4 ms·

Reminds me of another bombing incident, where the FBI was warned by the Russian FSB that the Boston Bombers, the Tsarnaevs, had associated with Islamist militan

Reminds me of another bombing incident, where the FBI was warned by the Russian FSB that the Boston Bombers, the Tsarnaevs, had associated with Islamist militant extremists: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-explosions-boston-congress/russia-warned-u-s-about-boston-marathon-bomb-suspect-tsarnaev-report-idUSBREA2P02Q20140326 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-explosions-boston-con... Yet, millions of dollars were being poured into "Fusion Centers", efforts to coordinate activities between intelligence agencies and local law enforcement: what were they doing? Turns out they were busy monitoring Occupy Boston, same as Fusion Centers across the country: http://www.justiceonline.org/unaware_of_tsarnaev_warnings http://www.justiceonline.org/unaware_of_tsarnaev_warnings They always ask for more surveillance funding/powers, yet they never have a good answer when it comes to what they do when they're granted such powers.

lovecg 6y ago
A familiar situation to anyone who worked in a large organization of any kind. What’s really needed on the ground and what gets funded by the top are often only tangentially related.
sneak 6y ago
The military and security services have deployed vast, illegal domestic spying networks, on the basis that if USians give up their privacy, they will be able to exchange it for safety. Here we see that not only is that untrue, but also that even with tips they can't seem to get basic, non-surveillance policework right. Remind me again why we tolerate these abuses in the name of safety? We and they now know they aren't being used for safety, if indeed that was even possible. What else could and will these massive surveillance powers be used for?
- dvdbloc 6y ago
  Providing “jobs” and enriching executives basically.
- darawk 6y ago
  It is important to keep in mind that when security is working, you don't see any evidence of it. We don't actually know how many terrorist attacks have been stopped by this surveillance. It may well be a lot. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that many have been. Which is why it's so important that we do not ground criticisms of surveillance in arguments about efficacy. Surveillance is effective, or at least, it can be. Surveillance is wrong because it concentrates too much power in the hands of the government.
  - Animats 6y ago
    We don't actually know how many terrorist attacks have been stopped by this surveillance. It may well be a lot. Actually, we do, because the FBI issues press releases when they succeed. Here's a relevant paper from an FBI study of "lone offender terrorism" [1] This guy fits the profile - white, some college, no major criminal history, not employed, marijuana user. [1] https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/lone-offender-terrorism-report-111319.pdf/view https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/lone-offender-terrorism-...
    - darawk 6y ago
      This is a list of people who successfully carried out attacks, it looks like. Not people who's attacks were foiled.
      - ric2b 6y ago
        Because that second list would be empty. They would be shouting it from the rooftops if they were actually stopping attacks.
        Animats 6y ago
        Which the FBI does. "Kenyan National Indicted For Conspiring To Hijack Aircraft On Behalf Of The Al Qaeda-Affiliated Terrorist Organization Al Shabaab. Cholo Abdi Abdullah Obtained Pilot Training and Researched How to Hijack Aircraft in Order to Conduct a 9/11-Style Attack at the Direction of al Shabaab."[1] Here's the FBI's list of terrorism-related press releases.[2] [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/kenyan-national-indicted-conspiring-hijack-aircraft-behalf-al-qaeda-affiliated https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/kenyan-national-indicte... [2] https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism/news https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism/news
schoen 6y ago
I sympathize with the goal of not giving law enforcement more surveillance powers, but I wonder how valid the anecdotal "connecting the dots" stories of law enforcement failures are. For example, it's conceivable that law enforcement or intelligence agencies regularly get a huge volume of urgent tips, 90% of which are totally incorrect or useless, and that they nonetheless manage to stop 95% of super-bad acts like terror attacks. Then the public hears about the 5% that they don't stop, and especially hears about the 0.5%, say, where a probably-unreliable tip was not successfully used to prevent a super-bad act. In order to argue convincingly that agencies are actually bad at using the powers or information that they already have, we would probably want to know a lot more about base rates (and about thwarted or deterred crimes). Edit: This comment downthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25579252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25579252 just before mine makes a somewhat similar point (although I was emphasizing the idea that we should want more data for this argument, while the other comment emphasizes the idea that there are more fundamental or important grounds on which to oppose expansions of surveillance powers).
- atoav 6y ago
  The problem (luckily!) is, that the thing they are trying to detect happens extremely rare. And when you try to detect rare events, even if your methods are 99.9% accurate you will drown in false positives. I once did the maths on facial recognition tech which was meant to recognize terrorists at Berlin main station. With the known number of commuters there and an accuracy of 99.9% (which is extremely optimistic) they would have over 600 false positives per terrorist if I remember correctly. The system they had installed there however wont even reach 80%... Imagine you have an alarm that rings twice every day, and is real and serious only once a year. How likely are you to react in time? I think this is the fundamental problem with the "we need more data and more rights"-strategy of most police and law enforcement. I am convinced what they actually need is more personel with a good education. Edit: what this kind of data is better at recognizing are broad movements in society like demonstrations, protests and such things.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    > Edit: what this kind of data is better at recognizing are broad movements in society like demonstrations, protests and such things. Yes, this is their real purpose. They're not rolling out these wide ranging systems at extraordinary expense when they're at all unsure they will actually solve the problem they're trying to solve.
NalNezumi 6y ago
Makes me wonder if most of the "give us more surveillance power" claim is nothing more than a convenient excuse surveillance apparatus give to "excuse" their lack of result.(and sometimes failures) Probably starting somewhere from the bottom/middle managers excuse, then that excuse being used by above manager, rinse and repeat to the top. Then politician with different incentive(voter satisfaction) granting that power just for their own game. "oh if you just gave us the power by unshackling us from regulation, we could've done better! I promise, it's not related to our lack of efficiency or ingenuity!"
refurb 6y ago
The only war you’re really good at fighting is the last one. I don’t know much about the Fusion Centers, but post-9/11, the failure of intelligence and law enforcement to communicate was regarded as a major reason why the plot was never uncovered. In totality, there was a lot of signs something was coming but different organizations had different pieces so nobody could see the “big picture”. So I’m just wondering if the focus on Fusion Centers and not on intelligence from foreign powers is just our gov’t “skating after the puck” instead of “skating where the puck will be”.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
AndrewBissell 6y ago
The FBI seems to have been caught lying about not having heard of Warner before the bombing: https://twitter.com/onekade/status/1344154240189661185 https://twitter.com/onekade/status/1344154240189661185
- 93po 6y ago
  No, surely the FBI wouldn't lie. That's nothing like them :)
cmdshiftf4 6y ago
>They always ask for more surveillance funding/powers, yet they never have a good answer when it comes to what they do when they're granted such powers. Their remit is to protect the state, not you. Occupy movements / class consciousness pose a real threat to the state and therefore is of far higher concern than some lunatics bombing some plebs doing a marathon.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  If Warner's girlfriend had told them he was planning to use the bomb to take out a major node in their mass surveillance infrastructure one imagines they might have pursued the investigation a little further.

lovecg 6y ago

A familiar situation to anyone who worked in a large organization of any kind. What’s really needed on the ground and what gets funded by the top are often only tangentially related.

sneak 6y ago

The military and security services have deployed vast, illegal domestic spying networks, on the basis that if USians give up their privacy, they will be able to exchange it for safety. Here we see that not only is that untrue, but also that even with tips they can't seem to get basic, non-surveillance policework right. Remind me again why we tolerate these abuses in the name of safety? We and they now know they aren't being used for safety, if indeed that was even possible. What else could and will these massive surveillance powers be used for?

dvdbloc 6y ago
Providing “jobs” and enriching executives basically.
darawk 6y ago
It is important to keep in mind that when security is working, you don't see any evidence of it. We don't actually know how many terrorist attacks have been stopped by this surveillance. It may well be a lot. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that many have been. Which is why it's so important that we do not ground criticisms of surveillance in arguments about efficacy. Surveillance is effective, or at least, it can be. Surveillance is wrong because it concentrates too much power in the hands of the government.
- Animats 6y ago
  We don't actually know how many terrorist attacks have been stopped by this surveillance. It may well be a lot. Actually, we do, because the FBI issues press releases when they succeed. Here's a relevant paper from an FBI study of "lone offender terrorism" [1] This guy fits the profile - white, some college, no major criminal history, not employed, marijuana user. [1] https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/lone-offender-terrorism-report-111319.pdf/view https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/lone-offender-terrorism-...
  - darawk 6y ago
    This is a list of people who successfully carried out attacks, it looks like. Not people who's attacks were foiled.
    - ric2b 6y ago
      Because that second list would be empty. They would be shouting it from the rooftops if they were actually stopping attacks.
      - Animats 6y ago
        Which the FBI does. "Kenyan National Indicted For Conspiring To Hijack Aircraft On Behalf Of The Al Qaeda-Affiliated Terrorist Organization Al Shabaab. Cholo Abdi Abdullah Obtained Pilot Training and Researched How to Hijack Aircraft in Order to Conduct a 9/11-Style Attack at the Direction of al Shabaab."[1] Here's the FBI's list of terrorism-related press releases.[2] [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/kenyan-national-indicted-conspiring-hijack-aircraft-behalf-al-qaeda-affiliated https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/kenyan-national-indicte... [2] https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism/news https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism/news

schoen 6y ago

I sympathize with the goal of not giving law enforcement more surveillance powers, but I wonder how valid the anecdotal "connecting the dots" stories of law enforcement failures are. For example, it's conceivable that law enforcement or intelligence agencies regularly get a huge volume of urgent tips, 90% of which are totally incorrect or useless, and that they nonetheless manage to stop 95% of super-bad acts like terror attacks. Then the public hears about the 5% that they don't stop, and especially hears about the 0.5%, say, where a probably-unreliable tip was not successfully used to prevent a super-bad act. In order to argue convincingly that agencies are actually bad at using the powers or information that they already have, we would probably want to know a lot more about base rates (and about thwarted or deterred crimes). Edit: This comment downthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25579252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25579252 just before mine makes a somewhat similar point (although I was emphasizing the idea that we should want more data for this argument, while the other comment emphasizes the idea that there are more fundamental or important grounds on which to oppose expansions of surveillance powers).

atoav 6y ago
The problem (luckily!) is, that the thing they are trying to detect happens extremely rare. And when you try to detect rare events, even if your methods are 99.9% accurate you will drown in false positives. I once did the maths on facial recognition tech which was meant to recognize terrorists at Berlin main station. With the known number of commuters there and an accuracy of 99.9% (which is extremely optimistic) they would have over 600 false positives per terrorist if I remember correctly. The system they had installed there however wont even reach 80%... Imagine you have an alarm that rings twice every day, and is real and serious only once a year. How likely are you to react in time? I think this is the fundamental problem with the "we need more data and more rights"-strategy of most police and law enforcement. I am convinced what they actually need is more personel with a good education. Edit: what this kind of data is better at recognizing are broad movements in society like demonstrations, protests and such things.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  > Edit: what this kind of data is better at recognizing are broad movements in society like demonstrations, protests and such things. Yes, this is their real purpose. They're not rolling out these wide ranging systems at extraordinary expense when they're at all unsure they will actually solve the problem they're trying to solve.

NalNezumi 6y ago

Makes me wonder if most of the "give us more surveillance power" claim is nothing more than a convenient excuse surveillance apparatus give to "excuse" their lack of result.(and sometimes failures) Probably starting somewhere from the bottom/middle managers excuse, then that excuse being used by above manager, rinse and repeat to the top. Then politician with different incentive(voter satisfaction) granting that power just for their own game. "oh if you just gave us the power by unshackling us from regulation, we could've done better! I promise, it's not related to our lack of efficiency or ingenuity!"

refurb 6y ago

The only war you’re really good at fighting is the last one. I don’t know much about the Fusion Centers, but post-9/11, the failure of intelligence and law enforcement to communicate was regarded as a major reason why the plot was never uncovered. In totality, there was a lot of signs something was coming but different organizations had different pieces so nobody could see the “big picture”. So I’m just wondering if the focus on Fusion Centers and not on intelligence from foreign powers is just our gov’t “skating after the puck” instead of “skating where the puck will be”.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

AndrewBissell 6y ago

The FBI seems to have been caught lying about not having heard of Warner before the bombing: https://twitter.com/onekade/status/1344154240189661185 https://twitter.com/onekade/status/1344154240189661185

93po 6y ago
No, surely the FBI wouldn't lie. That's nothing like them :)

cmdshiftf4 6y ago

>They always ask for more surveillance funding/powers, yet they never have a good answer when it comes to what they do when they're granted such powers. Their remit is to protect the state, not you. Occupy movements / class consciousness pose a real threat to the state and therefore is of far higher concern than some lunatics bombing some plebs doing a marathon.

AndrewBissell 6y ago
If Warner's girlfriend had told them he was planning to use the bomb to take out a major node in their mass surveillance infrastructure one imagines they might have pursued the investigation a little further.