6 ms·

If you go near the Super Bowl you will be surveilled hard

42 points by callmeed 11y ago

pnathan 11y ago
To be clear, the bombing of the Super Bowl would be both a symbolic and a devastating coup for a terrorist. It's perfectly pragmatically reasonable for the law enforcement agencies to take special precautions. What those are, I decline to comment through ignorance: but precautions are exactly what I'd like to see.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- sbuttgereit 11y ago
  I agree with you in regard to this (or similar) event. I think the larger question is does this stuff really ever get turned off after the game? As the article notes, many of the surveillance techniques and such were in place well before the Super Bowl event: license plate readers, cameras, etc. The real issue isn't what happens during a high profile event, but how much of this is really just the normal course of governing... and why it needs to be that way. I think it reveals a more fundamental problem in our society: a tolerance for unnecessary intrusion by those with the power to disrupt our lives.
- omginternets 11y ago
  Nobody has a problem with security at or around the super bowl. Where people have a problem is in the use of surveillance that's both very invasive and very ineffective in actually stopping terrorist attacks. Dragnet surveillance of internet packets fall into that category.
  - pnathan 11y ago
    So, interesting question that I don't have an answer to (or position on). Suppose we say, look: no surveillance of packets without a warrant or due process. Fine and dandy. The FBI comes to a judge and says, hey - we have this major event which we consider to be a super high risk for an attack. We'd like to run a dragnet on the location for electronic surveillance for a month prior to try and detect attackers. No exemptions; they all go into a graph database and compared against known patterns and known malicious datapoints. After the event is over and the crowd has dispersed, we'll tear down the surveillance infrastructure and go home. What do you think the judge should say... (Let's say the tech is freaky effective: can isolate attackers 90% of the time. Does that change your answer? How come?) I don't have an answer to the above question. I can argue both sides of the debate, I think. :-)
    - omginternets 11y ago
      >What do you think the judge should say... I think the judge should evaluate, with the best available knowledge, the degree to which this approach is likely to be effective, and weigh that against the invasion of privacy it entails. >Let's say the tech is freaky effective: can isolate attackers 90% of the time. Does that change your answer? How come? Clearly, he should say yes. My entire argument stems from the fact that the most credible sources place the probability in the neighborhood of zero. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to do this bit of research himself, but here's a starting point: http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/33264/snowden-frances-intrusive-surveillance-laws-failed-stop-paris-attacks http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/33264/snowden-frances-intru... The burden of proof is on the person claiming that the tech is effective, and so far we've only seen it fail.
      - pnathan 11y ago
        Interesting. I would argue that from a civil liberties standpoint, the efficacy really doesn't matter, the intrusion onto privacy from such a technology is so great that it essentially grants a total awareness by the FBI into all the citizen's lives as they pursue their 'life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness'. And, if the surveillance is more effective, the ability to control harmless behaviour is more, and thus the infringement is worse.
        omginternets 11y ago
        I think the counter-argument (in this specific case) is that it's geographically restricted, which I think is fair from the standpoint of civil liberties. Does your example posit global dragnet surveillance, or are we still working within the frame of the superbowl exemplar?
        pnathan 11y ago
        In the superbowl exemplar, you've determined to have near-total visibility on a large (200K?) number of people (assuming 75K going to the stadium, roughly 3x that in the general region). Many of whom are not going to be involved; they are just passing by on their private business. Why should the government inquire deeply into their private lives without a specific warrant (as opposed to a general warrant)? It strains the bounds of credibility that a specific warrant can apply to hundreds of thousands of people. However, if we set aside the idea of privacy as a civil liberty to be protected, and assume that the greatest good would be to stop a terrorist attack, I think that we would be justified in
- kristopolous 11y ago
  Large scale responses to purely imagined nightmares do not come without consequences to civility and society. On the contrary, it elicits a response to something that will probably not happen as if it actually already occurred! The purpose of terrorism is to elicit this exact response. When we have the same reaction whether they show up or not, their goals are met without any effort or risk on their part! Extraordinary success. They've gotten all they asked for and didn't have to lift a finger. Good job for them!
  - marcoperaza 11y ago
    >The purpose of terrorism is to elicit this exact response. I don't buy this argument. Sure, you defeat your enemy in war by either destroying his legions or sapping his will to fight, but the last thing that you want him to do is take defensive positions that will hamper your attacks while being minimally invasive to his productivity and happiness. Now, if fear causes your opponent to take self-defeating measures, like ones that severely hamper economic activity or suppress individual freedom, that's a different story. It comes down to what the specific measures are.
    - kristopolous 11y ago
      War and terrorism are different things. If I am amassing political power by putting people in fear of say, the United States, I ought to depict the US as a bunch of people to be feared. So I show the political leaders saying that they want to kill us and I get more power. I show all the repressive state tactics of the Americans on their own people, I get more power. "Look", I say "Even at their sports games, the evil Americans treat their own citizens like they are in a prison!" Make no mistake, much of this is puppetry in the same way that the cold war, or terrorism, or the reds etc was used as a mechanism to gain political power in the US. Extreme things like this give an assist to facilitate a foreign orchestration of political attacks on the other (in this case, the US) and help them consolidate power. It's geopolitically and intrapolitically counter-productive --- well that is unless you are trying to control people through the forced-hand of FUD and not their actual consent. If this is still hard, think of WW2. It was justified historically because of how Germans treated the Jews. Everyone is on board with the presumed necessary large scale destruction of Europe because of the holocaust. It was the internal horrific politics of the Nazis on people they considered foreigners which justify this. If you want your people on board to what they think is a good, justifiable moral war, depicting your enemy as horrific and anti-freedom is a great effective way to do this. This only has to be true in the minds of the people you need to persuade - not objectively true in any sense. These tactics enfold hawkism and make a mockery of diplomacy and civility. What kind of world do you want? One where terrorism campaigns are a smashing success for winning local support or one where they don't actually work so people stop doing them?
- DrScump 11y ago
  It won't even take an actual attack to provoke an extreme response. Imagine, for example, a troublemaker group putting together a fleet of 100+ consumer-grade drones with empty spray cans attached and painted as to provide the illusion of a chemical or biological attack. What does security do? Ignore it all, or shut the place down? I don't see an intermediate response happening. Or, imagine the same thing being used as a diversion to a real attack elsewhere. Waiting within viewing range of the exits, for example. In situations like this, I think I'd prefer that the majority of security be covert, mixing in the crowds.
omegaworks 11y ago
It's ridiculous and disgusting. Spending all this public money on a private event. Shoving the homeless problem under the rug to put on a pretty face for all the visitors. Come protest with us. The city needs to invest in lasting solutions, not temporary ones. https://www.facebook.com/events/955997417814447/ https://www.facebook.com/events/955997417814447/
myztic 11y ago
I too think measurements like that are "fair", it is one of THE events in the US, so it makes sense to take special precautions. That being said, the NFL should pay for this 100%. They should also pay for their stadiums (not threaten local fans / politicians they will move if not being financially supported), and frankly they should pay for any security measures during any NFL games. The government paying for it is nothing but a quite heavy subsidy they don't need. It's the same though with any big sports league around the world where police / government is handling such affairs and the league is not paying for it.
- Zelphyr 11y ago
  I have to agree. It's pretty disgusting how the owners threaten cities until they get a new hundreds million dollars stadium, and how the NFL, MLB, and other leagues are complacent in this. But what's worse, far worse, is how the fans have no problem with their own governments being fleeced. Their tax dollars are used to build the lavish stadiums and then they're expected to pay exorbitant amounts just to go see a game. Bread and circuses indeed.
  - ohsnapman 11y ago
    The Roman government at least paid for the bread and circuses, right? They didn't ask the populace to pay for the right to pay for circus season tickets ...
- vacri 11y ago
  The role of government is to govern it's citizens. Major social events should be assisted by the government, in my opinion - if that's what people want to congregate to do, they should be able to do so safely. You'll often see this in smaller-scale events in the form of a few police officers thrown nearby to keep tabs on things. The NFL could handle a few less sweetheart deals in other areas though, for sure.
  - myztic 11y ago
    Major non-profit community events, yes, major for-profit billion-dollar events where tickets and a commercial slot cost I don't know how much, no! I have nothing against a city financially supporting some sort of community event, but this clearly is something completely else.
smoyer 11y ago
Everyone knows that the terrorists will detonate a nuclear bomb at the Super Bowl when it's in Denver. [1] In all seriousness, if event security is as lax as the TSA is at airports, what chance do they have of stopping it? Intercepting the cell traffic of those who are at the game will likely be too late. If they don't have credible intelligence beforehand, it's still going to be disasterous. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sum_of_All_Fears_%28film%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sum_of_All_Fears_%28film%2...
- callmeed 11y ago
  I thought the bomb was brought in through Baltimore and detonated in Baltimore or DC ...
  - smoyer 11y ago
    I had totally forgotten that the movie and book were different. You're remembering the movie correctly and I was remembering the book (which I read several times before the movie came out).
- whybroke 11y ago
  >Everyone knows that the terrorists will detonate a nuclear bomb at the Super Bowl when it's in Denver. No, no it's gonna be a blimp in Miami! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sunday_%281977_film%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sunday_%281977_film%29
gersh 11y ago
I see a lot of police near the ferry building in San Francisco with machine guns. It feels like the NFL is invading San Francisco.

42 points by callmeed 11y ago

To be clear, the bombing of the Super Bowl would be both a symbolic and a devastating coup for a terrorist. It's perfectly pragmatically reasonable for the law enforcement agencies to take special precautions. What those are, I decline to comment through ignorance: but precautions are exactly what I'd like to see.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
sbuttgereit 11y ago
I agree with you in regard to this (or similar) event. I think the larger question is does this stuff really ever get turned off after the game? As the article notes, many of the surveillance techniques and such were in place well before the Super Bowl event: license plate readers, cameras, etc. The real issue isn't what happens during a high profile event, but how much of this is really just the normal course of governing... and why it needs to be that way. I think it reveals a more fundamental problem in our society: a tolerance for unnecessary intrusion by those with the power to disrupt our lives.
omginternets 11y ago
Nobody has a problem with security at or around the super bowl. Where people have a problem is in the use of surveillance that's both very invasive and very ineffective in actually stopping terrorist attacks. Dragnet surveillance of internet packets fall into that category.
- pnathan 11y ago
  So, interesting question that I don't have an answer to (or position on). Suppose we say, look: no surveillance of packets without a warrant or due process. Fine and dandy. The FBI comes to a judge and says, hey - we have this major event which we consider to be a super high risk for an attack. We'd like to run a dragnet on the location for electronic surveillance for a month prior to try and detect attackers. No exemptions; they all go into a graph database and compared against known patterns and known malicious datapoints. After the event is over and the crowd has dispersed, we'll tear down the surveillance infrastructure and go home. What do you think the judge should say... (Let's say the tech is freaky effective: can isolate attackers 90% of the time. Does that change your answer? How come?) I don't have an answer to the above question. I can argue both sides of the debate, I think. :-)
  - omginternets 11y ago
    >What do you think the judge should say... I think the judge should evaluate, with the best available knowledge, the degree to which this approach is likely to be effective, and weigh that against the invasion of privacy it entails. >Let's say the tech is freaky effective: can isolate attackers 90% of the time. Does that change your answer? How come? Clearly, he should say yes. My entire argument stems from the fact that the most credible sources place the probability in the neighborhood of zero. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to do this bit of research himself, but here's a starting point: http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/33264/snowden-frances-intrusive-surveillance-laws-failed-stop-paris-attacks http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/33264/snowden-frances-intru... The burden of proof is on the person claiming that the tech is effective, and so far we've only seen it fail.
    - pnathan 11y ago
      Interesting. I would argue that from a civil liberties standpoint, the efficacy really doesn't matter, the intrusion onto privacy from such a technology is so great that it essentially grants a total awareness by the FBI into all the citizen's lives as they pursue their 'life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness'. And, if the surveillance is more effective, the ability to control harmless behaviour is more, and thus the infringement is worse.
      - omginternets 11y ago
        I think the counter-argument (in this specific case) is that it's geographically restricted, which I think is fair from the standpoint of civil liberties. Does your example posit global dragnet surveillance, or are we still working within the frame of the superbowl exemplar?
        pnathan 11y ago
        In the superbowl exemplar, you've determined to have near-total visibility on a large (200K?) number of people (assuming 75K going to the stadium, roughly 3x that in the general region). Many of whom are not going to be involved; they are just passing by on their private business. Why should the government inquire deeply into their private lives without a specific warrant (as opposed to a general warrant)? It strains the bounds of credibility that a specific warrant can apply to hundreds of thousands of people. However, if we set aside the idea of privacy as a civil liberty to be protected, and assume that the greatest good would be to stop a terrorist attack, I think that we would be justified in
kristopolous 11y ago
Large scale responses to purely imagined nightmares do not come without consequences to civility and society. On the contrary, it elicits a response to something that will probably not happen as if it actually already occurred! The purpose of terrorism is to elicit this exact response. When we have the same reaction whether they show up or not, their goals are met without any effort or risk on their part! Extraordinary success. They've gotten all they asked for and didn't have to lift a finger. Good job for them!
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  >The purpose of terrorism is to elicit this exact response. I don't buy this argument. Sure, you defeat your enemy in war by either destroying his legions or sapping his will to fight, but the last thing that you want him to do is take defensive positions that will hamper your attacks while being minimally invasive to his productivity and happiness. Now, if fear causes your opponent to take self-defeating measures, like ones that severely hamper economic activity or suppress individual freedom, that's a different story. It comes down to what the specific measures are.
  - kristopolous 11y ago
    War and terrorism are different things. If I am amassing political power by putting people in fear of say, the United States, I ought to depict the US as a bunch of people to be feared. So I show the political leaders saying that they want to kill us and I get more power. I show all the repressive state tactics of the Americans on their own people, I get more power. "Look", I say "Even at their sports games, the evil Americans treat their own citizens like they are in a prison!" Make no mistake, much of this is puppetry in the same way that the cold war, or terrorism, or the reds etc was used as a mechanism to gain political power in the US. Extreme things like this give an assist to facilitate a foreign orchestration of political attacks on the other (in this case, the US) and help them consolidate power. It's geopolitically and intrapolitically counter-productive --- well that is unless you are trying to control people through the forced-hand of FUD and not their actual consent. If this is still hard, think of WW2. It was justified historically because of how Germans treated the Jews. Everyone is on board with the presumed necessary large scale destruction of Europe because of the holocaust. It was the internal horrific politics of the Nazis on people they considered foreigners which justify this. If you want your people on board to what they think is a good, justifiable moral war, depicting your enemy as horrific and anti-freedom is a great effective way to do this. This only has to be true in the minds of the people you need to persuade - not objectively true in any sense. These tactics enfold hawkism and make a mockery of diplomacy and civility. What kind of world do you want? One where terrorism campaigns are a smashing success for winning local support or one where they don't actually work so people stop doing them?
DrScump 11y ago
It won't even take an actual attack to provoke an extreme response. Imagine, for example, a troublemaker group putting together a fleet of 100+ consumer-grade drones with empty spray cans attached and painted as to provide the illusion of a chemical or biological attack. What does security do? Ignore it all, or shut the place down? I don't see an intermediate response happening. Or, imagine the same thing being used as a diversion to a real attack elsewhere. Waiting within viewing range of the exits, for example. In situations like this, I think I'd prefer that the majority of security be covert, mixing in the crowds.

omegaworks 11y ago

It's ridiculous and disgusting. Spending all this public money on a private event. Shoving the homeless problem under the rug to put on a pretty face for all the visitors. Come protest with us. The city needs to invest in lasting solutions, not temporary ones. https://www.facebook.com/events/955997417814447/ https://www.facebook.com/events/955997417814447/

myztic 11y ago

I too think measurements like that are "fair", it is one of THE events in the US, so it makes sense to take special precautions. That being said, the NFL should pay for this 100%. They should also pay for their stadiums (not threaten local fans / politicians they will move if not being financially supported), and frankly they should pay for any security measures during any NFL games. The government paying for it is nothing but a quite heavy subsidy they don't need. It's the same though with any big sports league around the world where police / government is handling such affairs and the league is not paying for it.

Zelphyr 11y ago
I have to agree. It's pretty disgusting how the owners threaten cities until they get a new hundreds million dollars stadium, and how the NFL, MLB, and other leagues are complacent in this. But what's worse, far worse, is how the fans have no problem with their own governments being fleeced. Their tax dollars are used to build the lavish stadiums and then they're expected to pay exorbitant amounts just to go see a game. Bread and circuses indeed.
- ohsnapman 11y ago
  The Roman government at least paid for the bread and circuses, right? They didn't ask the populace to pay for the right to pay for circus season tickets ...
vacri 11y ago
The role of government is to govern it's citizens. Major social events should be assisted by the government, in my opinion - if that's what people want to congregate to do, they should be able to do so safely. You'll often see this in smaller-scale events in the form of a few police officers thrown nearby to keep tabs on things. The NFL could handle a few less sweetheart deals in other areas though, for sure.
- myztic 11y ago
  Major non-profit community events, yes, major for-profit billion-dollar events where tickets and a commercial slot cost I don't know how much, no! I have nothing against a city financially supporting some sort of community event, but this clearly is something completely else.

smoyer 11y ago

Everyone knows that the terrorists will detonate a nuclear bomb at the Super Bowl when it's in Denver. [1] In all seriousness, if event security is as lax as the TSA is at airports, what chance do they have of stopping it? Intercepting the cell traffic of those who are at the game will likely be too late. If they don't have credible intelligence beforehand, it's still going to be disasterous. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sum_of_All_Fears_%28film%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sum_of_All_Fears_%28film%2...

callmeed 11y ago
I thought the bomb was brought in through Baltimore and detonated in Baltimore or DC ...
- smoyer 11y ago
  I had totally forgotten that the movie and book were different. You're remembering the movie correctly and I was remembering the book (which I read several times before the movie came out).
whybroke 11y ago
>Everyone knows that the terrorists will detonate a nuclear bomb at the Super Bowl when it's in Denver. No, no it's gonna be a blimp in Miami! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sunday_%281977_film%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sunday_%281977_film%29

gersh 11y ago

I see a lot of police near the ferry building in San Francisco with machine guns. It feels like the NFL is invading San Francisco.