> It is for a good cause. However a couple of years from now, there will remain a temptation to use the same tools to address whatever normal problems we have. And that is a big step towards a planned economy like the Soviet Union had.
It is difficult for me to imagine another set of scenarios that could plausibly lead to popular support of a lockdown. Even our past lockdowns from this year were poorly enforced and basically voluntary (the worst punishment was largely being fined). Yeah businesses shuttered but at GREAT political expense to politicians which is why we have half assed our lockdowns repeatedly. Politicians couldn't bear any more pain. The last thing they want to do is lock down again.
> I cannot forget that 9/11 has transformed us into a permanent surveillance state where our communications are tracked, travel by plane involves a search where someone gets to look at your privates
Yeah 9/11 definitely enhanced the surveillance state which is deeply unfortunate, but we had security screening for planes long before we had 9/11, and it wasn't just 9/11 that made the experience miserable, it was the 10 follow on attacks targeting different vulns in the screening process (liquids, shoes, blah blah). The security measures need to be decently strong because we vehemently refuse to employ the more effective authoritarian technique of flagging passengers based on history and demographics like they do in places like Israel (eg, simply flag anyone with a higher probability of being a muslim because most attacks were performed by muslims). We are actually resisting the aggressive response in this case.
> it is considered normal in low crime neighborhoods to require security badges and/or passing armed guards to get into office building
> Obviously our efforts have been so fruitful that terrorism has been wiped out.
If that's the perception, maybe we need to direct the same effort to the now more serious problem of police shootings of citizens, so those can be wiped out to the same low level as the terrorism threat has been reduced to.
>>Also: If the Boston bombings was the final straw, then WHY ON EARTH wasn't 9/11 the final straw? Several orders of magnitude worse of a cock-up than Boston!
They've been supposedly honing their intelligence skills since then. By now they should be way better at this considering all the additional budget they are getting and by the simple fact that they should have a lot more experience at this.
> But that won't become a concern, I suspect, until something unfortunate happens.
And then it will just be dismissed as an unfortunate side effect, shadowed by all the times the system worked and did good. After all, isn't it worthwhile to have a SWAT team bust down a few doors and maybe kill one innocent person if it helps catch hundreds of 'bad guys'?
> Yes, you either need town walls (e.g. borders) or you need a legal apparatus that coordinates over a large area.
Or you need a populace that's able and willing to defend itself against the John Dillingers and Baby Face Nelsons of the world. Deterrence begets peace; helplessness begets violence.
> Plenty of criminals have been caught using traditional detective work.
Yes, but that's on the other side of time's arrow. The whole point to counter-terrorism is to detect it and stop it before (not after) it has happened.
> Note that a mass casualty event at a checkpoint, where hundreds of people are concentrated, standing around exposed, hasn't prompted called to eliminate that structure for checkpoints.
that an incident like you describe hasn't happened is an indication of the fact that terrorism is really a spectre and not a real threat. dumb people will claim "this hasn't happened because the nsa/cia/etc catches all the bad guys!".
> We have to solve this kind of problem at the human level.
As technology accelerates, it's going to become easier and easier for a crazy person to inflict massive damage. With a knife, you can only kill a few people. With a gun, you can only kill a few dozen people. With a bomb, you can only kill a few hundred people.
Eventually, the only way to solve this problem will be mass surveillance.
> 3) The damage any attack would do to that sense of security is high enough to justify extreme expenditures to minimize even low-risk scenarios
Also every politician fears being the person who cancelled that program/reduced that sentence/restrained the police because there's a huge bias towards "doing something" even if it's the wrong thing.
> In that case, I would urge people to remain patient and avoid making conclusions and long term decisions based on this response. It’s likely things ease up once “calm” is restored.
Just like airport security theatre and the PATRIOT Act were eased up after 9/11?
> but hopefully not at the expense of quick response to real emergencies.
An overpowered response at the expense of innocent lives are not in any way better. It's actually worse, since the people responsible for the killings don't face the consequences like everyone else.
> This could have been avoided, but the time to avoid it was perhaps in the early 2000s.
there were protests, from Seattle '99 until Genova '01, where many different groups merged into a single protest agaist that kind of globalization. but after 9/11 everything almost vanished in the name of worldwide anti-terrorism.
> This may be all security theatre. Or the times are really changing.
The whole point of terrorism is to convince you that "times are really changing" and that nothing is safe anymore. It only works if you let it. Try not to.
Maybe the solution is to have a smaller law enforcement and security community. Fewer components, better MTBF.
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