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

[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

[Silverstrike]

This is probably a little offtopic, but I've heard that bastardization of a concept, "Social Darwinism", one too many times lately.

Let's set the record straight.

Social Darwinism is a concept popularized in the late 19th century after Darwin published the Origin of Species.

It has no basis in Darwin's writing or theories, although it remained popular until after the Second World War.

Why is that? Because it was used as a scientific basis for racism.

So please, think of a better phrase for what you mean, or better yet, do some research in sociology before spouting about what was essentially science twisted for evil.

Refernece: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism

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.

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.

[kfg]

As we slowly give up our freedoms and rights bit by bit for some safety that nobody can prove we actually have.

And here is the irony of Franklin's dictum; it cannot be proved that we actually have some more saftey as a result of giving up rights, since giving up rights merely transfers the source of the threat from one party to another.

I have many friends and acquaintences who were blacklisted during the McCarthy era, a few of them even cited for contempt of Congress. I have lived through the hottest phase of the cold war and the social termoil of the 60s; and for the first time in my life I find myself actually afraid on a day to day basis , not of the external terrorists, who are no more a real threat to me than they ever have been (and I'm a native New Yorker) , but from the internal terrorists.

KFG

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?

I point the responsibility...

[oahazmatt]

I point the responsibility towards the people who are succumbing to these notions of fear and submitting their rights to the government in exchange for peace of mind. I was having dinner with my parents the other night, and my mother, who had MSNBC on in the background, was preaching GWB and how the war on terrorism was going to work and bring democracy to Iraq.

I suggested to my mother that Iraq might very well be the victim of a strong power vaccuum once (or if) the US ever removes its presence completely from the region. My mother countered by saying that wont happen if we set up their democracy correctly. I asked her why we're setting up their democracy for them. She said it was because they deserved it. I said that may be well and true, but you can not lead someone who lacks their own motivation into a battle and then leave. The will and effort to change the government has to come from the people oppressed by that government, not someone else egging them on for change. That is not a true foundation for that people's government.

Also its my mothers belief that democracy will eradicate all terrorist activity. She said once all countries have a democracy that everything would be harmonic and peaceful. I countered by asking about countries with democracies that chose not to go to Iraq with the US and she countered by saying those countries didn't know any better. I then suggested that a government such as ours and a democratic but Muslim-faith-based government may never see eye-to-eye. She retracted to her previous point of democracy being able to eliminate all internal terrorism. I then name-dropped Tim McVeigh as proof of that theory.

My mom is one of many people who believe warrantless wire-tapping is fine. She says she has nothing to hide. I asked her to tell me her current checking account balance. She got angry and told me no. I asked why she would give me that information and she replied it was none of my business. Then I asked her to tell me about all the phone calls she made last month to anyone who wasn't in our family. She told me again it was none of my business. I asked her why it was none of my business yet she had no problem letting the government know all of that information?

She got this nasty look on her face and told me GWB is going to save this country.

Yay.

1 ticket to Canada, please.

Apologies for spelling and grammar.

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?

More than just aircraft

[DG]

A few years ago, the US Dept of Homeland Security was advising people to buy plastic sheeting and duct tape to seal their houses against chemical weapons.

I'm a Canadian who works in the US. I'm also a former Regular Force soldier who is now a Reservist. Part of my baliwick at one point was unit Chemical Warfare Officer.

So I come to work the day after that particular announcement was made, and I find a group of my co-workers discussing a plan for the one guy who owns a pickup truck to stop off at Home Depot and stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape. The plan was to buy in bulk, and they were working out the details for how much to buy, how to deliver it, etc etc.

I wound up delivering a little ad-hoc class on the properties of chemical weapons to about 30 people, the high points of which were:

1) Yes, modern chemical weapons are ludicrously lethal. Exposure to as little as a pinhead-sized drop of certain nerve agents can kill you, which means that a litre of agent has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of people.

2) The *reason* that these agents are so stupidly toxic is that **DELIVERY** of agent is really serious problem. It is so difficult to arrange exposure of soldiers to agent AT ALL that you need tiny exposures to be incapacitiating or the stuff just doesn't work. If you have (say) 300,000 lethal doses in a litre of agent, try getting a lethal dose of that agent to 300,000 people - it's a nontrivial problem.

3) The people who invested most heavily in this equipment (the USSR and the USA) had access to MONSTER delivery systems, and the targets were expected to be densely packed. We're talking hundreds of tubes of artillery, and aircraft-based delivery systems that for all intents and purposes were giant crop dusters. We're not talking a couple of litres of agent here; we're talking about tanker-truck quantities.

4) The primary military objective of chemical weapons isn't to kill the enemy; they are a nucience and area denial weapon. As soon as you deliver a chemical strike, you force everybody in the area to get into their protective gear - bunny suit, gas mask, "Boots, Rubber, Clumsy" which is a serious pain in the ass and interferes with combat effectiveness. A chemical strike can channel the enemy, slow him down, induce fatigue and stress, forces him to take time to decomtaminate - but it rarely inflicts serious casulties.

5) The golden example of this is the Sarin attack on the Japanese subway a few years ago. Of all the places in the world to do a chemical strike, that's the best - stupid high population density maximizes the exposure pur unit volume of agent, limited ventallation reduces the amount of agent burned off, few exits maximizes the time the target is spent exposed to agent, and the agent itself was reasonably modern.

It SHOULD have been a slaughterhouse, according to conventional wisdom. But in reality, the amount of casulties due to agent was tiny; they inflicted more casulties through panic and stampeding than due to agent exposure.

Chemical weapons JUST DON'T WORK unless delivered in huge volumes - and the ability to deliver in huge volumes is limited to large, well-equipped state armies. A chemical strike is well down the list of potential threats to the civillian populace.

A skilled and motivated sniper is far, far more dangerous than a dozen nutballs with a litre of VX.

The fact that the Department of Homeland Security was advising people to buy plastic sheeting to protect themselves against chemical attack is completely ludicrous... and while I have a hard time buying into anybodies' tinfoil-hat conspriracy theories (never assume malevolance where stupidity will serve) that sure looks like fear-mongering to me.

DG

This whole Buttle/Tuttle confusion was planned

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Brazil and Bush's War on Terror

by Robert Blumen

We are living in Brazil. The future as foretold by Terry Gilliam's 1985 rich and multi-layered film masterpiece Brazil is upon us. First released fifteen years ago, Terry Gilliam's Brazil was astonishingly accurate in forecasting political trends. In a previous essay, I examined the film as a critique of socialist central planning. In this piece, I will discuss how Brazil portends Bush's War on Terror.

The world of Brazil shows a totalitarian society in which freedom has been forfeited for a false promise of protection from terrorist attacks. Gilliam shows how the threat of terrorism is manipulated by the state as a means of political control over the population. The threat of terror is created by the internal security police in order to generate public acceptance of totalitarian police powers.

Gilliam's exposition raises some important questions: Is the terror created by the power of the state in the alleged pursuit of terrorism worse than the terrorism itself? And are they really any different?

The ministers of state in Brazil have succeeded in creating a society organized around a continuous response to the threat of terrorism. Random bombings occur regularly. The protagonist Sam and his mother must go through a security check in order to enter a restaurant. And then during their meal a large explosion blows out the back of the dining room; they continue eating while bodies are dragged away.

As in modern America, there is some doubt about whether Brazil's "War on Terrorism" is really working. At the opening of the film Minister Helpmann, the Deputy Minister of information (the internal security agency), appears on TV immediately after a bombing takes place:

• INTERVIEWER: Do you think that the government is winning the battle against terrorists?

  HELPMANN: Oh yes. Our morale is much higher than theirs, we're fielding all their strokes, running a lot of them out, and pretty consistently knocking them for six. I'd say they're nearly out of the game.

  INTERVIEWER: But the bombing campaign is now in its thirteenth year.

  HELPMANN: Beginner's luck.

Now in the US, we are told by the Bush administration that the war on terrorism will become a more or less permanent state of affairs.

• U.S. war may last decades
  Military pushed to think broadly
  By KAREN MASTERSON

  WASHINGTON - The U.S. war on terrorism may rage for decades and has forced Pentagon strategists to think more broadly than they've had to since World War II, a top military official said Sunday.

  "The fact that it could last several years, or many years, or maybe our lifetimes would not surprise me," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday on ABC's This Week.

The film has been reissued on DVD with commentary by the director in which he states that it was his intention to convey that there were so many government plants, double agents, agents provocateurs, moles, infiltrators, etc. that at some point even the government did not know for sure whether there were any real terrorists or whether all of the terror was fabricated by the police as part of their anti-terror campaign.

In a conversation between Sam and Ministry of Information office Jack Lint, Lint reveals how he - as a key member of the internal security department - understands the events that are taking place:

• SAM: You don't really think Tuttle and the g