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As usual, fun quotes for all sides of a debate: "Many raised doubts about the claims -- especially that the NSA played a key role in uncovering a 2009 plan to

by mpyne 13y ago

As usual, fun quotes for all sides of a debate: "Many raised doubts about the claims -- especially that the NSA played a key role in uncovering a 2009 plan to bomb the New York subway system --but the rough number of plots was comparable to what I estimated, which makes the NSA’s assertions seem credible to me." "...Perhaps our government’s controversial counter-terrorism efforts have prevented more Bostons than is commonly believed" "Recently, the former coordinator of the UN team that monitors Al Qaeda and the Taliban said that, between 2007 and 2011, your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were about 1 in 20 million. You have about a 1-in-126,000 lifetime risk of being killed by lightning"

jessaustin 13y ago
Yeah I thought it was balanced. I expect insiders will consider the study incomplete, because he's just looking at indictments, and those aren't among the objectives for the black-bag squad. (Although frankly I don't know what the relative percentages are, it's not as though Anwar al-Awlaki was a one-off.) Still, when we have a public discussion, only public information is relevant. You can't base an academic work on "secret" information. Within the NSA, this analysis is probably old hat. I'm pretty sure some of the geniuses know queuing theory. The comparison between lightning and "terror" emphasizes that security is a game of trade-offs. Although this is one of the basic mantras of computer security, we rarely hear it from those employed at public expense. Why do they have a different emphasis? We do spend some money on lightning protection, and most of us do use caution to avoid lightning-prone situations. Each of those costs is a pittance compared to those of the War On Terror. Really though, since lightning is not a sentient opponent who changes his tactics in response to human action, the more fair comparison in TFA is to violence in general. While that has dropped precipitously for decades, credit is given by many to the tyrannical police state we've built to match our tyrannical security state, so the proper amount to spend is still "more". LEOs are just as unlikely as NSA people to raise questions of priorities and trade-offs. If this were a dilemma the USA political system could solve, it probably would have been solved already for both of these cases. In my more pessimistic moments, I consider the widespread public apathy in the face of common knowledge about The War on Drugs to presage similar apathy to revelations of The War on Terror.
shirro 13y ago
While I think the "War on Terror" has been mostly a huge waste of tax payer money and a threat to civil liberties, when comparing it to lighting you have to consider that the rate of lightning strikes are probably fairly constant over time subject only to slow processes like climate change. Terrorism could potentially grow quite quickly so perhaps it does make sense to expend a bit more effort than protecting people from lightning. We seem to have failed to do that in an entirely rational way but the lightning - terror comparison seems invalid. Probably better to compare it with preventable deaths from some cause like car accidents or pool drownings (which is probably even worse for the anti-terror lobby) and which might get out of hand unless there is active prevention. Though again the cost benefit compared with preventing death from other causes doesn't help the authoritarians.

by mpyne 13y ago

jessaustin 13y ago

Yeah I thought it was balanced. I expect insiders will consider the study incomplete, because he's just looking at indictments, and those aren't among the objectives for the black-bag squad. (Although frankly I don't know what the relative percentages are, it's not as though Anwar al-Awlaki was a one-off.) Still, when we have a public discussion, only public information is relevant. You can't base an academic work on "secret" information. Within the NSA, this analysis is probably old hat. I'm pretty sure some of the geniuses know queuing theory. The comparison between lightning and "terror" emphasizes that security is a game of trade-offs. Although this is one of the basic mantras of computer security, we rarely hear it from those employed at public expense. Why do they have a different emphasis? We do spend some money on lightning protection, and most of us do use caution to avoid lightning-prone situations. Each of those costs is a pittance compared to those of the War On Terror. Really though, since lightning is not a sentient opponent who changes his tactics in response to human action, the more fair comparison in TFA is to violence in general. While that has dropped precipitously for decades, credit is given by many to the tyrannical police state we've built to match our tyrannical security state, so the proper amount to spend is still "more". LEOs are just as unlikely as NSA people to raise questions of priorities and trade-offs. If this were a dilemma the USA political system could solve, it probably would have been solved already for both of these cases. In my more pessimistic moments, I consider the widespread public apathy in the face of common knowledge about The War on Drugs to presage similar apathy to revelations of The War on Terror.

shirro 13y ago

While I think the "War on Terror" has been mostly a huge waste of tax payer money and a threat to civil liberties, when comparing it to lighting you have to consider that the rate of lightning strikes are probably fairly constant over time subject only to slow processes like climate change. Terrorism could potentially grow quite quickly so perhaps it does make sense to expend a bit more effort than protecting people from lightning. We seem to have failed to do that in an entirely rational way but the lightning - terror comparison seems invalid. Probably better to compare it with preventable deaths from some cause like car accidents or pool drownings (which is probably even worse for the anti-terror lobby) and which might get out of hand unless there is active prevention. Though again the cost benefit compared with preventing death from other causes doesn't help the authoritarians.