Bruce Schneier Blasts Politicians, Media

An anonymous reader writes, "In his latest newsletter, security author Bruce Schneier delivered a scathing critique of politicians and the media for promoting fear and ultimately doing exactly what the terrorists want. Citing several cases of false alarms, Schneier writes: 'Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat... Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.' Are the terrorists laughing at us?"

Comments

Machiavelli

[Itchy Rich]

Dissent gets stifled using anti-terror legislation... government fuck-ups get buried beneath terror headlines... people are given an enemy, and a reason to be obedient. Terrorism makes it easy for politicians to get their own way. Considering the mind-bogglingly small impact of terrorism, why wouldn't they want to encourage it?

Re:Machiavelli

[IAmTheDave]

Where's the frontier where one can escape the thumb of large business and large government?

Buy an island. Or maybe move to SeaLand.

As long as there is money, there will be greed and corruption. As long as there are humans, there will be a desire for power and control. Since the human race currently reigns the planet, and international cooperation is almost entirely based on money, all four (greed, corruption, power, and control) exist.

They also all feed off of eachother. Greed breeds a desire for power and money. Greedy desire for money breeds corruption. Corrupt people with reems of money can buy control and power.

What's interesting is that despite greed, and the desire for ultimate control, said corrupt greedy controling individuals DO ban together - if pushing forward the collective enhances the individual. So as corruption grows inside of a large group, it's bound to effect (often in a positive money sense) the individual seeking said money and power. As a group becomes more powerful, the individual gains more power inside the group, which gives the group and individual more control.

It's vicious, rampant, and all-too-difficult to keep in check.

So the idealism held by a few true blue men (the founding fathers) was bound to fail, as is any new government set up today. (Although, I should point out, or at least not pretend to deny, that almost all the important founding fathers were all men who held positions of power and control in said new government, and were all pretty well off financially too. Best way to gain control of a country? Make one up.)

It's the crux of why all governments fail - and the crux of why, despite how perfect it looks on paper, communism is a dismal failure as well.

The democracy... sorry... republic... in which we live (US) is, to many, the best that we have come up with as a species thus far. To which side it leans can be debated forever, and whether or not more socialism is a good thing is also debatable. But we're far from a perfect society, and I dare say that we won't see one... ever.

Or, at least not as long as greed, power, corruption, and money are in the equation.

Re:Machiavelli

[russ1337]

Its 'mutualism symbiosis' at its best. It is much like the Movie stars and the Paparazzi - the movie stars loath the Paparazzi, but need the publicity they give them; and the paparazzi need the movie stars to stay employed.

Politicians NEED the terrorist threats to push through legislation giving themselves more power. (If there was no threat, there would be no Patriot Act). They politicians may not like them, but it is the terrorists that enable the politicians. (Here is the redundant bit, but it proves the point:) When the politicians use the terrorist threats to gain said power, they are spreading the word of the terrorist, giving them more power..... thus fueling the terrorists ability to enable fear, and so on....

Re:Machiavelli

[Hijacked Public]

You'd have to buy an island that no one wants. And I think SeaLand burned half to the ground and isn't going to be able to resurrect itself without help, which means some government or corporation somewhere is going to earn themselves some leverage by providing it.

The important thing to remember is that things aren't the way there are simply because humanity willed it so. Our true blue, slave owning, whore fucking founding fathers didn't just get to draw up a consitution and the country birthed out of that and everybody went around respecting everyone. They ordered thousands and thousands of common people to march face first into the outstretched bayonets of our enemies. When all the boides were finally piled up and counted, more of their guys were killed than our guys, so we could call this place our own and go back to being eaten alive by bears and half starving to death until we recuperated enough strength to go on a murderous genocidal rampage against the people who were here when we arrived.

So no, buying an island won't do. You'll need a massive economy to produce airplanes and rifles and metal hats to ward off all your bloodthirsty neighbors. You'll then need to develop a culture that resists encroachment, otherwise you'll wake up one day and there will be shops on every corner selling shitty hamburgers and piping your money back across your borders, so that the hamburger vendor's homeland can pay for more machine guns to open up more markets to peddle hamburgers in so they can pay for more machine guns.

And if you discover gold or copper or oil or anything else of any conceivable value on your island, even sand, shoot yourself in the face in preemptive capitulation because someone will have already developed a cleverly named campaign, "Operation Friendly Help" or the like, that involves a boat the size of Rhode Island parking 15 miles off your shore and hurling bombs at you continuously for months on end.

Thing are looking pretty bleak for sovereignity in general.

Re:Machiavelli

[radtea]

Politicians NEED the terrorist threats to push through legislation giving themselves more power.

Nothing illustrates this better than George W. Bush's citing Osama bin Laden's belief that "we are engaged in a third world war" to bolster his (Bush's) claims that the U.S. government needs to be able to ride roughshod over the fundamental liberties Americans have fought and died for over centuries.

When I heard Bush say that it suddenly made perfect sense: two sides, both of whom have an interest in a war that is by definition practically unwinnable. And the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth claiming the blitherings of a man hiding in a cave constitute a creditable attack on our world-spanning civilization. Neither is interested in victory. Both are interested in pervasive warfare and fear. That is what secures their own power-base.

It is time for the rest of us to say we are tired of this make-believe war that is only in the interests of the nutters who want to lead it. Ordinary police work has been and continues to be an effective tool for fighting the minor threat that terrorism presents. We know terrorism is a minor threat because major threats actually kill people, whereas death by terrorism was negligable in 2001, much less 2006.

Ordinary police work, within the strong framework of rights and liberties that is fundamental to Anglo-American law, and not "security theatre", is what has kept us safe for decades. And even depending on ordinary police work did mean we were a little less safe, I personally am willing to trade a little bit of security in favour of liberty for myself, my compatriots, and my children.

Re:Machiavelli

[tbannist]

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Re:Machiavelli

[n00854180t]

About time someone said this. Seconded. The victim attitude is pathetic and ridiculous. More people died in car accidents in two weeks following the "terrorist" attack than in the actual attack. The impact of terrorists on citizens is so absolutely minor when compared with the millions of other ways you could conceivably die NOT involving terrorists. It's far more likely to trip and break your neck/back or get run over by a car than it is to be attacked by something as nebulous and insubstantial as "terrorists". People that allow themselves to be frightened and herded like sheep over something this riduclously minor do not deserve to live in a country called "the home of the brave". And for all the trolls that undoubtedly will call me a "liberal" (since they apparently don't know how to make any logical arguments), I am not, was a former military servicemember and indeed hold very dear the TRUE ideals of the country (personal liberty and freedom, not the oppressive fear mongering garbage that so many cowardly people want).

Possibly.

[FatSean]

I mean, remember the ban on LIQUIDS and GELS on US aircraft? Despite all the improvised explosives experts stating how freakin' hard it would be to succssfully hide and then deploy explosives packaged in a tube of hair gel or other consumer packing?

Yeah, they're probably laughing. As we slowly give up our freedoms and rights bit by bit for some safety that nobody can prove we actually have.

I can quantify the infringements on my rights and freedom...can you quantify how much safer we are?

Re:Possibly.

[ResidntGeek]

can you quantify how much safer we are?

Yes. Every infringement you can quantify is another warm fuzzy feeling among the masses. Since fear is about the only thing they're in danger of from terrorism, they're safer.

refused to be terrorized

[farker haiku]

The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face, and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn't make us any safer.

I'm more afraid of the politicians than I am of the terrorists. I can't refuse to be terrorized by them, however.

Naive

[October_30th]

He's naive if he thinks that the politicians don't realize that. Fear mongering serves politicians' interests as well -- especially if you'd like to exert more control over the public.

The terrorists don't care about that

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Here's what the terrorists care about:

1) they don't want the US to have such economic and political power over their countries
2) they are pretty miffed that the US supports Israel
3) some of them want Islam to be the dominant religion all over the world
4) they don't like the US propping up regimes that suppress their brand of religion
5) they don't like the US propping up regimes that treat their citizens inhumanely
6) they want to be taken seriously
7) they want to act on equal terms with the West

They don't care whether or not we are squandering our freedoms. That is a cop-out and jingoism that makes it seem like there are all these external forces that are causing us to give up our freedoms. It's a way of appealing to our nationalist nature instead of our patriotic nature.

We are losing our freedoms because we are letting it happen. Period. This has nothing to do with terrorism or terrorist wishes except that politicians on both sides use appeals to our emotions to take those freedoms away on the one hand and to lamely protest their usurpation on the other.

I have no analogy for this. It doesn't need one. So why do all these pundits keep spouting these hackneyed bad analogies? Because they don't think you're any smarter than that.

I think you're smart enough to see through it. It is my fervent hope that we (the true intellectual elite) can move this country forward without jingoism and without nationalism, racism, and religious intolerance.

Re:The terrorists don't care about that

[cp.tar]

without nationalism, you don't have a country to move forward anymore.

Instead, you have a world to move forward.

Then again, who cares about the filthy foreigners, right?

Obviously

[retrosteve]

What surprises me is that more people aren't speaking up like Schneier. It seems to me that the role of the press and politicians in promoting terror is very much like that of oxygen and fuel in promoting fire.

If you don't feed the spark, it goes out.

If you doubt this, look at other, more important issues (affecting much more than a few thousand people) that routinely die out in the press because they're ignored.

Not to hijack the thread, I'll give a tiny sample, and ask politely that you don't reply to the examples, just to the general principle

* Voting machine irregularities and bad faith at Diebold
* Retraction of whistleblower protections in the US Federal Government
* Increasing exemptions to the US FOIA
* FCC regulation changes making it possible for 2 media giants to completely control any given local market.

The impact of these little stories is far more interesting than which 10 or 100 people will be killed by a terrorist attack someday. As someone just recently put it, more people are killed every year by peanut allergies than by global terrorism.

The War on Peanuts awaits.

Don't feed the troll

[vrtladept]

We have followed this advice in USENET for quite some time. Don't feed the troll, it's what they want. (Terrorists are just real world trolls if you think about it)

Pussies

[drooling-dog]

Those who would give up freedom in exchange for security, deserve neither.

Yet it's amazing how often those of us who think this way get called "pussies" or worse by conservatives who themselves are hiding under their beds trembling in fear, begging Daddy Government to please take all of our rights and liberties if that's what it takes to keep the Boogie Man at bay for one more night.

Makes you wonder who the real "pussies" are...

Re:Pussies

[Skye16]

There's rolling over and pretending nothing happened, and there's running around like a fucking moron screaming the sky is falling every other day.

Honestly, in the giant scheme of things, I don't fucking care about 9/11, I don't fucking care about the two towers, and I don't fucking care about the pentagon. A few thousand people died in a country of about three hundred million. Whoopdifuckingdoo. About 460 thousand people died of heart attacks in 1998 - where the fuck is our War on Candy Bars and Whoppers, huh?

It was a rhetorical question; don't bother answering it. Obviously you try to stop terrorists, just as you try to stop anything that kills people. But we're more worried about a bomb on a subway than we are of dying in a car crash because some jackass is drunk driving. As if that bomb is going to kill you any more dead than an idiot in a pickup truck. It's fucking retarded.

We've lost any and all sense of context with this whole "War on Terror" bullshit. I'm not saying Democrats have the answer, but I know for sure that Republicans don't. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure anyone in a government position does. All-in-all, I find them uniquely suited to be completely incapable of figuring out how best to deal with this. But when given a choice between an asshole dropping bombs and an asshole banging an intern and not doing much of anything else, I'd rather have the latter.

The real sad thing is all I really want is a viable choice. You know, someone who isn't a complete tool. (Note: Don't even bother babbling about the Green Party or the Libertarian Party. I've scoped both of them out. They're just as bad - just in different ways. Think of the differences between giant logs of poop and green mushy piles of poop. No matter how you look at it, you're still shit.)

Re:How Is This News For Nerds??!!!!!!

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

What happened to those days?

September 11th.

To give a more complete answer to your rant, terrorism related, or rather "anti"-terrorism related news has become news for nerds. As technicially competant educated people, with not a small sprinkling of intellectual, Slashdotters are more likely to be aware of and engaged in the civil liberties debate, especially when it concerns technology being used to "save us".

1984 crops up in discussions a lot. That's because a lot of people on these boards have actually read the book. There's not a lot of internet forums you can say that about. Slashdotters are interested in what is happening to free society in the wake of the twin towers' collapse, even if you are not. To cap it all off, Bruce Schneier is a computer security super geek. His words carry weight.

As an aside, I'm willing to bet that a big factor in Slashdotters interest and in general opposition to anti-terrorism legislation, is the fact that many here had a hard time in secondary education and would rather not be stamped on again in the emerging neo-facist society. Once you've tasted the lash, you won't be so eager for flogging as others.

Three questions for you

[benhocking]

1. How many Americans died from terrorist attacks in 2001?
2. How many Americans died from natural disasters in 2001?
3. Where did the government spend more money keeping us safe?

If you want some help answering these questions, see this article.

I'm not trying to lessen the seriousness of 9/11. It was a very serious attack that demanded our attention. However, there are lots of other serious issues that also demand our attention.

Re:But the problem is:

[tclark]

You mean those British guys with no plane tickets, no passports, and no workable plan? Thank God we got those bastards!

Then again, even though those guys did not have a way to make a workable bomb, they did manage to get my three year old daughter frisked and her lip gloss confiscated when we flew recently.

Did we win this one?