6 ms·

News flash: state actors can already track and kill anyone they want

by 21 9y ago

mtgx 9y ago
State actors can't yet kill anyone in any other country from the comfort of their chairs. This is the same argument people make when they say "drone strikes are the same as air strikes". Not they are not. We're seeing orders of magnitude more drone strikes than air strikes, and that's because they are different (such as much cheaper and easier to do than ever before).
- 21 9y ago
  > State actors can't yet kill anyone in any other country from the comfort of their chairs. This is what the CIA/Mossad/FSB/... does Sure, cars will make it cheaper and more convenient, and will open up the "market" to smaller states, but it's not a new capability.
  - tyfon 9y ago
    Sometimes they do, but sometimes they get caught like in this instance. Doing it by car would probably be preferable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair
  - mamon 9y ago
    They try it, but the results are usually pathetic. Think of all those CIA's attempts to kill Fidel Castro...
IntronExon 9y ago
Sure, but can they reliably make it look like an accident, over and over and over?
jrs95 9y ago
Not remotely, with ease, and with a built in story as to how the person died. Perhaps in more oppressive environments it wouldn’t matter, but being able to cause car accidents at will would substantially expand the ability of the U.S. government to carry out assassinations without raising suspicion. Even if someone were to notice, and point out a string of 20 people killed in strange and unlikely car accidents that shouldn’t have happened, nobody would believe them anyways. It would be treated like any other conspiracy theory. At the same time, I’m pretty sure they could come up with much better ways of killing people than this. Technology makes really dystopian shit a lot easier.

6 ms·

News flash: state actors can already track and kill anyone they want

by 21 9y ago

News flash: state actors can already track and kill anyone they want

mtgx 9y ago
State actors can't yet kill anyone in any other country from the comfort of their chairs. This is the same argument people make when they say "drone strikes are the same as air strikes". Not they are not. We're seeing orders of magnitude more drone strikes than air strikes, and that's because they are different (such as much cheaper and easier to do than ever before).
- 21 9y ago
  > State actors can't yet kill anyone in any other country from the comfort of their chairs. This is what the CIA/Mossad/FSB/... does Sure, cars will make it cheaper and more convenient, and will open up the "market" to smaller states, but it's not a new capability.
  - tyfon 9y ago
    Sometimes they do, but sometimes they get caught like in this instance. Doing it by car would probably be preferable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair
  - mamon 9y ago
    They try it, but the results are usually pathetic. Think of all those CIA's attempts to kill Fidel Castro...
IntronExon 9y ago
Sure, but can they reliably make it look like an accident, over and over and over?
jrs95 9y ago
Not remotely, with ease, and with a built in story as to how the person died. Perhaps in more oppressive environments it wouldn’t matter, but being able to cause car accidents at will would substantially expand the ability of the U.S. government to carry out assassinations without raising suspicion. Even if someone were to notice, and point out a string of 20 people killed in strange and unlikely car accidents that shouldn’t have happened, nobody would believe them anyways. It would be treated like any other conspiracy theory. At the same time, I’m pretty sure they could come up with much better ways of killing people than this. Technology makes really dystopian shit a lot easier.