

Terrorists vs. Bathtubs - krosaen
http://www.onthemedia.org/2013/jun/21/terrorists-versus-bath-tubs/transcript/

======
gruseom
This interview is entirely about spin. It never once asks what the truth is
[1].

    
    
      Brooke Gladstone: Now, let's take today the argument over NSA surveillance. 
                        Where would you come down on this?
      Peter Sandman:  Well, it would depend on who my client was -  
      [Brooke laughs]
      
      Brooke Gladstone: [Pause] I can see why you have such a nice apartment.
      Peter Sandman: [Laughing]
      Brooke Gladstone: Peter, thank you very much.
      Peter Sandman: My pleasure.
    

Can "journalism" get more oleaginous? Such a program should not be called _On
The Media_ , but _Of The Media_.

[1] Edit: to be fair, she does say "That's not true" at the beginning, re the
number of murders with hammers.

~~~
ctdonath
Indeed. Early is this quote: _SENATOR BILL JACKSON: There’s more murders with
hammers last year than there was shotguns and pistols and AK-47s. BROOKE
GLADSTONE: That’s not true, by the way._ They then fail to address the
objective truth: There’s more murders with hammers last year than there was
[with] AK-47s and all other rifles. There's also more deaths from cars than
with shotguns and pistols and AK-47s. He was making a point; rather than
addressing the point, the critics drill in to one small verbal error and
dismiss the inconvenient objective truth.

~~~
dllthomas
"There's more murders with hammers last year than there was shotguns and
pistols and AK-47s" is not anywhere _close_ to reality.

If we restrict to rifles (about 5% of homicides where a firearm is used) and
broaden to _all blunt instruments_ , we get the same ballpark, not a clear win
for the rifles. I can't find anything that calls out hammers specifically, but
lumped in a category with baseball bats and tire irons and golf clubs and 2x4s
and wrenches and candlesticks and lead pipes, I'd be amazed to find hammers
dominating.

It is certainly a perfectly reasonable position to assert that the number of
homicides which used a rifle are low enough that a focus on reducing them is a
misguided assignment of priority, even before discussion of particular
mechanisms. This happens to be a position I hold.

But you don't get to make a point by making false (and false by an order of
magnitude) statements.

------
mehwoot
[http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/terrisraelsum.html](http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/terrisraelsum.html)

In 2002, 451 people were killed and ~2,300 injured in 134 separate terrorist
attacks in Israel. From a population of about 7.7 million people.

If that were the U.S., that would be 18,300 deaths annually and close to
95,000 people injured.

Point is, whilst terrorism is designed to affect people psychologically more
than the physical effects, you can't simply _ignore_ it. A balanced response
is needed and surely that includes some element of intelligence gathering on
who is causing these attacks. Where to draw the line is a valid question, but
to reject terrorism completely as irrelevant is stupid. People who discuss
these issues in terms of absolutes ("we should never give up any freedom") are
rarely considering the reality of the situation.

The reason I find this so disturbing is it is exactly the wrong way of
approaching the situation. If we say terroism only killed X people so it isn't
worth sacrificing these rights, we are saying there is some level of deaths
that these rights are worth scarificing for. Personally I feel the balance
between privacy and security is one that should be figured out beforehand and
not changed in response to events, otherwise people who want to abuse such
power will always have an incentive to play up and exagerate how much danger
we are in. The rights we have when 1 person dies from terrorism should be the
same as when 20,000 people die. But I don't believe that should be the right
for every person to keep everything they do private. That just isn't living in
reality.

~~~
vinbreau
Part of the problem is that 'terrorist' is an ill defined word. Your stats are
couched in rhetoric as a result. Everyone agrees on what a hammer is, or an
AK-47, not so true on the term terrorist. Also, that term is used by many
factions to describe various oppositional forces. Are those stats lumping
together only the US Government's definition of terrorist, or is it a global
standard somehow amalgamating all the various and disparate ideas of what a
terrorist is? Looking at that link I see we are discussing terrorist as
defined by "data from the Israeli foreign ministry." It's a very one-sided
data argument.

Terrorist is a real term with a globally liquid definition. It makes it very
difficult to discuss the topic with any sort of rational discourse.

~~~
mehwoot
I originally used this page
[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/victim...](http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/victims.html#2003)
and was counting by hand, but it took too long. I didn't count a few that were
vague ("stabbing attack" where nobody took credit) but if you read the list
for 2002, I'm confident >75% would count by anybody's definition of terrorist
attack.

~~~
vinbreau
This kind of proves my point. While a stabbing attack is a crime, and a
violent one, I would scarcely call it terrorism. If so, then we have to call
just about all crimes terrorism. If we do that, then the word simply means
criminal and that's no good. A terrorist is not someone who stabs you. In the
strictest sense it is someone who commits acts of violence or uses
intimidation in an attempt to achieve a political end.

I've seen so many people labeled as terrorist that never even come close to
the "political end" part of the definition. Kids bringing guns to school is
not terrorism, but it is a crime, burning crosses in the yards of black
families would be.

I don't trust the US or Israel to publish data reflecting acts of actual
terrorism, I expect them to bolster their arguments by fabricating this data.
Just look at us here in the US. The media and the government have called just
about everyone a terrorist that commits a crime and they want to see them
treated harshly. I also expect them to use these bolstered numbers to prop-up
organizational infrastructure like the NSA and the military-industrial
complex.

It's practically impossible to use "terrorism" statistics in any real way for
any argument without strict definition of what a terrorist is as put forth by
the person making the argument. We can compare gun deaths, we can compare auto
deaths, we can compare bathtub falls, but we can't really compare any of that
to terrorism statistics.

~~~
mehwoot
_This kind of proves my point. While a stabbing attack is a crime, and a
violent one, I would scarcely call it terrorism._

There are 208 deaths on that list for 2002 from 33 separate suicide bombings.
Do you think that is fabricated? Do you think those numbers are bolstered? If
that number of people were proportionally killed in the U.S. each year
(~8,000) would my point still stand?

 _but we can 't really compare any of that to terrorism statistics._

I agree. That was my point with the 1 or 20,000 deaths comment. But _assuming
we can_ compare the numbers, like the author claimed, it still isn't valid. If
we can't compare the numbers, the point isn't valid in the first place.

------
brentm
Not all direct impact is physical. By design the effect of terrorism is much
greater than its direct impact on a single personal physical well being.
Comparing it to bathtub deaths is just not apples to apples.

~~~
rayiner
It's so ironic that people compare terrorist deaths to car accidents and
bathtub deaths in the same sentence as they talk about the chilling effects of
surveillance.

~~~
gruseom
How is that ironic? The first is a rhetorical device for claiming a threat is
inflated. The second is about negative consequences of inflating the threat.

~~~
twoodfin
I assume rayiner's point was that, as far as we know, nobody has been killed
as a result of NSA surveillance of Americans' communication. Maybe a few
people have been killed, but surely it's vastly less than the number of
bathtub deaths. So by the logic of this inane post, nobody should get too
upset about NSA surveillance.

~~~
joering2
> nobody has been killed as a result of NSA surveillance of Americans'
> communication

Maybe. We don't know that. We would have to know beyond any doubt how this
information is being used. I can imagine it being a tool to play foreign
politics; even affects places like Iraq, Afghanistan, you know, where people
do die.

> nobody has been killed as a result of NSA surveillance of Americans'
> communication

Maybe. But its also ironic that being US citizen and living on US soil you are
supposed to be protected by the law of the land. If they vacuum everything for
10 years or so, imagine how many people could be found not guilty of robbery,
homicides, drug dealing, etc, only if their attorneys would have access to
their clients' NSA files. Who knows? Maybe even there is someone recently
executed in this country that their NSA chart would have proven they were
innocent. That may be over-stretch but you believe noone innocent is doing a
lifetime right now because they couldn't prove that they have not been where
prosecution claims they were (don't get me even started on "innocent until
proven guilty").

------
krosaen
transcript here: [http://www.onthemedia.org/2013/jun/21/terrorists-versus-
bath...](http://www.onthemedia.org/2013/jun/21/terrorists-versus-bath-
tubs/transcript/)

