[Newsbot]

Title: The Physics of Terror
Category: Military
Posted By: Curtman
Date: 2010-12-14 07:54:37

[DrCaleb]

More children die drowning in the backyard pool ever year than in terrorist attacks, yet our rights are not diminished in their name. We are more likely to die in a car accident on our way to work, than from running over an IED. Yet, no one gives us a pat down search on leaving our home.

When will sanity return?

[Proculation]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

More children die drowning in the backyard pool ever year than in terrorist attacks, yet our rights are not diminished in their name. We are more likely to die in a car accident on our way to work, than from running over an IED. Yet, no one gives us a pat down search on leaving our home.

When will sanity return?

Weird logic you have there.
We put fences around pools and we have regulations for cars. It helped reduce accident. Protection against terrorism is the same thing. Maybe you have less chance to die but a terrorist attack has much more consequences than a child drowning in a pool...

[andyt]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

When will sanity return?

Probably never, since the situation is right up some politicians alley:

$1:

It is time that we abandon the language of war

[url]http://www.vancouversun.com/news/time+that+abandon+language/3961863/story.html#ixzz186e1UtKz
[/url]

$1:

On Sept. 12, 2001, George W. Bush said something he had avoided saying the day before. "The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror," he told reporters. "They were acts of war."

The decision to frame the response to 9/11 as a "war" was a fateful one.

Before that moment, western democracies would never have sent their soldiers to fight endless battles in distant and obscure deserts.

Imprisonment without charge or trial would never have been advocated by leading politicians. Torture would never have been supported by much of the population. And calls for the assassination of a man who leaked documents would never have been heard from leading journalists. It was George W. Bush's statement on Sept. 12, 2001, that made all this possible.

"We are at war," wrote the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer last week. "A hot war in Afghanistan where six Americans were killed just this past Monday, and a shadowy world war where enemies from Yemen to Portland, Oregon, are planning holy terror. Franklin Roosevelt had German saboteurs tried by military tribunal and executed. (Julian) Assange has done more damage to the United States than all six of those Germans combined."

The conclusion is obvious. "We are at war." That statement appears in virtually every call for more spying, more torture, more killing. War is an emergency. An existential struggle. To the extent that the ordinary rules get in the way of victory, they must be suspended -- just as Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. "The constitution is not a suicide pact," as the saying goes.

$1:

Brian Michael Jenkins, the RAND Corporation's esteemed terrorism expert, once helpfully described terrorism as "actual or threatened violence calculated to create an atmosphere of fear and alarm, which will in turn cause people to exaggerate the strength of the terrorists and the threat they pose."

Seen in that light, it's obvious that hyperbole about terrorism isn't mere nonsense. It's what the terrorists want. And that may be the least of the damage done by framing the response to terrorism as a "war."

$1:

To be blunt, any politician or journalist who demands liberty and civility be curtailed because "we are at war" is a bigger threat to liberal democracy and western civilization than any terrorist.

[ASLplease]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

.

When will sanity return?

man, one look at your avatar, and I am not sure if you want a serious answer.

[raydan]

ASLplease ASLplease:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

.

When will sanity return?

man, one look at your avatar, and I am not sure if you want a serious answer.

If that was the case, you would not have even tried to answer.

[DrCaleb]

Proculation Proculation:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

More children die drowning in the backyard pool ever year than in terrorist attacks, yet our rights are not diminished in their name. We are more likely to die in a car accident on our way to work, than from running over an IED. Yet, no one gives us a pat down search on leaving our home.

When will sanity return?

Weird logic you have there.
We put fences around pools and we have regulations for cars. It helped reduce accident. Protection against terrorism is the same thing. Maybe you have less chance to die but a terrorist attack has much more consequences than a child drowning in a pool...

It's not weird. It's called 'risk/reward'. If the risk of say, Jaywalking is less than the reward of saving time walking to the crosswalk, then we do it. If there is no penalty for not installing proper gates around your outdoor pool, then you won't unless a child dies. If car manufacturers don't meet minimum safety standards, their product can be pulled from the market.

If the risk of dying in a car accident is less than the reward of getting to work on time, we take the car. But for some reason, people are willing to subject themselves to searches, wiretapping, intimidation, inconvenience - all in the name of 'terrorism', yet there is no reward. We aren't any safer if a woman has to drink her own breast milk.

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid ... 11/1712239

And that's not even touching on the 'theater' aspect of the security procedures, that have little effect on preventing terrorism, but instead ingrain the authority of the security personnel performing in this theater to the public at large.

[DrCaleb]

ASLplease ASLplease:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

.

When will sanity return?

man, one look at your avatar, and I am not sure if you want a serious answer.

Because I can laugh at myself, you can't take me seriously?

As Raydan says . . .

[BartSimpson]

This kind of information, as reported in the story, is an example of what needs to remain classified. If terrorists learn that their patterns can be predicted then they can start employing the techniques used to predict terror attacks as a means of making their efforts harder to detect or prepare for.

[andyt]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

This kind of information, as reported in the story, is an example of what needs to remain classified. If terrorists learn that their patterns can be predicted then they can start employing the techniques used to predict terror attacks as a means of making their efforts harder to detect or prepare for.

Well so far it doesn't sound like he has an algorithm for predicting individual attacks. As the story says, it's more about helping with strategy than tactics and the picture that comes from his calculations is fuzzy. Calculating the likelihood of terrorists squiring nuclear weapons for instance. I don't know how helpful that is. Even if the likelihood is low, you'd still want to take measures against it because the outcome would be so severe.

[EyeBrock]

No we, should all be like Assange wants.

Give all our tactics, security measures, diplomatic intel away to anybody. After all, we don't need secrets. We should know everything our governments are doing and so should everybody else. I mean really, what's the harm?

[Zipperfish]

That's not physics he's doing, but statistics. Interesting stuff though.

[bootlegga]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

More children die drowning in the backyard pool ever year than in terrorist attacks, yet our rights are not diminished in their name. We are more likely to die in a car accident on our way to work, than from running over an IED. Yet, no one gives us a pat down search on leaving our home.

When will sanity return?

I'd rep if i could.

[hurley_108]

bootlegga bootlegga:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

More children die drowning in the backyard pool ever year than in terrorist attacks, yet our rights are not diminished in their name. We are more likely to die in a car accident on our way to work, than from running over an IED. Yet, no one gives us a pat down search on leaving our home.

When will sanity return?

I'd rep if i could.

I gotcha.

[DrCaleb]

hurley_108 hurley_108:

bootlegga bootlegga:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

More children die drowning in the backyard pool ever year than in terrorist attacks, yet our rights are not diminished in their name. We are more likely to die in a car accident on our way to work, than from running over an IED. Yet, no one gives us a pat down search on leaving our home.

When will sanity return?

I'd rep if i could.

I gotcha.

Thanks guys!

I do truly think some things should be secret, but to assume our enemies are dumb, that just is not good strategy. If there is a way of predicting things, we have to assume they know we can do it. And that it's factored into the predictions.

Good security procedures depend on the other parties knowing those procedures exist - and being unable to do anything about them. Hiding them and then assuming the enemy is unaware is just fooling ourselves. 'Security' is what I do for a living. The company I work for has endless internal websites full of security procedures for just about every conceivable situation, all accessible to any employee. All are audit able, and if you messed up somewhere on one of them, it will be discovered in an audit.

And yet, where is this accountability when it comes to our government and people's safety? Are we any safer? Can we prove we are any safer? Is the risk worth the cost?