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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."
All this showed to me sadly was how quickly people are willing to give up their own freedoms because of fear. This is a sad slippery slope we are on. While this was a horrible event, only three people died, and the whole city got shut down. Three. How long till they lockdown the city because two people die. How long untill they lockdown the city because a gunshot was heard. Untill they come into our homes to look for suspects. And the worst part is, no one will even say "No". We will welcome them with open arms, and claim that we dont mind being being forced to stay indoors, to let police into our houses whenever they want, to be under constant surveillance, because there are "madmen" on the loose and we have to catch them. Its like a mass case of stockholm syndrome.
Two devices went off, police were looking for two suspects... there was no particularly strong evidence that there would be dozens of people out there or something. I suspect it comes down to just the word "terrorism" causing people to refuse to apply the kind of logic they normally apply.
I've lived in neighborhoods where people were shot, and the gunman was an fugitive. It was more likely in those cases that there could be wider involvement of a larger group, because often people who perpetrate shootings are gang members. While it's rare, occasionally these fugitive scenarios actually do end up in a shootout that involves a dozen people. Yet, the police don't lock down all of Atlanta every other week just in case.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The authorities said "please stay inside, don't go to work or anything". Most people did, either because of the perceived danger (desperate fugitive with explosives and guns and a willingness, even perhaps a desire, to use them against random citizens) or because they wanted to do what little they could to help authorities catch the perpetrators of the marathon bombings.
Nobody got arrested for not staying inside. It was a temporary measure, and a ruinously expensive one in economic terms -- so they're not likely to do this again except in equally extreme situations.
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?
America is a land of fear. It is easy to paralyze us, we are already just short of paralyzed by fear all the time anyway.
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In the movies, there would be a large conspiracy and very intelligent, well-organized criminals with a very siginficant motive for profit or power.
In this case, it was a couple of really stupid punk-asses with lots of pent up anger and no real higher agenda other than "we want hurt stoopid Americans". They did nothing to mask their identities or cover their tracks, and they're not likely representing any larger organization.
If it was a movie, it would be a pretty awful one.
The guy was found when they let people out of their houses and one of them stumbled across the guy. If they had let people out earlier would he have been found earlier? Funny thing is if they had waited until night to lift the ban he might have slipped away.
What's more consider what happened. The people hid from one militant guy. Compare this to 1776 when British militants walked on a town. Citizens decided to gather together to oppose them despite the risk to their lives (, and many did die ). Boy how this country has changed.
The worst outcome of this isn't necessarily that Boston got locked down, although that's definitely worth discussing.
The worst outcome is that lockdowns are becoming more and more common, far out of proportion to the actual risk. Once it becomes normal to lock down an entire city in response to a very real and significant threat, it then becomes much easier to feel normal about it when we lock down an entire college campus because a mentally ill homeless person made some faculty or staff uncomfortable. It becomes normal to do what some community colleges in my area are doing, which is to have an active shooter drill once a year in which adult college students are locked in a dark room for 30 minutes and told they can't leave. (This passive response is, BTW, not at all in line with what experts recommend in such a situation.)
Destroying 30 minutes of instruction for a whole campus and violating students' civil rights is way out of proportion to the risk of getting killed by an active shooter, which for a college student is on the order of 1 in 300,000 per year. A college student's risk of being a victim of rape, robbery, or assault is about 1 in 100 per year, but we're uncomfortable dealing with that -- in fact, there is a wave of lawsuits right now by women who say their rights were violated when their colleges refused to take action about their being raped.
To use an analogy suggested by Scheneier, active shooters and the marathon bombing are like shark attacks, and other violent crimes are like dog bites. The number of people killed by dogs every year is much, much greater than the number killed by sharks. But we find shark attacks much more psychologically compelling.
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This entire thing was ridiculous and made so by the police. 2 men shut down one of the largest cities on earth. These sorts of attacks happen all the time most other parts of the world. Imagine living in Israel or Syria. If they ever get 20 guys again like 9/11 and they all just get rifles and randomly start shooting people all over the country like the Washington sniper did this countries going to become a police state if the police react like this. More people were killed in Massachusetts in the past week in car accidents then by these bombers. Where was the police presence to prevent those fatalities? Oh, that's right, they were busy firing thousands of rounds at a 2 guys in a residential neighborhood.
"Please stay indoors and off the roads unless you have a really good reason."
"May we search your house for him?"
Holy shit! The horrors!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
One thing about getting everyone to stay in their homes is that they reduced random innocents from getting attacked by scared civilians. Oh no, that guy has a hat and looks vaguely like that security image *blam blam* oh wait, that was the mailman. Woops.
I guess the feds are worrying about a hypothetical chain "Chechens - Russia - WMD".
I am not informed enough to judge their merits.
http://what-if.xkcd.com/40/
Almost ten times as many died in a Baghdad bombing.
But the only reason the Boston count was not higher than Baghdad was that there were so many medical personal literally right there at the scene.
The Boston attack was in a much more crowded area, during an event with a lot more media coverage. Why is it any surprise it would get more coverage? It does in fact deserve more coverage, as tragic as those other things are.
That said the Texas explosion does deserve more coverage than it is getting, and more sympathy from political leaders than it has.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Boston Police Dept. shut down the entire city except for the doughtnut shops.
http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/20/security-theater-martial-law-and-a-tale-that-trumps-every-cop-and-donut-joke-youve-ever-heard/
http://www.boston.com/businessupdates/2013/04/19/cops-request-dunkin-donuts-stays-open/a981LXWXrfuZAAgnIM1YjL/story.html
Requesting that people stay at home for a day doesn't seem that Orwellian to me, given that the choice of whether to comply with this request was up to us. If you went out, your freedom to move around was only restricted by a few cordoned-off areas in Cambridge and Watertown, and a small possibility that you might get asked for ID. The only reason the request to stay inside worked was because almost everyone thought it was a reasonable thing to ask under the circumstances. If the suspect had gotten away, I don't think it would have worked today.
As for the risk - I think people don't realize the level of law enforcement presence - there were (according to reports) well over 1,000 heavily armed officers, most of them in Watertown, a city of 30,000 people. The risk of the suspect hurting anyone was probably minor compared to the risk of something going horribly wrong with all those officers running around. This may have been a massive over-reaction, but that's a different question - given that the officers *were* there, it was a dangerous situation. As the parent of a skinny teenager who could conceivably be mistaken for the suspect at enough of a distance, I may be particularly sensitive to this issue...
First, the word lockdown is not appropriate. Police weren't out arresting folks for going outside. I live in Cambridge, and I think a lot of us affected thought of it kinda like a blizzard. I did go out during the day and saw kids playing basketball in the park and neighbors out talking with each other. Everyone was nervous, but we didn't feel like we were giving up any rights.
Second, the 'lockdown' was a result of a violent shootout that included explosives in a dense residential area and the escape of an armed and dangerous suspect who had killed an officer in cold blood. This wasn't because there were 2 'terrorists' on the loose. This was because there was a confirmed killer armed with bombs on the loose and last spotted a couple of miles away.
I think people should see those of us who 'sheltered in place' as doing what we could do to help the police catch him. We're an intelligent city that understands common sense. They don't want us to get hurt, so for our protection (what the police are there for) they warned us to stay inside. You also have the shutdown of all mass transportation, something that makes sense given the situation.
Finally, it was a Friday! The call to 'shelter in place' was given in the morning when we were all getting ready for work. What would you say? "Hey boss, sorry I can't make it today. Yeah the police say I shouldn't go out and besides the subway is closed." or "Well, I'm going to drive myself through an empty city and go to an empty office just to prove I have rights"
America is a land of fear.
That is not at all true. Americans simply have good common sense in times of crisis. Just look at how many people were running to HELP after the bombings, knowing there could be more.
It is easy to paralyze us
Not at all, we just have enough sense to know when it's a good time to stand still when we see a snake, long enough for some other guy to get a rock...
"Look before you Leap" is not a motto that derives from fear, but from experience that we'd like facts before acting unreasonably.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If a terrorist REALLY wants to cause the US lots of pain, here's how to do it:
1. Go to Harvard and get a MBA
2. Get a job on Wall Street (Goldman Sachs, Morgan, etc ...) or Bank of America.
3. Fuck up America MORE than any bomb or planes into towers could EVER do!
4. Oh, Profit!
See dieing in a terrorist act isn't as scary to an American as losing their way of life - that's TERRIFYING! Losing their big houses, big cars, iStuff and cable TV would decimate Americans!!
Maybe, but notice that the fear was created, not by terrorist, but by:
1) Politicians scoring a cheap leadership point, and
2) The media pushing ads with a "good" story,
This might very well have been way out of proportions.
I think the politicians eat it because it was great chance to show leadership, and the media loved the idea of doing live coverage for hours on end...
End result, more fear... but I'm not sure it was the terrorist who scared you.
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.
I would beg to differ, maiming people is in many ways far more effective as terror than killing people. The dead will have a funeral, maybe the odd memorial but the crippled will go around the rest of their lives as living reminders of the Boston Marathon bombings, make for tons of heart breaking scenes and be a huge drain on medical and other resources. There is a reason even the Geneva Convention banned weapons that are "excessively injurious" as an inhumane way to fight a war even when outright killing enemy combatants is generally permitted. Yes perhaps terrorists would favor a kill over a maiming but bomb makers generally want as many, as gravely and as permanently wounded as possible, not wanting clean kills but rather making it as messy as possible. Without the wounded three kills wouldn't even be half a pistol clip and not a fraction as terrifying.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If we outlaw pressure cookers,
only outlaws will have pressure cookers.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
> but because there are so many medical people and other security forces around
Not to mention the marathon finish line was only 1.4 miles away from what is arguably the best hospital in the world.
With a kinetic weapon, yes. Just wait until the Islamic nutjobs get their hands on Syria's chemical weapons.
Is that they didn't marandize (Is that a word?) him when they took him into custody claiming national security precedence or something like that. I doubt he will get off or set free but I wonder what the fallout is.
Merely posting to correct a mis-mod. Sorry!
Patience is a virtue, but haste is my life.
Option 1: Police/govt over-react, nothing bad happens: Grumbling about over reaction
Option 2: Police/govt over-react, something bad still happens: Grumbling that still not enough was done
Option 3: Police/govt under-react, nothing bad happens: No problem
Option 4: Police/govt under-react, another attack happens: Everyone "responsible" as good as burnt alive at stake
In light of the potential outcome of option 4 (which based on what these psychopaths did before and during capture was altogether probable) risk-averse structures, like governments, will choose to over-react every time.
I would beg to differ, maiming people is in many ways far more effective as terror than killing people.
That is coming from an intellectual viewpoint. I agree also (that in terms of causing terror mere maiming works as well) but the point is the terrorists do not view things in that way. If they did there would be a lot more attacks that were similarly ineffective at killing people, but caused a lot of chaos and confusion and hurt.
Again the fundamental motivation here is truly to kill, to rid the earth of each and every person that disagrees with them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Commenters whining about loss of freedom clearly don't live in Boston. It took five days from the bombings to having both suspects off the street. No civilians were hurt after the bombings. One police officer lost his life, and one was critically wounded in their efforts to bring the suspects to justice. If you are not impressed by that, you're not human. That's why, in Boston, we were applauding law enforcement, not bitching about some imaginary freedoms that you wont actually lose. Shut up already.
bio->bi_end_io(bio, error);
Again the fundamental motivation here is truly to kill, to rid the earth of each and every person that disagrees with them.
So because they hate the US they're going to try taking out America three people at a time? It'd take eight hundred 9/11s a year just to keep up with population growth, it doesn't even pass the giggle test. No, at this point they just want the US to butt out so they can have their radical islamist revolutions to themselves, they don't expect you to stop disagreeing just stop daring to speak out or doing anything about it. Yes eventually if they can unite the whole muslim world under a theocratic rule like Iran they'll be coming for the rest of us, but there's not the slightest bit of genocidal aspirations in blowing up a few people. Not even in wacky terrorist world.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Man this thread has lots of people that I am inclined to reply to.
Anyhow, I'm also inclined to agree with you. I figured they'd want terror and that either would work. I could see how maiming would increase the level of terror as well as increase the length of time that people think about it. The impact from crippling may be minimized in a large city as compared to a smaller village though but it still seems likely.
Much appreciated. I'd have never thought of it that way.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
So because they hate the US they're going to try taking out America three people at a time? It'd take eight hundred 9/11s a year just to keep up with population growth, it doesn't even pass the giggle test.
I don't understand the application of logic to an inherently illogical philosophy.
However, you are basically proving my point. They want to take out a lot of people for each hit. That they only killed three makes it a failure for them.
You just don't seem to really understand the mindset at work here which is to use hundreds of millions of people over decades to whittle down a larger force until they can destroy it totally. That is truly what they are thinking.
If they thought about it the way you are they would have done nothing - on 9/11 or in Boston - because the number of people actually killed is too tiny and really has little effect. But again they are not thinking in calculated logical terms, they are thinking in terms of broad victories that sweep many more people into the movement they want to maintain and grow.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
THIS! Two guys with pressure cookers shut down a major american city, innocent American's were deprived of their 4th Amendment rights (just as one example, stripped naked guy) Endless pictures of paramilitary police and armored personell carriers roaming the streets of Boston Door to door searches by police that essentially are indistinguishable from military without search warrants brandishing firearms ... You tell me who won? It certainly isn't the American citizen.
For a good insight into the "modern" terrorist, the novel "The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad, published in 1907, nails it depressingly well (Gutenberg version here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/974).
you are full of crap, know you are full of crap, and rather than admit it, assume that everyone will decide that you aren't worth the time needed to look up a negative just to demonstrate what we already know.
They didn't mandate it, they didn't arrest/shoot anyone on the street (there were some people out and about, go look it up). It is pretty standard to want people to stay in doors in a situation like that. Not often it happens to a whole city, but on a smaller scale.
One night, like at 2 in the morning, I saw a whole hots of police cars around. Mostly spread out in the mall near my condo complex but some on the road leading to it and so on. I was worried so I called and asked what was up. Their request to me was to stay inside, don't open my door, and that the officers on scene would let me know if I needed to go anywhere (they didn't).
They were looking for someone and that was made much easier if there weren't additional people out wandering around and if there wasn't someone who could become a potential hostage. They didn't tell me I had to stay in my house. I was free to go to my car and drive off, they just asked that I did.
There was no larger announcement because, well, it was 2 in the morning. I wouldn't have even noticed had I not woke up to go to the bathroom. However what they asked anyone who called in (I may have not been the only one) was to stay in your house, unless instructed to do something else.
It really makes a lot of sense.
You see a lot of it online, and on /. in particular. People like to hate on the US. They want to feel, for various reasons, that the US is just a shitty place to live and that it is really bad there. They like to whine and cry about everything being awful, everything being a bad thing, make it out to be a real dystopia. It's an anti-patriotism of sorts. If you look around online you can find sites where posters are the opposite, they talk about how amazingly awesome the US is all the time and for everything. They downplay all the bad, trumpet all the good (and sometimes make good up) that kind of thing. This is the reverse of that.
It is quite annoying as it shows not only a great level of ignorance but an astounding lack of perspective about the world. But it is what it is.
I would beg to differ, maiming people is in many ways far more effective as terror than killing people.
That is coming from an intellectual viewpoint. I agree also (that in terms of causing terror mere maiming works as well) but the point is the terrorists do not view things in that way. If they did there would be a lot more attacks that were similarly ineffective at killing people, but caused a lot of chaos and confusion and hurt.
Again the fundamental motivation here is truly to kill, to rid the earth of each and every person that disagrees with them.
Its standard military procedure with anti personnel landmines. The objective is not to kill the target but to cause an amputation of one or both legs. This causes far greater problems for the enemy than a death. The maimed soldier has to be gotten out of the field, treated, cared for possibly for the rest of their lives. It causes more psychological trauma for their comrades and for the people back home. I think it works pretty much the same when the non government terrorists to it as when the government terrorists do it. And yeah any organisation that uses anti personnel landmines is a terrorist organisation.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
timothy has taken a quote from Schneier's blog post, and then put a link to that blog post on a random sentence inside that quote.
That is incredibly confusing.
The Tsarnaevs' recruitment by US intelligence as penetration agents against terrorist networks in southern Russia explains some otherwise baffling features of the event:
1. An elite American college in Cambridge admitted younger brother Dzhokhar and granted him a $2,500 scholarship, without subjecting him to the exceptionally stiff standard conditions of admission. This may be explained by his older brother Tamerlan demanding this privilege for his kid brother in part payment for recruitment.
2. When in 2011, a âoeforeign governmentâ (Russian intelligence) asked the FBI to screen Tamerlan for suspected ties to Caucasian Wahhabist cells during a period in which they had begun pledging allegiance to al Qaeda, the agency, it was officially revealed, found nothing incriminating against him and let him go after a short interview.
He was not placed under surveillance. Neither was there any attempt to hide the fact that he paid a long visit to Russia last year and on his return began promoting radical Islam on social media.
Yet even after the Boston marathon bombings, when law enforcement agencies, heavily reinforced by federal and state personnel, desperately hunted the perpetrators, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was never mentioned as a possible suspect
3. Friday, four days after the twin explosions at the marathon finishing line, the FBI released footage of Suspect No. 1 in a black hat and Suspect No. 2 in a white hat walking briskly away from the crime scene, and appealed to the public to help the authorities identify the pair.
http://www.debka.com/article/22914/The-Tsarnaev-brothers-were-double-agents-who-decoyed-US-into-terror-trap
Casteism
I was initially very skeptical about the city-wide lockdown until it was reported on every news outlet that the reason for the wider city "lockdown", was to minimize the strain on law enforcement and other services that would otherwise have to respond to matters unrelated to capturing the suspects. Seems pretty sensible to me. It's still to soon to know for sure but I haven't heard of any abuses by law enforcement in areas located far away from the action.
You gotta keep in mind that with regards to the Geneva Convention, it is less a list of "moral" rules and more things that are in the best benefits of all parties engaged in war if they all follow them. Think of it as a prisoner's dilemma that is repeated. If one chooses the selfish option, then everyone else will also pick it afterwards, making everyone a loser. So if a country gives its soldiers plastic ammo, for example, they'll injure tons of enemies, creating a huge drain on resources, but then the enemy will just do the same thing to them, resulting in a net loss to everyone. Same thing with POWs.
I'm getting a little sick of Schneier's post hoc, benefit of hindsight finger-wagging. Where was he when all this was going down? He was watching it on TV like most of the rest of us. Of course his theory fits the facts now that the worst has passed. What sticks in my craw is that he supplies these obvious solutions after the fact, then tut-tuts us all for not having seen his brilliance in the first place. How many of his precious, self-advertising blog posts on this topic were made while the events were in progress? One, and it was to advertise some things he'd written. He has nothing practical or helpful to say on these matters, only self-evident, if-only-you-knew advice long after everything has been laid out by others. Sure, now that we know it was probably just two guys with a screw loose, we can marvel at how afraid we were and how reclusive we became. But at the time, nobody knew what was going on. Oh, except Schneier, eh?
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
State and federal authorities have caught criminals that have killed far more people than these two brothers have without shredding the 4th Amendment or enforcing what was basically martial law across one of America's most populous cities.
It's not "do little to nothing" vs "Defcon 4", it's losing our shit vs the sort of manhunt that's done hundreds of times a year in varying locations across the country.
Sorry - none of that makes phrenology or other shit about ethnic groups being prone to violence "scientific". My own background in materials science doesn't tell me this - the fucking dictionary and common usage of the entire English speaking world tells me this.
Since you are a grown man you really should be ashamed of the Nazi bullshit you are spewing out for the kids to see. Yes Nazi does apply - change one word of your above stream of shit and you get: What does need to happen is that the political Left needs to learn about Jews and wake up to the Truths about it - do it through the entire stream of shit and even you should be able to see the road to hell you are calling for. Your parents would be disgusted that you've forgotten what happened in the war they lived through.
Racially the Palestinians are identical, as is obvious, so I don't see why you think you can get out of pretending you didn't mean what you wrote. Also your bit about pretending Islam is a form of politics is a ridiculous waste of words since you cannot possibly be that stupid as to believe it, especially with Syria etc going on now. Falling back on calling me an anti-semite for my cut and paste example of your own words is hilarious - that was to illustrate that the line you are pushing is equivalent to anti-semitism and you should know better. Face it, despite your ego from being good at one thing (could have done without you wanking it all over this page with that bio) you know fuck all about this topic and you've been sucked in by a bunch of white power fuckwits that want to wipe out everyone that just happens to be a different branch of Judaism to Christianity.
The "political islam" you rant about is bringing parts of the middle east away from military dictatorships and closer to western style democracies - haven't you paid attention to the news in the last couple of years? Those places haven't ended up like Iran but instead more like "political christians" such as the ones that founded the USA. What really happened in Egypt, Libya etc is the mosques were the only legal places for large gatherings so that's were the politics happened, nobody else had a hope of getting organised and getting their shit together. Give it a few years and those places will probably look a lot more politically like Turkey - they are already a million miles away from Iran's theocracy and show no signs of going that way. So your "political islam" IMHO makes no more sense than saying "political christians".