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Bruce Schneier On the Marathon Bomber Manhunt
Should Boston have been put in a state of lockdown on Friday as police chased down Dzhokhar Tsarnaev? Pragmatic Bruce Schneier writes on his blog: "I generally give the police a lot of tactical leeway in times like this. The very armed and very dangerous suspects warranted extraordinary treatment. They were perfectly capable of killing again, taking hostages, planting more bombs -- and we didn't know the extent of the plot or the group. That's why I didn't object to the massive police dragnet, the city-wide lock down, and so on." Schneier links to some passionate counterarguments, though. It doesn't escape the originator of a recurring movie plot terrorism contest that the Boston events of yesterday were just "the sort of thing that pretty much only happens in the movies."
If two people with makeshift bombs can cause a major city to go on lockdown, isn't the message to terrorists that a multi-city disruption -- say, shutting down from Boston to Philly -- wouldn't take very many people or that much coordination?
But that lesson was already learned way back in 9/11. Terrorists already know they can do that.
However what you are forgetting is that they don't care about "disruption". Disruption is not fear, it is annoyance. Generally Islamic terrorists have a very clear goal; they want to kill as many "infidels" as possible.
In that sense another lesson was learned. A marathon seems to be a great target with huge crowds, but because there are so many medical people and other security forces around, it's hard to carry off any kind of attack that actually kills very many people.
Even with some fairly powerful explosives, a packed crowd, and no forewarning of the authorities they only killed three people. Yes they wounded many more and sadly a lot of people lost limbs, but again that is not the goal of terrorism, they want death.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Costs more to rescue the xx-number of morons in the snow vs the total daily economic output of the state?
No no no, it's "the costs to rescue the xx-number of morons in the snow vs the total state and county taxes on the daily economic output of the state". The state doesn't care how much the citizens might benefit. It cares about how much it might gain or lose. Plus the state can save money on snow plow overtime and salt if less people are on the roads.