Slashdot Mirror
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.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
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.
Find free books.
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.
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.
Correct, though the people may deserve some sympathy what is needed from our politicians is an investigation as to why this plant was allowed to flaunt safety regulations. The greatest respect we can show the victims of the West Texas accident is to hold those responsible accountable, from the owners of the plant to the regulators who failed to perform the required inspections.
West Texas was completely preventable, and a failure of regulatory oversight.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
There is a continuum on a scale that goes from "I have my own rights and I don't care about anyone else" to "What the individual wants isn't important, it's only the common good that matters." Most of us dislike both extremes and find our beliefs somewhere between the two. In this case, most residents thought the emergency and very temporary needs of their community were significantly more important than their own personal convenience and voluntarily complied with a request to stay in for part of a day. Seems eminently reasonable to me, and so I find it curious to be critical of that.
... investigation as to why this plant was allowed to flaunt safety regulations. (emphasis added)
Flaunt means to display proudly or ostentatiously, such as one might do after buying a new sports car. To flaunt safety regulations means you have put up a big colourful poster with the text of the regulations and maybe have a big sign saying "We're better than everyone else because we follow safety regulations!"
I believe the word you were looking for was flout.
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.
Another one for the "The Anarchist Cookbook?" I wasn't aware of O2F2.. :-?
The formula that better describes its properties is FOOF. You can read a very entertaining description of its synthesis and properties here. Comparing FOOF to the stuff from "The Anarchist Coockbook" is like comparing Saturn 5 rocket to a firecracker. Yes they both blow up, but FOOF can make water explode at subzero temperatures. Here is a quote from Stern, AG, The Chemical Properties of Dioxygen Difluoride, JACS 1963:
It caused explosions when added to ice at 130-140K.
BTW I strongly recommend reading Derek's "Things I Won't Work With" blog. It is a lot of fun.
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.
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);
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.