

The Irrationality of Giving Up This Much Liberty to Fight Terror - 300bps
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the-irrationality-of-giving-up-this-much-liberty-to-fight-terror/276695/

======
hotpockets
There's even stronger arguments that this article doesn't make. Cures last
forever (at least until the entropy death of the universe assuming we can
become space-faring and continue to exist for ~10^50 years) benefiting
incalculable numbers of people. On the other hand, preventing one terrorist
attack, has very temporally limited benefits. New knowledge lasts forever.

------
jerf
We aren't giving up liberty to obtain safety. Those in power are using
terrorism as an excuse to do what they want to do anyhow, and it's successful
enough to provide just enough cover that successful resistance never quite
formed.

Educating people out of beliefs they mostly don't have is not going to solve
the problem.

------
DanielBMarkham
I completely agree that we've overreacted, but I've always rejected this
argument, and here's why: Terrorism is not about numerical risk, it is about
_public perception_.

That means that it plays in the same game as everything else in the PR world:
politics, advertising, social signaling, and so forth. The last thing it has
anything to do with is logic.

It would be great if we could tally up all the things that kill us and spend
proportionally on those. It's the logical thing to do. Heart disease would
come first, then cancer, and so on. But instead we spend and give attention to
those things that the public perceives we should: AIDS research, nuclear war
deterrence, terrorism.

And if you think about it, that's the way it ought to be. Spending and making
laws are all about the consent of the governed, doing things they want.
They're not about math or logic.

The problem here is that, with the Cold War over, the defense and intelligence
industry saw 9-11 as a call to arms. They're going to go out and do things a
good defense and intelligence industry should. And as Americans we have
traditionally been forgiving of having our civil liberties temporarily
trampled on during times of war.

But you can't have a war forever. A democracy cannot survive this. Instead of
the natural overreaction to a war that always happened, we started creating
permanent infrastructure to address all terrorism, forever. We're fighting a
war with nobody to surrender, and no amount of spending or government
monitoring will ever be enough.

The original laws around 9-11 were temporary, and for a very good reason. But
somehow politics has gotten to the point where terrorism is the new third-
rail: some national politicians might grandstand a bit, but nobody is going to
do anything except for give the security state apparatus whatever it says it
needs. Otherwise they'd be thrown out of office. Public perception demands it.

Adding up numbers has nothing to do with it, unless you're using them to make
some kind of _persuasive argument_ , and then we're right back to public
perception and politics. You're in the same boat as those who asked for more
cancer research instead of AIDS research. Different people, rightly, see
things differently, and everybody deserves to be represented. We're running a
country, not an insurance agency.

~~~
belorn
> _Spending and making laws are all about the consent of the governed._

Laws should be about the _informed_ consent of the governed. Security built on
a lie is still a lie even if people feel more safe. During the first days of
9-11, the military sent personal down to the airport to reinforce peoples
perception of safe travel. What they did not tell anyone at the time, was that
the guns did not have any ammunition in them. Instead, the military were
basically posing as an "armed force", because having guns _with_ ammunition at
airport would then actually create a security issue at the airports.

The security theater of the US feels somewhat like a doctor who has started to
only give out placebos to his patients. If anyone feels better, sing praises,
and if anyone get worse, give them more sugar pills. Soon, everyone start to
get sick on the sugar alone, while the sugar pill manufacturer crave for more
sick people.

The security theater from 9-11 has gone on long enough. People are not going
to feel more safe from it, and will just get sicker on the solution.

~~~
finnw
> _Laws should be about the_ informed* consent of the governed*

That is a huge can of worms, because it depends on being able to determine who
is and isn't "informed."

~~~
nasmorn
It sure doesnt help if the government constantly exagerates the severity of
the issue. This naturally leads to disinformed consent. Not lying so much and
not keeping so many secrets would go a long way. Just a decade ago Clinton
faced impeachement for trying to keep an affair secret and then lying about
it. Nowadays Obama can just do a "no comment" about how many vitizens he is
secretly asassinating.

~~~
Terretta
And this is where an free and independent press comes in, ideally one not
beholden to the institutions, government or corporate, on which it reports.

~~~
aswanson
I trust the press in this country (U.S.) about as much as I do those covering
the W.W.F.

------
D_Alex
Now consider also this: the medical privacy rights have the effect of
withholding from research vast amounts of medical data, which would be
extremely valuable in, say, cancer research.

How many people did CANCER kill in the US 2001-2012? Roughly 6 million.
6,000,000 people. 2000 times more than terror attacks.

Cardiovascular disease and stroke: roughly the same, and just as likely to
benefit from medical data.

I - personally - would much prefer that my medical data becomes known, than my
e-mails and telephone conversations. I think that applies to 99+ % of us.
Certainly the argument "if you did nothing wrong, you got nothing to hide"
applies to medical data - few medical problems would land someone in trouble.

------
leot
Sent this letter to Conor Friedersdorf (article author):

The trouble with the idea of "terrorism" is it doesn't distinguish between
Boston Bombings and a 500k+ casualty attack from a nuclear device. The former
can and should be dealt with within the normal rule of law and using normal
law enforcement. In the case of the latter, we hope and expect that the full
national security apparatus is directed toward preventing the event, and that
a suspension of the normal rule of law could probably be appropriate.

The problem is, like the 2008 financial crisis and the 2009 Gulf oil spill,
the probability of these massive impact "black swan" events is much higher
than naive statistical modeling and intuition would suggest. That is, the
distribution of these events is "heavy-tailed": the probability of an
extremely bad thing happening cannot be easily extrapolated from looking at
the frequency with which less bad things have actually happened.

I think people may have a sense that the distribution of terrorism events is
"heavy-tailed", making our reaction not entirely irrational (though much of it
is). The real problem is that the word "terrorism" conflates normal garden-
variety shootings, bombings, and ricin-laced-letter-mailings with the events
that could kill millions. If the NSA is only working on preventing the latter,
then I think most people would be happy to let them read everything. But when
peace activists are called threats to national security
([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/peace-activists-
nuc...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/peace-activists-
nuclear_n_3306170.html)), and people in the IC joke that Glenn Greenwald
should be "disappeared", it's hard to have faith that our national security
apparatus is appropriately allocating its resources.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The thing about nuclear terrorism is that it has nothing to do with terrorism
and everything to do with capturing loose nukes. Al Qaeda isn't going to build
a nuclear bomb. States can barely manage it. Which means as long as you keep
the nukes locked up you don't have to worry about what Al Qaeda would do if
they got one.

Also, given that the most rational reason to steal a nuclear weapon is to sell
it, it goes a long way to just be the highest bidder. And Uncle Sam is going
to outbid Al Qaeda every day of the week. There is a reason that terrorists
have _never_ detonated a nuclear weapon.

------
aetherson
This article is of course right on the money, and a well-argued version of
this argument. But I have to think that everyone in the US has heard this
argument a dozen times since 2001, and it seems like it has likely convinced
all the people it's going to convince.

------
dllthomas
I wholeheartedly agree with the thesis here, and have been saying as much
since 2001. An event on the scale of 9/11 happening _every other day_ would
still kill fewer Americans than heart disease.

~~~
rayiner
A 9/11 happening every other day would cause $5.5 trillion a year in damage.
Possibly much more, if you look at the impact of 9/11 on U.S. stocks.

In any case, looking at just the death toll misses the point. The attack on
the World Trade Center was the largest attack on continental U.S. soil since
the British sacked the White House. The reaction it engendered was very
understandably out of proportion with the number of lives lost in the attack.
It was deeply disturbing to a nation that has for nearly its whole history
felt secure, being isolated from anyone who would harm it by the world's
largest oceans.

As someone from a country with questionable security, let me tell you that you
cannot measure the value of safety merely in lives lost. I bet in Bangladesh
the violence of hartals (labor strikes) probably doesn't add up to very many
lives at all, but the disruptive force of that violence is much stronger. A
major terrorist attack just every year would make the U.S. a very different
place (see, e.g., Israel).

~~~
dllthomas
I didn't say 9/11 happening every other day wouldn't be an awful thing, just
that we should keep it in perspective. Most of the damage from such an event -
including in the situations you describe - aside from loss of life is due to
people not keeping the event in perspective, which is not _less_ of a reason
to keep it in perspective.

~~~
rayiner
The public reacts viscerally to terrorism and crime, out of proportion with
natural causes that cause the same amount of damage. Accounting for that in
public policy is keeping things in perspective.

Also, if you want to be hyper-rational about this: the NSA program probably
has incredible bang-for-buck. If it costs $500 million a year, it only has to
prevent a 9/11-scale event once or twice a century to justify itself.

Also, if we're "keeping things in perspective" why do you compare lives as if
each one has equal value? One WTC worker was probably worth several times as
much, in terms of GDP, as the average person who dies of heart disease. 3,000
people dying in Manhattan's financial district == 15,000 people dying in a
Kansas City tornado... Obviously I'm being glib with this line of argument.
You can't callously compare the two situations in the interest of "keeping
things in perspective." So to can you not compare people dying in a terrorist
attack to people dying of heart disease.

~~~
dllthomas
_" The public reacts viscerally to terrorism and crime, out of proportion with
natural causes that cause the same amount of damage. Accounting for that in
public policy is keeping things in perspective."_

My argument was very much not "there are more deaths by X than terrorism, ergo
we need to deal more with X". However, I think most people are not at all
aware of the staggering difference in the levels of risk they bear from
various sources, and pointing out the radical differences helps to keep things
in perspective. A narrow counting of the dead is absolutely _not_ the only
correct perspective. At the same time, telling people they need to worry more
because other people will be worried is only making matters worse. Better that
they refuse to be terrorized
([http://www.schneier.com/essay-124.html);](http://www.schneier.com/essay-124.html\);)
that they recognize that by bearing in mind the actual relative threats they
can _legitimately_ feel safer.

 _" Also, if you want to be hyper-rational about this: the NSA program
probably has incredible bang-for-buck. If it costs $500 million a year, it
only has to prevent a 9/11-scale event once or twice a century to justify
itself."_

That is not what rational means.

 _" Also, if we're "keeping things in perspective" why do you compare lives as
if each one has equal value? One WTC worker was probably worth several times
as much, in terms of GDP, as the average person who dies of heart disease.
3,000 people dying in Manhattan's financial district == 15,000 people dying in
a Kansas City tornado... Obviously I'm being glib with this line of argument.
You can't callously compare the two situations in the interest of "keeping
things in perspective." So to can you not compare people dying in a terrorist
attack to people dying of heart disease."_

There are so many things wrong with this.

First, you pick a metric that is most emphatically _not_ just counting lives,
find it ick, and conclude that you can't just count lives. Which isn't really
here nor there - my intent with number of lives was never to be precise but to
give a sense of scale; adjust according to whatever perceived value you place
on the respective lives.

More importantly, you're making an emotional appeal that is frankly absurd:
yes, comparing certain things can seem crass, but resources we're spending on
"fighting terrorism" aren't being put to other use and liberties we're giving
up for "fighting terrorism" are enabling abuses (now or down the line), and we
need to make comparisons if we're going to make any decisions. Making
decisions anyway _is_ implicitly making those same comparisons, just with less
care, and people's lives are at stake!

------
dllthomas
I might say "killed with guns" rather than "by" \- I'm not sure that I'd
normally nitpick but when contrasting with "killed by terrorists" it seems
more glaring.

~~~
giardini
Amazing! He's using this event (Snowden's revelations of unrestrained
government snooping) to promote gun control.

~~~
dllthomas
To be fair, it's a legitimate argument that "doing something about shootings"
should be preferred to "doing something about terrorism" if they are likely to
have a similar (proportional) effect and similar costs (in resources or
liberty). It's still a few steps to get from there to "therefore we should ban
guns", but he's not overtly saying that anyway.

------
jack-r-abbit
I find it a little ironic when people talk about how rare and possibly over-
stated the terrorism threat is and then go on to freak out over the NSA
snooping with a bunch of "what if" arguments ("what if they do
[this|that|the_other_thing] with _my_ data?") that are likely to be just as
rare and over-stated.

Even if it doesn't really concern me too much, I can respect your concern over
it. But if you turn the NSA snooping into some doomsday thing, I won't really
listen to you for very long.

~~~
TallGuyShort
I think the concerning thing for me is trends. I don't think that, all other
things being equal, acts of terrorism increase in frequency just by their
nature. An intelligence agency, on the other hand, is going to seek for more
and more power as long as it is unchecked. What scares me about the NSA is now
what they're doing now, but the direction they're clearly headed in.

------
lazyjones
It's short-sighted to assume that fighting terror is the only goal these
governments have. One of the main benefits of a surveillance society is self-
censorship and other "panopticon" effects
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon#The_panopticon_as_me...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon#The_panopticon_as_metaphor)).
Fighting terrorism is, in my opinion, actually just a pretext.

------
T-A
While I dislike mass surveillance as much as the next guy, the OP's particular
argument against it strikes me as myopic. The risks which PRISM purportedly
addresses do not cap out at the 3000 deaths by terrorism in 2001. One nuclear
device detonated in a major city (let's say in a RORO container awaiting
inspection in New York's harbor) could kill millions. Does inclusion of that
number in the math make PRISM rational?

~~~
hotpockets
Conversely, what would a huge epidemic do? Unlike terrorist nukes, we've
already encountered massive global flu epidemics.

------
djcjr
Two quibbles: 1\. We aren't "giving up" liberty, it's being taken. 2\. It
isn't for the purpose "to fight terror".

Case in point, me.

I have done absolutely nothing wrong, but (symmetrically) 1\. I am having my
liberties taken. 2\. I am not a terrorist in any sense of the word.

I suggest it is the odd framing the story that makes it seem irrational.

------
temp453463343
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty)

"Liberty is the value of individuals to have agency (control over their own
actions)"

 _Privacy is not a liberty_. It's a restriction on the action of others.

TSA and no fly lists are restrictions on liberty.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Come back when the government stops ordering service providers to provide
information and insert intercept technologies whether or not they want to and
whether or not you've contracted with them not to.

------
ilaksh
"Terrorism" is simply the most popular contemporary propaganda used as cover
for any type of state overt or covert military action or agenda. In other
words, use of extraordinary force must be justified by circumstances of
mythical proportions. The real reasons for going to war or surveillance of
citizenry, like the desire to acquire territory and resource control, or to
suppress dissidents or political opposition domestically, are not ethical or
marketable.

------
cpdean
I have a problem with the author's use of comparing the quantity of people
killed by terrorists with the quantity of people killed by guns.

The media isn't fearmongering off 'death by planecrash'. Why can't he use
something more direct like 'mistakenly-shot a family member that forgot their
keys', or drive-by shootings, accidental-discharge-of-a-firearm-while-it-was-
being-cleaned deaths? Unlocked gun cabinet related deaths?

------
fexl
Right: (1) the chance of being murdered for any reason is very low, (2) the
chance of being murdered for a political reason (a.k.a "terrorism") is
extremely low, and (3) the chance that a multi-billion dollar, multi-yottabyte
info dragnet can save you from (2), or is even _designed_ to do so, is also
very low.

------
Digit-Al
Americans always seem to be boasting how they are better at things than
everyone else. Well now they can add 'killing Americans' to the list. As Homer
Simpson would say: USA, USA, USA :-)

------
300bps
Hindsight is 20/20, so I am not looking to place blame when I ask - how much
better off would we be if we put the money we spent on the "war on terror" to
just about any other use?

There are some monumental things that can be done for a trillion dollars (see
[http://costofwar.com/](http://costofwar.com/) which doesn't even include the
TSA or other homeland security operations).

~~~
jemka
I don't think it has anything to do with hindsight. Even if you were, at one
point, for spending every dime on the "war on terror" and now you are opposed,
what does that mean? You're in the same exact place as you were. All worked up
with yet another opinion. You're not a corporation with a lobbyist. You mean
nothing.

Terrorism prevention spending is an easier pill to swallow/get
behind/comprehend/profit from/ compared to any other type of possible "thing"
tax dollars can be spent on. The government needs to spend money on something.
The economy depends on it. But what?

People are obese. They have long lists of health problems and are plagued by
the high cost of healthcare. But somehow the one thing that can help them
directly (healthcare) alludes them. How is that such a difficult problem?

But mention terrorist or the potential of an attack and people will usually
get behind all kinds of different programs and spending. We'll fight these
damn terrorists together. Hand in hand! For FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY. We might
have to give up a few things. Want to read my emails? Eh, they're mostly just
funny pictures of cats...so I guess that's fine. Oh you need money to fight
terrorists? Here's a trillion dollars. If we get some cool gadgets out of it
afterwards, then that's awesome! Just as long as it has a spill guard because
you know I'll be sucking down some soda when I use it.

Priorities...

------
chmike
Do you think the NSA spying operation in the US is only for terrorism ? This
sounds so much like the pedophile argument when talking about internet
privacy.

------
ck2
This is nothing. Wait for the drones over every city.

------
Tycho
You also have to consider that this loss of liberty was maybe exactly what the
real terrorists wanted to inflict all along.

------
at-fates-hands
The premise is completely off. If the author actually compared the totality of
the impact of 9/11 on the country, instead of just comparing the number of
people who die each year to various diseases, they would surely see the
importance of fighting terrorism.

Just some facts:

[http://www.iags.org/costof911.html](http://www.iags.org/costof911.html)

\- The destruction of major buildings in the World Trade Center with a
replacement cost of from $3 billion to $4.5 billion.

\- Property and infrastructure damage: $10 billion to $13 -billion.

\- Federal emergency funds (heightened airport security, sky marshals,
government takeover of airport security, retrofitting aircraft with anti-
terrorist devices, cost of operations in Afghanistan): $40 billion.

\- Direct job losses amounted to 83,000, with $17 billion in lost wages.

\- Losses to the city of New York (lost jobs, lost taxes, damage to
infrastructure, cleaning): $95 billion.

\- Fall of global markets: incalculable.

Keep in mind the reason terror attacks have been successful here is that the
terrorists use our own laws against us in order to gain an advantage. The lax
immigration laws allowed many of the 9/11 hijackers to set up shop here. Keep
in mind a large number of illegal immigrants being stopped at our southern
border are middle eastern:

[http://www.wnd.com/2010/05/156441/](http://www.wnd.com/2010/05/156441/)

"A 2006 congressional report on border threats, titled “A Line in the Sand:
Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border” and prepared by the House
Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Investigations, indicated that
1.2 million illegal aliens were apprehended in 2005 alone, and 165,000 of
those were from countries other than Mexico. Approximately 650 were from
“special interest countries,” or nations the Border Patrol defines as
“designated by the intelligence community as countries that could export
individuals that could bring harm to our country in the way of terrorism.”

It's a tough balancing act. You don't want to give the bad guys an advantage,
but when you keep the laws relaxed and reduce the amount of money being spent
on this, all you do is play into the hands of the people who want to kill
Americans.

~~~
hotpockets
Ever heard of the economic impact of chronic disease? Its in the trillions per
year (CDC, WHO, others). Ever consider the economic value of a human life? Its
around $5 million. Since around 50 million people die each year from disease
we can estimate the societal burden of disease to be ~$250 trillion dollars
per year. If you do an full analysis, I would have a hard time believing you'd
find the societal burden of terrorism is greater than the detrimental impact
of disease.

~~~
greeneggs
There are several flaws in your argument.

US agencies place a $5-10 million value on an American life [1]. This is not
the value of a life anywhere, though. For example, part of the valuation comes
from discounted earnings calculations, which is lower in lower-income
countries.

Furthermore, just because problem A is worse than problem B (measured in
dollars) doesn't mean we should spend more money fighting problem A. Money
should be spent where it has the greatest impact.

[1]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/economy/17regulat...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/business/economy/17regulation.html?pagewanted=all)

~~~
hotpockets
Most people don't make over $1 million dollars in a lifetime. I like to think
the value comes from the desire to compensate a family member for a lost loved
one. Some manner of putting a dollar value of the pain of the loss.

Also the greatest impact of spent dollars comes from investing in knowledge
creation since new knowledge benefits everyone who will exist in the future,
and we are extremely close (on the earth time scale) to our species becoming
effectively permanent (space faring). So any minor new discovery can have
enormous benefits, or at least benefits that are many orders of magnitude
greater than stopping any number of different terror attacks.

You also have biological terrorism to worry about. Both natural (new severe
viral outbreaks as in 1918 virus) and man made threats, which are not included
in any estimates of the toll of disease.

------
ianstallings
The purpose of the institution is to protect the institution. This has about
as much to do with terror as it does with aliens from another planet. Nothing
at all. It's about protecting the US government from _all_ threats. And they
feel threatened by US citizens so they react with the subtleness of a titan. I
sometimes wonder if this is the natural evolution of all governments, to
overreact and slide into a delusional world, thinking complete control can be
attained.

------
codex
Technically, liberty has not been impacted, only privacy.

------
squozzer
While I agree with the article's main point, keep in mind that most of the
comparative examples given do not threaten the legitimacy (or the aura
thereof, if one wishes to distinguish between the two) of the government. That
in itself should explain why the government pays so much attention to it.

Why ordinary people seem to obsess over terror probably stems from all of the
coverage an attack (or even a foiled plot, for that matter) gets. Which
shouldn't surprise once one remembers how cozy the media is with the
government.

------
tkahn6
It seems that no one who brings this argument up acknowledges the possibility
that terrorism doesn't seem like a big threat precisely because of the extreme
precautions taken to stop it.

Comparing traffic related deaths to terrorism related deaths is invalid since
we don't spend the same resources or give up comparable liberties to prevent
traffic related deaths.

Any analysis that doesn't seriously consider that cannot be taken seriously.

As the Boston Marathon Bombing showed us, it's very easy to create a lot of
destruction and disruption and fear with very mundane items (gunpowder and
pressure cookers). If it's so easy to accomplish, why doesn't it happen more?
Either terrorism is genuinely not a serious threat or our security
organizations are very good at what they do using the tools they have at their
disposal.

I would be in favor of our security apparatuses 'taking a break' or scaling
back spying operations for about 5 years just to see what the result would be
and if the American public would be able to tolerate it. Bombs going off every
week in a major shopping mall or in an airliner or in a bus (like in Israel in
the 90s) would probably not be acceptable to the American people.

Alternatively, we would discover that terrorism is not a big threat and the
debate about giving up liberties to prevent terrorism would be a very simple
one.

~~~
mindcrime
_If it 's so easy to accomplish, why doesn't it happen more?_

Maybe because outside of Vince Flynn and Brad Thor novels, and Hollywood
summer blockbusters, there aren't actually that many people who: A. are
motivated to conduct a terrorist attack, and B. equipped / able / willing to
do so.

 _It seems that no one who brings this argument up acknowledges the
possibility that terrorism doesn 't seem like a big threat precisely because
of the extreme precautions taken to stop it._

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it's not falsifiable. I mean,
here ya go: I have a Tiger Proof Rock I'll see you. It absolutely protects
against tiger attacks. How do I know it works? Well, in 39 years, I have never
once been attacked by a tiger.

Anyway, this whole line of discussion shows exactly why we need more
transparency and less secrecy from our government. We don't know if what
they're doing works or not, because we largely don't know what they're doing.
And this is _not_ how a free, open and democratic society is supposed to work.
We should not be a nation of secret laws, secret court systems, and shadowy
government agencies operating in the dark.

~~~
tkahn6
> Maybe because outside...

I explicitly acknowledged this in the very next sentence. The difference is
that you assert this as a fact (for which you have no evidence) and I state it
as a possible explanation.

> The problem with this line of reasoning is that it's not falsifiable.

And for the same reason the claim that terrorism is not a problem due to lack
of sufficiently motivated terrorists is also not falsifiable. Hence my
suggestion that the government scale back their anti-terrorism [spying]
operations and see what the outcome is.

> we need more transparency and less secrecy from our government

Agreed.

~~~
mindcrime
_I explicitly acknowledged this in the very next sentence. The difference is
that you assert this as a fact (for which you have no evidence) and I state it
as a possible explanation._

I actually meant to end that with a question mark, but I mistyped it and
didn't notice until I saw your reply. I definitely don't mean to assert that
as fact, but just floating it out there as a scenario worth considering.

