo-state. Which sounds a little less ridiculous than it did five years ago.

The point is primarily that chastising fear/effort/resources/counterattacks based only on the current statistical threat level is short-sighted.

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#55

Post by mseebach »

chopin wrote: post #48
mseebach wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to see what happens if you slip a big knife into someones carry-on? It's harder than "covertly dabbing" someone, but not impossible. On the other hand, big knifes are substantially easier to get your hands on without drawing attention to yourself than even microscopic amounts of Semtex. Yet, it doesn't happen, so I think we're safe here.

Just use fertilizer. I am pretty sure that will work, too. If not, congratulations, you know now how to defeat the guard.

The system would need to be resilient to small amounts of fertiliser, otherwise it would trigger on anybody who's been on a farm or done gardening recently. Heck, I use fertiliser when watering plants in my flat. That's not a practical level of false positives.

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#56

Post by GordonS »

nkozyra wrote: post #54
GordonS wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Future death tolls are limited only by the capabilities of the terrorists and our ability to stop them. They would kill millions of us if they could This is rather sensationalist. There are infinite ways that anyone with a bit of intelligence could hurt or kill large numbers of people with small arms, explosives, chemicals, vehicles etc - and yet we see time and time again that terrorists usually display extreme in…

> The few terrorists that there are, just aren't very good at it. Sure, but let's say we take the "stop freaking out about it" approach and it enables further mobilization. Suddenly those things change in a hurry. > The idea of terrorists getting hold of a nuke and actually being able to use it effectively is, frankly, ridiculous. Unless a terrorist organization is able to morph into a pseudo-state. Which sounds a li…

I'm not saying we should be entirely complacent, but the response from the western world since 9/11, and ongoing, has been insane, and has caused more civilian deaths than any terrorist attack could ever cause.

Devices like this, or indeed body scanners, just add to the security theatre that makes corporations money and allows our politicians to further continue the narrative of fear that allows them to get away with almost anything.

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#57

Post by dang »

seivan wrote: post #29
sametmax wrote: post #3

I find crazy the amount of resources we deploy to fight something: - that causes little deaths compared to most diseases or social issues. - cost little compared to most economical or educational issues. - has little long term consequences on the country compared to internal and external policies, laws, politics and visions; - is a direct consequence of social, economical and educational issues and a by product of po…

You should tell that to women and kids who were hit by chemical bombs from British Muslims in Rojava.

Most of your posts continue to be political rants despite our asking you more than once not to do this. If you keep doing it, we're going to ban your account.

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#58

Post by seivan »

dang wrote: post #57
seivan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should tell that to women and kids who were hit by chemical bombs from British Muslims in Rojava.

Most of your posts continue to be political rants despite our asking you more than once not to do this. If you keep doing it, we're going to ban your account.

That happene when the likes of you become mods. I went back far enough to check. But hey, don't let that make you wonder.

Re: Could British invention foil terror bombs?

#59

Post by dang »

seivan wrote: post #58
dang wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of your posts continue to be political rants despite our asking you more than once not to do this. If you keep doing it, we're going to ban your account.

That happene when the likes of you become mods. I went back far enough to check. But hey, don't let that make you wonder.

I'm concluding that you haven't any interest in not abusing HN, so your account is banned.

Your view of how HN moderation has changed is quite wrong. PG would have banned you many times over (and IIRC actually did).

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