18 ms·

Thousands dead, millions deprived of civil liberties? (2001)

338 points by k2enemy 13y ago

mtgx 13y ago
I bet Stallman feels quite vindicated now.
- karamazov 13y ago
  I'm sure he'd prefer not to.
winter_blue 13y ago
Wow, Stallman sure has a way of predicting the future. This isn't the first time he's predicted the future with such accuracy -- remember the story that he wrote about a dystopian world far away in the future where books were under DRM? It's so funny that story came true so much earlier than expected.
- nolok 13y ago
  Every time I think about that, I remember Amazon remote deleting bought copy of 1984 from the owners' kindles some time ago. You can justify it with legalese all you want, at the end of the day it's such a perfect example of how awful that whole thing is that it wouldn't pass as real in a story.
- astrodust 13y ago
  Books have been under DRM since the early days of "e-Books" on CD-ROM. It just wasn't called DRM back then.
flexie 13y ago
I think the apparatus available to today's government for spying on its citizens would make a 1980s KGB or Stasi agent blush.
- jeremyswank 13y ago
  drool, more likely.
- nsns 13y ago
  So called "Totalitarian" regimes only spy on dissidents and free thinkers, they don't give a f* about other people. It's only democratic regimes that tend to keep a tally of every citizen and his/her movements.
  - mtgx 13y ago
    Not entirely accurate. When you say "free thinkers", I think you're mainly referring to some civil libertarians or some sort. But in communist countries they used to get people to spy on each other and report their friends and neighbors to the secret police if they said anything bad at all against the government or "the party". So everyone was under constant surveillance, not just by the government, because they didn't have those kinds of resources, but by everyone around them, too.
    - nsns 13y ago
      Perhaps, but the government did not care how many children were born or old men died in some remote village.
      - hga 13y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy Upwards of 200 million people are spinning in their mass graves at your abject ignorance of the 20th century history of totalitarianism. Hint: the world "total" is a clue.
        dllthomas 13y ago
        I was under the impression (and a brief skimming of the article you linked seems to support) that the one-child policy didn't apply in rural areas, so while it was a cute refutation of the government not caring "how many children were born" it seems to be an inaccurate one of the government not caring "how many children were born [...] in some remote village". ... I write this assuming the earlier comment wasn't amended to tack on the phrase; if it was, my apologies...
kunai 13y ago
This is why I get very angry whenever somebody calls Stallman a nut. He's not a nut. He's a visionary; albeit a very pessimistic and dystopian one. Call him crazy now, but in 2023 you'll look back at what he said now, and you'll see how it's all right and wish you'd done something. Anything. But no. Free software is not business-oriented. He's a nut because of his privacy advocation; he must have something to hide. Let's just ignore him, and start startups and get everyone to accept our vendor lock-in and remain blissfully unaware how we're harming everyone.
- GuiA 13y ago
  Stallman's only "flaw" (but I'm not even sure it is one, actually), IMO, is that he could be more tactful about spreading his message. If most nerds don't take him seriously, why would any average non-techie person?
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    The message he spreads is one that likely would not be well received with any delivery. People hate bad news.
    - pyre 13y ago
      People will receive bad news better if you know how to communicate and engage with them. As an example, the angry vegan on the street shouting, "Shame! Shame on you!" doesn't convince you to go vegan. The vegan that engages you in rational debate and shows you how a vegan lifestyle isn't as hard/daunting as it seems, may convince you. It's foolish to realize that people will ignore bad news from some unkempt academic that seems a bit off, rather than by a clean-cut smooth-talker in an expensive suit.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        A vegan that is explaining to you how easy their lifestyle is can hardly be said to be bringing you bad news. On the other hand a vegan that is calmly/politely/diplomatically explaining their point of view on the ethics of eating meat could be said to be bringing bad news, and I expect you will find that vegans are 'heard' far less often when they discuss that topic. I certainly tune them out and start getting annoyed when they go down that route, no matter how diplomatically they do it. The bizarre dual nature of patriotism and politics in the US makes it even worse for anyone looking to bring Stallman's message to the public. Telling people that "the system is not flawless and world would be wonderful if only 'those other jerks' stopped trying to subvert the system" is somewhere between "eating a hotdog is like eating your child" and "cows should be able to vote in elections". People have too much emotional stake in that system being the right system. Many of them have literally killed for it, or known people who were killed for it. They've lost sons, daughters, fathers and grandfathers who were fighting for it. They put people currently fighting for it on a pedestal of unconditional support. They have romantic notions of people before them fighting and dying for it. Maybe there is somebody out there charismatic enough to convince the general population to consider fundamental flaws with the system itself, but I don't think that such a person has really been seen in politics for many many years. Well, you can take a shortcut if you appeal to stronger allegiances than faith in American democracy... but those shortcuts drive us in the wrong direction.
greenonion 13y ago
Although I do agree that today's events show that Stallman is right to be that much worried, I have to point out that his argument against face recognition is a weak one. Computer vision is superior to human in many aspects, and this is why the situation we 're facing is very complex.
- bcoates 13y ago
  > Computer vision is superior to human in many aspects But not in any way relevant to the September 11 hijackings as the hijackers were travelling under their real identities including real photo ID cards.
- gcr 13y ago
  Computer vision presently comes nowhere close to human performance in almost any respect.
tbrownaw 13y ago
Is there anyone who didn't immediately see a knee-jerk crackdown against civil liberties coming after the WTC attack?
- codeulike 13y ago
  True, props to Stallman for joining in, but there was much discussion along these lines at the time in late 2001. Or at least, the certainly was in the UK.
fennecfoxen 13y ago
I'm just going to quietly leave this quote here. "Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices." (The Ohio State University commencement address)
- GuiA 13y ago
  This is from Obama's commencement address (May 5th 2013, OSU). Full quote: “Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted. We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems. We shouldn't want to. But we don't think the government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy is ours. And as citizens, we understand that it's not about what America can do for us, it's about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government. And class of 2013, you have to be involved in that process.” (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/05/05/obama_to_ohio_state_grads_reject_voices_that_warn_about_government_tyranny.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/05/05/obama_to_o...)
tvjunky 13y ago
With the benefit of hindsight and a single source this certainly might seem like future prediction or visionary thinking. However, with the events of the time, this idea was pretty obvious and similar opinions were shared by many. If there was vision, it was that he put his thoughts online for all to see.
cs702 13y ago
As usual, Stallman was not only ahead of his time, but also swimming against the tide of conventional wisdom, immediately after the attacks of 9/11. While nearly everyone else was focused on more mundane concerns of immediate importance, he was worried and tried to warn us about long-term, higher-order, societal consequences. (He's always doing that -- worrying about long-term, higher-order consequences -- so his warnings and antics strike more practical people as being 'out of touch with reality.') Like him or not, Richard Stallman is already a major historical figure, because his impact on society (via the gnu, FSF, various manifestos, and activism) will be felt for a very long time. Much of what he has said/written in the past has gained stature with the passing of time. -- Edit: added last sentence.
- zallarak 13y ago
  Indeed. Its funny how HN bashes on him, and then gets enraged about Obama's wiretapping! This man saw it coming and we ridiculed him for his fear - look at where we are now.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    "we ridiculed him for his fear" citation needed
- spodek 13y ago
  What's sad is what he got wrong. The 'm' in "Thousands dead, millions deprived of civil liberties?" should have been a 'b'. "Bush" in "Congress hurried to pass a resolution giving Bush unlimited power" should have been "the Executive Branch." Visionary as he was, history surpassed what he anticipated.
  - skore 13y ago
    Indeed, that makes it even worse. Time and time again I see people scoffing at Stallman (and others like him) as "radicals" who do nothing but impede our discourse with their outlandish fantasies, trying to center it around their paranoia instead of finding quick, pragmatic and ultimately self destructive "solutions". I have a feeling Stallman would have liked to say more, but chose to make a more modest statement. Turns out, he could have cranked it up to 11 and it would still be modest by what we know today.
methehack 13y ago
I had the same thought at about the same time. I think a lot of people saw this coming. Uber-surveillance has been a old standby for dystopian popular entertainment for a good while. It's almost like NSA spooks have been consulting to hollywood to make a little coin on the side. What I admire more than Stallman-the-visionary is Stallman-the-idealist. The guy speaks his mind even when it's really difficult. Further, he appears to live in accordance with his thinking as best he can even though it's pretty inconvenient. These are both really very difficult to do consistently over the long haul. At the time Stallman wrote this, it was a very unpopular thing to say. He was not just considered a crackpot but drink-in-the-face-at-parties unpatriotic. For better or worse, I'm more of a pragmatist. I often experience the idealist as a pain in the ass and standing in the way of 'getting things done'. It's good for me to be reminded that the idealists must be listened to carefully. It might just be that I'm trying to get the wrong things done and I should slow down and listen.
- foolrush 13y ago
  I would only add that "pragmatic" versus "idealist" is privileged language in the classically Foucault sense. Stallman in many respects is being pragmatic in the pursuit of his ideology. Conversely, the NSA and like organizations are working toward their idealist beliefs. The risk of being pedantic over language should at least be tempered against the realization that privileged language is at the core of much of this discourse[1]. [1] "Terrorist"
opminion 13y ago
Where's Stallman when we need him? Ah, here! He didn't have to spend much effort in predicting the future in 2001, he just had to be consistent.
youngerdryas 13y ago
>I'm not talking about searches at airports here. Searches of people or baggage for weapons, as long as they check only for weapons and keep no records about you if you have no weapons, are just an inconvenience; they do not endanger civil liberties.
seldo 13y ago
"Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would help." This seems fallacious. Computer-based face recognition would be significantly better than human-based, because computers can remember thousands of faces while humans can only recognize a few hundred at most.
- jessaustin 13y ago
  Computer-based face recognition ...has never been shown to work on the scale needed to secure access to commercial air travel.
gculliss 13y ago
This might be the most illogical and unsupported assertion, ever: "Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would help."
loup-vaillant 13y ago
The title is not very diplomatic: it suggest that privacy is worth sacrificing human lives. It is, to some extent, but suggesting it out loud is often liable to a "think of the children" knee jerk reaction.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Well, I don't think you can accuse Stallman of being diplomatic.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Privacy is worth sacrificing human lives, for some amount of privacy and some number of lives... However, that's not even the biggest problem with the knee-jerk response: it's not a trade being offered. If you could guarantee me 3000 lives saved in exchange for more invasion of my privacy and that of my billion closest friends (assuming they agreed), I'd have to think about it. But no! 3000 lives were lost, and that is tragic, and it's more tragic that the fear it caused was then exploited to consolidate power. It was consolidated in the hands of people who are probably mostly reasonable people, and who are probably mostly trying to keep us safe, but there is no guarantee as to the number of lives saved (although "lives lost to terrorism in the 10 years prior when you didn't have these powers" helps us provide some upper bounds...), and moreover some of those people we're being asked to trust will prove not to be good people, power will be abused, and it might well cost more lives than it saves: governments have killed overwhelmingly more people than insurgents and terrorists over the past 100 years.
  - loup-vaillant 13y ago
    We're indeed talking sunk costs. By the way, you could even argue that some measures, such as increased airport "security", indirectly killed people, who took their more risky cars instead of just flying. This title reminds me a quote from Ultimate Spiderman: "Your uncle snuffs. And you stop basket ball!?". Seems rather… blunt.
ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
I have to bring this up. I'll never forget growing up on reddit and digg during the Bush Era. People were talking about this stuff all the time, calling Bush Hitler and the Patriot Act evil, Gitmo unconstitutional, and raising awareness of the uncivilized wild-west Republican and Conservative Parties. I mean Redditor's honestly thought the USA was coming to an end. Then after Bush left and Democrat Obama got in things continued to get worse. Attacks on privacy and constitutional rights, drones, surveillance increased yet the backlash isn't there. Think of all the terrible things you read about Bush, now come to the realization that Obama is continuing this behavior yet people (Democrats in particular) aren't complaining. Because their party is in power. That was the moment I realized the worst thing about America was the 2 party system. Each party is oblivious to it's own flaws, blames the other party for everything. It's called "Ingroup Bias" http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Ingroup%20Bias http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Ingroup... This same "Ingroup Bias" is what's preventing Americans from standing up against their party when they introduce invasive legislature AND preventing members of both the Republican and Democratic parties from standing up against their party's own extreme views on national security. === My Point === If either party puts a stop to the extreme surveillance and a terrorist attack happens, that party will forever be blamed by the other and will lose elections for quite some time.

338 points by k2enemy 13y ago

mtgx 13y ago

I bet Stallman feels quite vindicated now.

karamazov 13y ago
I'm sure he'd prefer not to.

winter_blue 13y ago

Wow, Stallman sure has a way of predicting the future. This isn't the first time he's predicted the future with such accuracy -- remember the story that he wrote about a dystopian world far away in the future where books were under DRM? It's so funny that story came true so much earlier than expected.

nolok 13y ago
Every time I think about that, I remember Amazon remote deleting bought copy of 1984 from the owners' kindles some time ago. You can justify it with legalese all you want, at the end of the day it's such a perfect example of how awful that whole thing is that it wouldn't pass as real in a story.
astrodust 13y ago
Books have been under DRM since the early days of "e-Books" on CD-ROM. It just wasn't called DRM back then.

flexie 13y ago

I think the apparatus available to today's government for spying on its citizens would make a 1980s KGB or Stasi agent blush.

jeremyswank 13y ago
drool, more likely.
nsns 13y ago
So called "Totalitarian" regimes only spy on dissidents and free thinkers, they don't give a f* about other people. It's only democratic regimes that tend to keep a tally of every citizen and his/her movements.
- mtgx 13y ago
  Not entirely accurate. When you say "free thinkers", I think you're mainly referring to some civil libertarians or some sort. But in communist countries they used to get people to spy on each other and report their friends and neighbors to the secret police if they said anything bad at all against the government or "the party". So everyone was under constant surveillance, not just by the government, because they didn't have those kinds of resources, but by everyone around them, too.
  - nsns 13y ago
    Perhaps, but the government did not care how many children were born or old men died in some remote village.
    - hga 13y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy Upwards of 200 million people are spinning in their mass graves at your abject ignorance of the 20th century history of totalitarianism. Hint: the world "total" is a clue.
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        I was under the impression (and a brief skimming of the article you linked seems to support) that the one-child policy didn't apply in rural areas, so while it was a cute refutation of the government not caring "how many children were born" it seems to be an inaccurate one of the government not caring "how many children were born [...] in some remote village". ... I write this assuming the earlier comment wasn't amended to tack on the phrase; if it was, my apologies...

kunai 13y ago

This is why I get very angry whenever somebody calls Stallman a nut. He's not a nut. He's a visionary; albeit a very pessimistic and dystopian one. Call him crazy now, but in 2023 you'll look back at what he said now, and you'll see how it's all right and wish you'd done something. Anything. But no. Free software is not business-oriented. He's a nut because of his privacy advocation; he must have something to hide. Let's just ignore him, and start startups and get everyone to accept our vendor lock-in and remain blissfully unaware how we're harming everyone.

GuiA 13y ago
Stallman's only "flaw" (but I'm not even sure it is one, actually), IMO, is that he could be more tactful about spreading his message. If most nerds don't take him seriously, why would any average non-techie person?
- jlgreco 13y ago
  The message he spreads is one that likely would not be well received with any delivery. People hate bad news.
  - pyre 13y ago
    People will receive bad news better if you know how to communicate and engage with them. As an example, the angry vegan on the street shouting, "Shame! Shame on you!" doesn't convince you to go vegan. The vegan that engages you in rational debate and shows you how a vegan lifestyle isn't as hard/daunting as it seems, may convince you. It's foolish to realize that people will ignore bad news from some unkempt academic that seems a bit off, rather than by a clean-cut smooth-talker in an expensive suit.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      A vegan that is explaining to you how easy their lifestyle is can hardly be said to be bringing you bad news. On the other hand a vegan that is calmly/politely/diplomatically explaining their point of view on the ethics of eating meat could be said to be bringing bad news, and I expect you will find that vegans are 'heard' far less often when they discuss that topic. I certainly tune them out and start getting annoyed when they go down that route, no matter how diplomatically they do it. The bizarre dual nature of patriotism and politics in the US makes it even worse for anyone looking to bring Stallman's message to the public. Telling people that "the system is not flawless and world would be wonderful if only 'those other jerks' stopped trying to subvert the system" is somewhere between "eating a hotdog is like eating your child" and "cows should be able to vote in elections". People have too much emotional stake in that system being the right system. Many of them have literally killed for it, or known people who were killed for it. They've lost sons, daughters, fathers and grandfathers who were fighting for it. They put people currently fighting for it on a pedestal of unconditional support. They have romantic notions of people before them fighting and dying for it. Maybe there is somebody out there charismatic enough to convince the general population to consider fundamental flaws with the system itself, but I don't think that such a person has really been seen in politics for many many years. Well, you can take a shortcut if you appeal to stronger allegiances than faith in American democracy... but those shortcuts drive us in the wrong direction.

greenonion 13y ago

Although I do agree that today's events show that Stallman is right to be that much worried, I have to point out that his argument against face recognition is a weak one. Computer vision is superior to human in many aspects, and this is why the situation we 're facing is very complex.

bcoates 13y ago
> Computer vision is superior to human in many aspects But not in any way relevant to the September 11 hijackings as the hijackers were travelling under their real identities including real photo ID cards.
gcr 13y ago
Computer vision presently comes nowhere close to human performance in almost any respect.

tbrownaw 13y ago

Is there anyone who didn't immediately see a knee-jerk crackdown against civil liberties coming after the WTC attack?

codeulike 13y ago
True, props to Stallman for joining in, but there was much discussion along these lines at the time in late 2001. Or at least, the certainly was in the UK.

fennecfoxen 13y ago

I'm just going to quietly leave this quote here. "Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices." (The Ohio State University commencement address)

GuiA 13y ago
This is from Obama's commencement address (May 5th 2013, OSU). Full quote: “Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can't be trusted. We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems. We shouldn't want to. But we don't think the government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy is ours. And as citizens, we understand that it's not about what America can do for us, it's about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government. And class of 2013, you have to be involved in that process.” (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/05/05/obama_to_ohio_state_grads_reject_voices_that_warn_about_government_tyranny.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/05/05/obama_to_o...)

tvjunky 13y ago

With the benefit of hindsight and a single source this certainly might seem like future prediction or visionary thinking. However, with the events of the time, this idea was pretty obvious and similar opinions were shared by many. If there was vision, it was that he put his thoughts online for all to see.

cs702 13y ago

As usual, Stallman was not only ahead of his time, but also swimming against the tide of conventional wisdom, immediately after the attacks of 9/11. While nearly everyone else was focused on more mundane concerns of immediate importance, he was worried and tried to warn us about long-term, higher-order, societal consequences. (He's always doing that -- worrying about long-term, higher-order consequences -- so his warnings and antics strike more practical people as being 'out of touch with reality.') Like him or not, Richard Stallman is already a major historical figure, because his impact on society (via the gnu, FSF, various manifestos, and activism) will be felt for a very long time. Much of what he has said/written in the past has gained stature with the passing of time. -- Edit: added last sentence.

zallarak 13y ago
Indeed. Its funny how HN bashes on him, and then gets enraged about Obama's wiretapping! This man saw it coming and we ridiculed him for his fear - look at where we are now.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  "we ridiculed him for his fear" citation needed
spodek 13y ago
What's sad is what he got wrong. The 'm' in "Thousands dead, millions deprived of civil liberties?" should have been a 'b'. "Bush" in "Congress hurried to pass a resolution giving Bush unlimited power" should have been "the Executive Branch." Visionary as he was, history surpassed what he anticipated.
- skore 13y ago
  Indeed, that makes it even worse. Time and time again I see people scoffing at Stallman (and others like him) as "radicals" who do nothing but impede our discourse with their outlandish fantasies, trying to center it around their paranoia instead of finding quick, pragmatic and ultimately self destructive "solutions". I have a feeling Stallman would have liked to say more, but chose to make a more modest statement. Turns out, he could have cranked it up to 11 and it would still be modest by what we know today.

methehack 13y ago

I had the same thought at about the same time. I think a lot of people saw this coming. Uber-surveillance has been a old standby for dystopian popular entertainment for a good while. It's almost like NSA spooks have been consulting to hollywood to make a little coin on the side. What I admire more than Stallman-the-visionary is Stallman-the-idealist. The guy speaks his mind even when it's really difficult. Further, he appears to live in accordance with his thinking as best he can even though it's pretty inconvenient. These are both really very difficult to do consistently over the long haul. At the time Stallman wrote this, it was a very unpopular thing to say. He was not just considered a crackpot but drink-in-the-face-at-parties unpatriotic. For better or worse, I'm more of a pragmatist. I often experience the idealist as a pain in the ass and standing in the way of 'getting things done'. It's good for me to be reminded that the idealists must be listened to carefully. It might just be that I'm trying to get the wrong things done and I should slow down and listen.

foolrush 13y ago
I would only add that "pragmatic" versus "idealist" is privileged language in the classically Foucault sense. Stallman in many respects is being pragmatic in the pursuit of his ideology. Conversely, the NSA and like organizations are working toward their idealist beliefs. The risk of being pedantic over language should at least be tempered against the realization that privileged language is at the core of much of this discourse[1]. [1] "Terrorist"

opminion 13y ago

Where's Stallman when we need him? Ah, here! He didn't have to spend much effort in predicting the future in 2001, he just had to be consistent.

youngerdryas 13y ago

>I'm not talking about searches at airports here. Searches of people or baggage for weapons, as long as they check only for weapons and keep no records about you if you have no weapons, are just an inconvenience; they do not endanger civil liberties.

seldo 13y ago

"Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would help." This seems fallacious. Computer-based face recognition would be significantly better than human-based, because computers can remember thousands of faces while humans can only recognize a few hundred at most.

jessaustin 13y ago
Computer-based face recognition ...has never been shown to work on the scale needed to secure access to commercial air travel.

gculliss 13y ago

This might be the most illogical and unsupported assertion, ever: "Given that the human face recognition performed by the check-in agents did not keep the hijackers out, there is no reason to think that computer face recognition would help."

loup-vaillant 13y ago

The title is not very diplomatic: it suggest that privacy is worth sacrificing human lives. It is, to some extent, but suggesting it out loud is often liable to a "think of the children" knee jerk reaction.

icebraining 13y ago
Well, I don't think you can accuse Stallman of being diplomatic.
dllthomas 13y ago
Privacy is worth sacrificing human lives, for some amount of privacy and some number of lives... However, that's not even the biggest problem with the knee-jerk response: it's not a trade being offered. If you could guarantee me 3000 lives saved in exchange for more invasion of my privacy and that of my billion closest friends (assuming they agreed), I'd have to think about it. But no! 3000 lives were lost, and that is tragic, and it's more tragic that the fear it caused was then exploited to consolidate power. It was consolidated in the hands of people who are probably mostly reasonable people, and who are probably mostly trying to keep us safe, but there is no guarantee as to the number of lives saved (although "lives lost to terrorism in the 10 years prior when you didn't have these powers" helps us provide some upper bounds...), and moreover some of those people we're being asked to trust will prove not to be good people, power will be abused, and it might well cost more lives than it saves: governments have killed overwhelmingly more people than insurgents and terrorists over the past 100 years.
- loup-vaillant 13y ago
  We're indeed talking sunk costs. By the way, you could even argue that some measures, such as increased airport "security", indirectly killed people, who took their more risky cars instead of just flying. This title reminds me a quote from Ultimate Spiderman: "Your uncle snuffs. And you stop basket ball!?". Seems rather… blunt.

ChrisNorstrom 13y ago

I have to bring this up. I'll never forget growing up on reddit and digg during the Bush Era. People were talking about this stuff all the time, calling Bush Hitler and the Patriot Act evil, Gitmo unconstitutional, and raising awareness of the uncivilized wild-west Republican and Conservative Parties. I mean Redditor's honestly thought the USA was coming to an end. Then after Bush left and Democrat Obama got in things continued to get worse. Attacks on privacy and constitutional rights, drones, surveillance increased yet the backlash isn't there. Think of all the terrible things you read about Bush, now come to the realization that Obama is continuing this behavior yet people (Democrats in particular) aren't complaining. Because their party is in power. That was the moment I realized the worst thing about America was the 2 party system. Each party is oblivious to it's own flaws, blames the other party for everything. It's called "Ingroup Bias" http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Ingroup%20Bias http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Ingroup... This same "Ingroup Bias" is what's preventing Americans from standing up against their party when they introduce invasive legislature AND preventing members of both the Republican and Democratic parties from standing up against their party's own extreme views on national security. === My Point === If either party puts a stop to the extreme surveillance and a terrorist attack happens, that party will forever be blamed by the other and will lose elections for quite some time.