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And how do you plan to stop the next terror attack?

• mpyne 13y ago
  The normal recommendation is "good old-fashioned police work", as if strong police states are known to be beacons of freedom. Some simply recommend to just suck it up as the price of doing business, but that goes against everything America has typically done with regard to terrorism, all the way back to the Barbary Pirates: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!"
  • Sven7 13y ago
    That's why the surveillance state will exist. Cause the answers are non-obvious. What I find most annoying about the comments on hacker news over the last couple weeks, is the amount of people crying about the problems or potential problems and hardly anyone talking solutions. The lack of solutions itself is a sign that no one has anything better to offer than what the NSA is currently upto.
    • ObviousPoints 13y ago
      > The lack of solutions itself is a sign that no one has anything better to offer than what the NSA is currently upto. Not doing what the NSA is currently up to, and letting a 9/11 happen every year, would be better than what we're currently doing. "Preventing all terrorism" is both impossible and wildly impractical: to even get close, you must eviscerate the freedoms in your society and undermine the rule of law. The "solution" is "be an adult, and don't go in to a frenzied panic every time you get hurt".
      • twoodfin 13y ago
        Not doing what the NSA is currently up to, and letting a 9/11 happen every year, would be better than what we're currently doing. In a democracy, you have to at least try to get people to agree with you, and given what we know about the NSA program, you're nuts if you think any politician who proposed the tradeoff you're making would get 15% of the vote.
      • bas 13y ago
        You can't be serious. If a 9/11 were to happen every year, then the police state you dream of would obtain.
      • mpyne 13y ago
        > "Preventing all terrorism" is both impossible and wildly impractical: to even get close, you must eviscerate the freedoms in your society and undermine the rule of law. Preventing all terrorism isn't actually the goal though. Just like our vaccination regimes are not intended to completely eradicate disease, merely prevent epidemics and pandemics, the anti-terrorism programs are intended to increase safety and security for Americans (and by proxy, other nations who would also be targets of the groups aligned against the USA), in a way such that terrorism does not happen so often that the people demand the police state we all claim here to despise. It is recognized that completely eradicating terrorism is probably impossible, but the U.S. can make it almost impossibly difficult to form large enough terror cells to repeat things like 9/11. And unlike your rather defeatist attitude, I think that can be done without "eviscerating" civil liberties, as long as we employ ample doses of transparency, watchdog groups, and organizational structures designed to keep those programs directed to the mission and provide accountability and oversight. Of course it can be done; how do banks holding billions of dollars of their customers funds manage to provide strict accountability for those? Pretty much every prior technological breakthrough has made tyranny in the U.S. more likely, and the U.S. has managed to pull through in each case (though sometimes with roadbumps...). And, if you're really concerned about the rule of law you will do everything possible to avoid "a 9/11 every year". When the state fails to protect the people, the people (armed by the 2nd Amendment) will take matters into their own hands, and it won't be pretty for many innocents in America. But again, if you have better ideas I'm sure the NSA is listening...
    • 3amOpsGuy 13y ago
      You've asked some tough questions which are really against the grain here. You've been respectful, direct to the point and articulate. Just felt a simple up vote didn't convey enough of a thanks. You've provoked the conversation in far more interesting directions than it would otherwise have taken. Thank you sven7.
      • Sven7 13y ago
        Thanks OpsGuy :) It was indeed an eye opener. If asking a question, in what generally appears to be an open minded forum of seemingly well read people of above average intelligence, can be this complicated...its easy to imagine why Congress has a tough time doing anything. I guess we just have to keep trying to refocus on solutions and hope for the best.
    • brugidou 13y ago
      What about spending the anti-terror money to make the US "look good" to the people that could be terrorists? That would lower the probability of terrorist attacks. I know this sounds cheesy but I think repression is just making things worse.
      • mpyne 13y ago
        The U.S. has done that before (and is doing it now; witness Egypt and Pakistan). It normally has come back to bite us in the ass though.
    • dllthomas 13y ago
      Simple proposal that I think everyone would agree is preferable to what the NSA is currently up to: What the NSA is doing, but properly implementing mandatory access control (like what they added to Linux over a decade ago with SELinux) to ensure that admins do not have more access than they should. That said, I'm not eager to let them define the Overton window and just settle for that - I'm leaning a little further on the "radical transparency" side of the spectrum - but clearly, what the NSA is up to is not treating our data with the care it merits.
      • mpyne 13y ago
        I'd even add more technical controls on top of accountability/oversight compliance organizational changes: - Any data collected under a general warrant is encrypted immediately. - Access to this data is audited to a WORM-style server. - Decrypting the data requires 2 persons to provide a key (I believe there are crypto schemes that do this in the literature; if not I'm sure NSA could figure it out). - The process that decrypts the data after the authentication creds are provided also notifies a random 3rd party within NSA (or even a Congressional/FBI/etc. panel setup for this purpose). On top of this there need to be changes to how NSLs and FISA warrants are treated. They are secret only so long as needed for the law enforcement purpose. Afterwards, if there is still an issue of sensitivity from a counter-terrorism standpoint (e.g. enemy groups would learn too much about our capabilities if fully detailed NSLs/warrants were public), then they are scrubbed as little as necessary to allow for public dissemination. This could mean aggregate reporting, sunset provisions for gag orders, etc. But having permanent gag orders is not befitting our Republic. Finally I agree that having NSA write its own rules is not a good idea. I would require Congress to set overarching policy and limits on NSA's actions and prevent Congress from delegating that into the Executive Branch. I think even the Dems and GOP could hopefully get along long enough to ensure national security is being guarded...
        • dllthomas 13y ago
          I agree with everything here. Given a free hand, I'd likely go significantly further. I was simply proposing the simplest, smallest change that I think everyone serious would agree an improvement over what has been implemented. I don't think it's anywhere near enough.
• CamperBob2 13y ago
  The guy who sold me this tiger-repelling rock said it also worked on terrorists. So far, it looks like he was right.
  • jlgreco 13y ago
    I hear it works with Communists and witches too.
• PavlovsCat 13y ago
  By stopping to commit them. Oh wait, that's not what you meant, you meant terror attacks by Americans or foreigners against American officials, not terror attacks against foreigners by American officials, or terror attacks by american officals against American civilians, right? My bad. For that I would hop into a time machine, not train Al-Quaeda, not mess with Iran, and let Saudi Arabia find someone else to buy their oil with which they sponsor what they sponsor. Some might claim then I would have been utterly usurped by the USSR, and without a time machine, who knows. There's really only one way to find out what acting like a decent person, and in extension like a decent nation, would have lead to. Or what it might lead to starting from today.
  • Sven7 13y ago
    Solutions please. Rhetoric is easy.
    • tommi 13y ago
      The solution is to act nicer now and in the future. The solution is not act in more terrifying ways, both home and abroad. Don't torture and murder people.
      • dllthomas 13y ago
        I think this country needs to really (re-)internalize the importance of popular support, and the difficulty of fooling enough of the people enough of the time.
    • johnrob 13y ago
      You've unjustifiably framed the problem as preventing terrorist attacks. There's no evidence indicating that is our biggest problem.
      • Sven7 13y ago
        :) unjustifiable huh? Feels like I am in an evangelical church questioning god.
• benjohnson 13y ago
  Not to sound rude, but I'd rather lose 10,000 American souls then lose the freedoms that make America.
  • Sven7 13y ago
    That isn't a solution. Nobody is going to get elected on that platform.
  • hga 13y ago
    That's unrealistic, because we simply won't put up with mass casualty events. The key is to focus the response productively and avoid mission creep. It's the potential if not inevitability of the latter that makes the current NSA et. al. stuff so bad. This is different, this is a president who's cut from the same cloth as Nixon, in everything from being the first one since him to refer to his political enemies as "enemies" to this new model of the Plumbers ... except the establishment and media hated Nixon with a passion starting in the late '40s, 1950 at the latest. Obama hasn't been subjected to that level of feedback, e.g. note how many on the Left are happy with or at least excusing his Administration's suppression of the TEA Party et. al., which is one of the things that casts the NSA's extreme data gathering---not "collection", you must understand...---in sharp relief.
    • AnthonyMouse 13y ago
      >That's unrealistic, because we simply won't put up with mass casualty events. Honest question: Why not? Obviously we don't want mass casualties, but we don't want thousands of traditional murders or automobile fatalities or cancer deaths every year either, and we don't allocate insanely disproportionate budgets or construct a surveillance state to address any of those things. If anything we under-perform in addressing them. I mean let's even compare to other mass casualty events. There have been hurricanes that have caused more deaths than 9/11. Where is the call for a war on CO2 to reduce climate change induced mass casualties? The answer is that there is no lobby for it. Nobody is going to get paid a trillion dollars, if anything the oil and coal companies would lose money. So the mass casualties there don't get politicians, lobbyists and PR flacks whipping the media into a frenzy over it, instead it just gets swept under the rug. We as citizens have a duty to not allow ourselves to be manipulated like this.
• smsm42 13y ago
  I feel this comment is missing "think of the children". Practically any government excess can be justified once it is claimed it is to combat terrorism or protect children.
  • Sven7 13y ago
    And this comment doesn't answer my question.
    • smsm42 13y ago
      Oh, the answer to you question is simple - you can't. We just had a terror attack in US not so long ago. And there probably would be others, unfortunately, though nobody could predict where and when. If somebody promises you he'll stop all terror attacks - he's lying. If somebody claims he can give you safety only if you surrender your freedom - he is lying and he's trying to enslave you, using your fear against you. I am completely convinced, however, that US government, with all its enormous might, is perfectly capable of ensuring reasonable - not complete, as it is impossible, but reasonable - level of safety to US citizens without turning into a police state and shredding the Constitution. Yes, it will be harder and some important people would be forced to work a lot harder than otherwise and spend more money and stay longer hours, and be frustrated and annoyed by how they have to follow all those pesky little rules while doing their work. It is the only way to do it without turning from citizens to subjects.
• lukeschlather 13y ago
  I don't. We could have a 9/11 type event every year, and it would still not be as big a problem as automobile accidents. If we're going to live in a police state, I would hope the police state would focus on major causes of preventable death, like disease and automobile accidents. Terrorism in the United States is not a serious problem worthy of this level of concern.
  • Sven7 13y ago
    This is like saying lets have a lottery every year that picks 3000 people and send them over to the middle east. My point is people have to be pushed to answer the question on how to tackle terrorism to take this debate in a constructive direction. Ofcourse governments will do dumb things but the terrorism problem is a hard one.
    • smsm42 13y ago
      If the Middle East is Tel Aviv, I'm ready to go today. Provided the ticket is paid, of course, those are so damn expensive lately.
    • AnthonyMouse 13y ago
      The terrorism problem is a manufactured one. You want to fight terrorism? Fine, your budget is proportional to the budget we use to solve other types of murder based on the number of lives it costs us, and you can use the same methods. If you don't agree you'll have to distinguish terrorism from other types of murder in a defensible way, otherwise we should be treating them equally.
      • Sven7 13y ago
        Finally someone with a realistic solution that can be politically acceptable. Amazing to watch how defensive people get over a question. So thank you, for showing everyone else who has been downvoting me into oblivion, the right way to react to questions that make one uncomfortable. And in the end, this debate will only move forward over reasonable solutions. Not fancy speeches on privacy and freedom. Which I have had more than enough off.
• losvedir 13y ago
  You do what you can while respecting freedom and privacy, and accept that every once in a while terror attacks may happen. You're giving us a false choice.
  • Sven7 13y ago
    Yet politicians the world over, in the aftermath of terrorist attacks are expected to act tough. I have never heard a shit happens lets move on speech.
    • rahoulb 13y ago
      There are often politicians (and others) who say "we will not let them change our way of life, because that would hand them victory". The fact remains that our way of life has changed, in the name of security.
      • camus 13y ago
        This is where i say USA lost the fight against terrorism. USA became the evil it claimed it was fighting.
    • AnthonyMouse 13y ago
      >Yet politicians the world over, in the aftermath of terrorist attacks are expected to act tough. So act tough. Demand justice. Capture Osama bin Laden. The rest of it is just defense contractors and bureaucrats capitalizing on the tragedy to engorge their budgets and claim new powers.
    • CamperBob2 13y ago
      Check out some of the speeches from the Norwegian government in the aftermath of the Breivik massacre.
• grey-area 13y ago
  In a free society, you can't guarantee that you will stop terror attacks. They do cause damage and mayhem, however that is strictly localised unless the government overreacts and introduces draconian measures in a mistaken attempt to find terrorists under every rock. The UK survived decades of terrorism (sponsored by some US politicians like Rep. Peter King, now so ferocious against terrorists) without relying on mass surveillance of the kind it is now engaged in, in partnership with the US. It's not necessary to stop the attacks, only to survive them. Your question is like asking: How can we stop the next war? In fact the aims of terror are principally to provoke a government to introduce repressive measures and lash out, and in the process, damage itself and its credibility with citizens. I think the aims of Bin Laden were probably to induce terror, fear, and paranoia in the US, and unfortunately they have succeeded, probably beyond their wildest dreams. Huge amounts of money and numbers of lives have been squandered, and the only result has been a series of failed states half-way across the world, a casual disregard for the rule of law, and a growing surveillance state at home destroying the very ideas the US claims to represent. It's time for the US to recognise that expanding the architecture of surveillance and engaging in an eternal war against an ill-defined enemy is not going to make anyone safer, quite the reverse.
  • Sven7 13y ago
    If you were a Congresswoman, and a terror attack happened in your district, and you give this speech, what do you think the reaction would be?
    • chronic25 13y ago
      I would not be the congressman of a district full of idiots to begin with. The reaction would not be negative.
    • grey-area 13y ago
      Like your previous question, this is a non sequitur. The answer to a local terror attack is not hysteria about stopping all terror and surveillance of all citizens (99.9% of whom will never encounter terrorists in any form). The answer is to give the police and law enforcement time to do their work (which they do very well) and support them in trying to catch the people who committed that crime. The Boston bombers were found by police work after the fact, not by the mass surveillance of the population you are advocating as a solution to 'stop terror'. That's a solution to another problem - it's far more useful for finding dissenters of any stripe and undermining the rule of law than for catching terrorists.
• venomsnake 13y ago
  By nuking the rest of the world to glass. If only USA exist there will be no more terrorism. I also intend of stopping crime by preemptively incarcerating everyone and sending them to prison. And I will also stop rape by freezing the sperm of every man when he gets his first ejaculation and then castrate them. The prevention efforts should be reciprocal to the threat.
  • hga 13y ago
    What do you think is going to happen to the Muslim parts of the world that aren't in majority non-Muslim nuclear states after the, say, third Muslim origin nuclear weapon slags a US city? That's a pretty powerful motivation to keep this beat back, to e.g. as I noted WRT to Afghanistan post-9/11 send a strong message that if you kill thousands of us we will return the favor to the leaders and enablers.
    • venomsnake 13y ago
      The same that will happen when my little pony characters begin to worship chaos undived and add Abbadon the Despoiler in the crusade against Gandalf who is sitting on the golden throne. The idea of a successful attack on US with missile is just bad B movie trope. Even USSR strategies were for massive waves of missiles that could overpower the defenses. Non state actors cannot manufacture nuclear weapons. This thing is hard. They could obtain possibly - but the fact is that US is somewhat defended by geography alone so Israel is much better (and more hated) target. Now I know that the majority of US ruling class act as if USA is just some territory belonging to Israel and not sovereign country. But if any credible nuclear threat for the US is to appear - it will be from a country. And there are better ways to contain Iran or Pakistan than to become surveillance state.
      • hga 13y ago
        Who said anything about missiles? For best effect, smuggle in a device and do the mother of all "suicide bombings" from a general aviation plane at optimum height and location. Nasty detail: as of when I left the D.C. area, the defense plans for the White House would only shoot down the 2nd airplane which violated the relevant restricted air space.... We also have absolutely no defenses for anything from our east, unless an Aegis ship with SM-3s and the upgrades to fire them is near the target and properly alert. This lack of protection was, after all, one of the reasons for the Bush plan to put ABMs in Eastern Europe, they'd protect everything there to the west, including the eastern part of the US. As for sources, IF they got enough HEU they could most certainly manufacture working gun assembly nuclear weapons; as usual the trick is getting the fissionables, but are you entirely, "You Bet Your Life" sanguine about Pakistan's control over its nukes and nuclear materials??? And how responsible Iran will be when they get "the bomb" remains to be seen.
• mehmehshoe 13y ago
  Remember a few year back when a group of Irish were the worst terrorists in the world? Oh, wait, a few people in the United states funded them! There will always be people that fight nations with non traditional warfare. Today it happens to be from the middle east. Tomorrow it may be Hello Kitty fanatics.
• lemmsjid 13y ago
  Try doing an exercise that is incredibly useful for those talking about terrorism--remove the word "terror" from what you're saying and see if your question remains reasonable. "And how do you plan to stop the next attack?" Suddenly the supreme vagueness of the question becomes apparent. After all, attacks in general provoke terror (at least for me--some random guy can rush at me on the street and I'll feel terror). So what attack are you talking about? By whom? The U.S. already has a framework to prevent "attacks" in general-- the CIA, the military, the police, the NSA, etc. Like with all security systems, it's a matter of calibrating them so they don't undermine our way of life. As a micro example -- I can prevent future (terror) attacks on myself by burying myself in a sealed metal casket. But my way of life would be seriously undermined. So how do I want to calibrate my safety vs. how I want to live? The exercise of removing the word "terror" is useful in almost all situations, because it actually makes things a little more accurate. For example, the "War on Terror" becomes the "War on ...". Which, as it panned out, more accurately describes the outcome.
• deleted 13y ago
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