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The varying strategies (and their varying results -- even when applying the same strategy but in a different location) is rather surprising to me, especially wh

The varying strategies (and their varying results -- even when applying the same strategy but in a different location) is rather surprising to me, especially when you dig around a little and find that plenty of places don't re-think their strategy for decades while the results remain 'meh' at best. Maybe this works well for Australia, or they are stuck in 1990 and simply haven't looked back and wondered if anything could be done differently. Example would be: instead of catching everything you see, you can also collect information until you find a pattern, central driver or societal problem and solve that to solve the underlying problem. The counter-example would then be: instead of always trying to catch the biggest fish you can also make a few examples and disturb something like a criminal network by messing up the actions of their foot soldiers. I suspect the way you go about it increases or decreases the amount of individual requests you need in order to execute your mandate.

sbeller 6y ago
> places don't re-think their strategy for decades because it is hard to measure the effectiveness. How many terrorist attacks and domestic incidents are there (assuming in good faith those are the only things to be prevented) ? I would assume in the absence of any of these national security agencies that there were only very few per year if not decade. That makes it hard to adjust the strategy even if you assume that they are totally focused on security only, and not e.g. on the continued presence of their paycheck of suppression of opposition parties. To give you an example: the (American) security measures at the airport that were introduced in 2001 can be considered a total success, as there has been no incidence since then (success = good, people can get promoted for that[0]), although these measures have been called security theater at times[1]. And with these measures called successful by those promoted people, why change them? Of course some other people opine that they may not be as successful as they claim they are [2], but it is still hard to quantify. > instead of catching everything you see, you can also collect information until you find a pattern yeah that seems likely. Though this scares me personally as I may demonstrate a pattern now that will make me a suspect in the future, despite doing nothing wrong. [0] I worked at big tech once upon a time [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/tsa-business-security-theater-not-security/357599/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/tsa-bus... [2] https://www.thelocal.de/20091231/24279 https://www.thelocal.de/20091231/24279
- oneplane 6y ago
  Yes, the way we 'measure' or call something a 'success' can be amusing at best (sometimes). Reminds me of a joke where someone is throwing paper out of a train, someone asks: why are you doing that. Person says: to keep the flying elephants away from the train. And since there are no flying elephants storming the train it must be working!

sbeller 6y ago

> places don't re-think their strategy for decades because it is hard to measure the effectiveness. How many terrorist attacks and domestic incidents are there (assuming in good faith those are the only things to be prevented) ? I would assume in the absence of any of these national security agencies that there were only very few per year if not decade. That makes it hard to adjust the strategy even if you assume that they are totally focused on security only, and not e.g. on the continued presence of their paycheck of suppression of opposition parties. To give you an example: the (American) security measures at the airport that were introduced in 2001 can be considered a total success, as there has been no incidence since then (success = good, people can get promoted for that[0]), although these measures have been called security theater at times[1]. And with these measures called successful by those promoted people, why change them? Of course some other people opine that they may not be as successful as they claim they are [2], but it is still hard to quantify. > instead of catching everything you see, you can also collect information until you find a pattern yeah that seems likely. Though this scares me personally as I may demonstrate a pattern now that will make me a suspect in the future, despite doing nothing wrong. [0] I worked at big tech once upon a time [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/tsa-business-security-theater-not-security/357599/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/01/tsa-bus... [2] https://www.thelocal.de/20091231/24279 https://www.thelocal.de/20091231/24279

oneplane 6y ago
Yes, the way we 'measure' or call something a 'success' can be amusing at best (sometimes). Reminds me of a joke where someone is throwing paper out of a train, someone asks: why are you doing that. Person says: to keep the flying elephants away from the train. And since there are no flying elephants storming the train it must be working!