
In Wake of Charlie Hebdo Attack, Let’s Not Sacrifice Even More Rights - stefap2
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/wake-charlie-hebdo-attack-lets-not-sacrifice-even-more-rights
======
sandstrom
Norway had a great response to their terror attack in 2011.

    
    
        The country would "stand firm in defending our values" and the "open, 
        tolerant and inclusive society", he said. "The Norwegian response 
        to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political 
        participation." -- Jens Stoltenberg, Norwegian Prime Minister [at the time]
    

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/27/norway-
terror-a...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/27/norway-terror-
attacks-prime-minister)

~~~
lbenes
> "open, tolerant and inclusive society"

This is what we need, not the usual approach of using tragic events to justify
new surveillance, law enforcement powers, or military action. The only
response that could offer a real long term solution is outreach and education,
because fundamentalisms only flourishes in an environment of ignorance and
poverty.

One of the few downsides of the technological revolution that we live in, is
that everyday it lowers the barrier of entry develop nuclear or biological
weapons. If we don't do something about extremest, they will be the cause of
our civilization's demise. In the past decade, we have spent $3 trillion
fighting wars in the Middle East.[1] That money and our presence there hasn't
worked, it's only created a new generation that hate Western values.

I just watched on news footage of hangars and barracks being bulldozed in
Afghanistan.[2] What I saw was potential schools and homes being bulldozed.
Imaging what could have been accomplished after 911 with $3 trillion invested
instead in Education, Science, and Technology. Imagine the good over $800
million each day for a decade could do. Let's stop dropping bombs and start
teaching. That's the only way we're going to end this vicious cycle before
it's too late for all of us.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/09...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302200.html)

[2] [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-war-60-minutes-
lara-...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-war-60-minutes-lara-logan/)

~~~
maroonblazer
>"because fundamentalisms only flourishes in an environment of ignorance and
poverty."

Do you mean ignorance as in poorly-educated? Nearly all the 19 hijackers of
911 were quite well-educated. Or are you referring to ignorance rooted in a
belief in myth and superstition as manifested in religion? How kindly do you
think people are going to take to being told, if even implicitly - by
"infidels" no less - that they're belief system has rendered them ignorant?
For that matter non-muslims playing _any_ role in the arab world is considered
an abomination by fundamentalists.

I agree that change needs to happen but am not convinced it can come from the
West. It needs to come from within Islam and the Muslim community. They need
their own Reformation.

~~~
notsony
Reformation is unlikely to come from within the Islamic community.

In the clip below, from Norway, English-speaking Muslims ridicule and dismiss
the Western concepts of moderate and extremist Islam. Their rationale is that
the same beliefs are shared by the majority.

This should worry everyone.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZataEz_m73E](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZataEz_m73E)

~~~
stevenjohns
> Reformation is unlikely to come from within the Islamic community.

I wrote a long response to this but I decided to delete it. Basically this is
not very accurate, and familiarity with history of the Middle East and North
Africa (including ideologies like Arab nationalism and Ba'athism, or figures
like Gamal Abdel Naseer and Hafez al Assad) would show that it certainly can
come from within the Islamic world-- primarily because the Islamic world are
the prime targets and overwhelmingly the majority of the victims of these
actions.

> Their rationale is that the same beliefs are shared by the majority.

Their rationale is also that the majority of Muslims are hypocrites and are
not "real" Muslims (when compared to those who follow the extremists' perverse
Wahabbi fiqh within the Sunni Hanbali maddhab) or else they would agree with
them. Unless we haven't noticed, the prime victim of Islamic extremism is
other Muslims, and the prime opposition towards Islamic extremism is other
Muslims. To go even further, the primary enemy of ISIS is actually Al Qaeda
(in the form of Jabhat al Nusra) and vice versa.

When they say there is no moderate or extremist Muslim, it is because the
moderate Muslim does not recognize the extremist as a Muslim, and the
extremist does not recognize the moderate as a Muslim. Even the Muslim
extremists do not recognize other Muslim extremists as Muslim if they do not
pledge allegiance.

There is a reason why these extremist folk are called "Takfiris"\-- it
literally means "those who accuse others of disbelief." Here [1] is a video
between the Western-backed terrorists in Syria and ISIS on a two-way radio
call. Pay close attention from about 40s, especially when the Western-backed
terrorists ask the ISIS fighters why they do not attack Israel

As an anecdote: In Iraq a fatwa was issued by Ayotallah Sistani to refer to
ISIS as "Daesh al Murtad" ("ISIS who has left Islam") but it was eventually
brought down to "Asa'ib daesh" ("the gangs of ISIS") so as to avoid the
"moderates" receiving the takfiri labeling as it is considered inflammatory.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbY9uU3kQc0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbY9uU3kQc0)

------
zkhalique
The question is, can liberalism be intolerant of intolerance?

If this is the exception rather than the rule, then we shouldn't sacrifice any
rights.

However, if islamISTS or communISTS or nazISTS or anyone else decides to take
advantage of a liberal society and attempt to overthrow it, systematically,
shouldn't there be some way to prevent it?

I don't know what's worse, McCarthyism or allowing unlimited growth of violent
revolutionary ideas. Of course, the civil libertarian in me says that freedom
of expression should be maximized. But I also realize that there are mind
viruses out there that compete with liberalISM and despise it for one reason
or another. The question is, how intolerant should we be of intolerance? In
the United States, for instance, we have become very intolerant of racists and
homophobes.

I am not talking about this particular incident.

~~~
mathieuh
As a communist, I'll give you my point of view. To reiterate: I am a
communist, not a troll, and this is really what I think.

I think that "free speech" as meant by liberals is harmful. I don't believe
that oppressive speech (i.e. homophobic, racist, fascist etc.) should come
under the aegis of the liberal ideal of "free speech", at least not until a
post-revolutionary society. People take on the ideas to which they're exposed.
I'm sure if you look through the history of the Parisian murders you'd find a
trail of exposure to extremist ideas.

~~~
undersuit
>People take on the ideas to which they're exposed.

Children take on ideas to which they are exposed, adults evaluate ideas before
accepting them. Suppressing opposing viewpoints is therefore treating me like
a child.

~~~
mathieuh
I think you'd be surprised. I have family in Paris who have steadily become
more and more reactionary as the FN (the French far-right) have been given
more exposure, even before these attacks.

And it's not an "opposing viewpoint" to me, it's just completely harmful. In
my opinion, things like being against gay marriage, or being racist are
objectively wrong and not things that are up for debate.

~~~
Crito
> _" I have family in Paris who have steadily become more and more reactionary
> as the FN (the French far-right) have been given more exposure, even before
> these attacks."_

What makes you think there must be a causational relationship between these
two things? Or for that matter, if we assume for the moment that one _did_
cause the other, how can you be sure which caused which? Perhaps the FN has
become more and more mainstream as a result of more and more French citizens
drifting towards the right.

> _" And it's not an "opposing viewpoint" to me, it's just completely
> harmful."_

I don't really understand why being an opposing viewpoint and being harmful
are mutually exclusive to you. You _do_ oppose their viewpoint (very strongly
it seems), so it surely _is_ an opposing viewpoint.

~~~
tsotha
>What makes you think there must be a causational relationship between these
two things?

It's probably more that the growth of the FN is a result of people becoming
"more and more reactionary".

------
tokenadult
Hear. Hear. Let's make sure that life in a free society is preserved no matter
what threat it is put under.

I see that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is calling for individuals and news media
organizations to respond to the Charlie Hebdo attack too, and I hope they
follow her suggestions.[1]

A historical example I turn to about how to respond to grave national danger
is that during the United States Civil War, the 1864 election occurred exactly
on the expected schedule, and Abraham Lincoln was prepared to be voted out of
office during the middle of the war. Of course in parliamentary systems
elections do not occur at predictable intervals as they do in the United
States constitutional system, but I've always thought that was a good example
of how not to cave in to the temptation of self-benefit "for the sake of the
country's stability" by delaying the election or something like that. Lincoln
did invoke the power (a power granted by the Constitution from the
beginning[2]) to suspend the right of habeas corpus during the War of
Rebellion (as the Civil War was called by the Union at the time), but habeas
corpus was restored as soon as the rebellion ceased.

We should cherish all of our freedoms all of the time and guard them
zealously. We should exercise free speech to minimize the risk of future
attacks like the attack in Paris, by openly disagreeing with the kind of
thinking that leads to attacks like that.

[1] [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/08/ayaan-
hirsi...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/08/ayaan-hirsi-ali-
our-duty-is-to-keep-charlie-hebdo-alive.html)

[2]
[http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/habeas_corpus](http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/habeas_corpus)

~~~
nkurz
_We should exercise free speech to minimize the risk of future attacks like
the attack in Paris, by openly disagreeing with the kind of thinking that
leads to attacks like that._

I greatly appreciate your comments on this site, and worry I'm being obtuse,
but I'm not sure what you feel is the "thinking that leads to attacks like
this". I read Hirsi Ali as saying that we must band together and deliberately
offend conservative Muslim sensibilities to protect free speech. This seems
greatly at odds with many of the tenets of modern multiculturalism. Are you
suggesting that we need to move away from the form of multiculturalism that
grants power to the violent fundamentalist?

~~~
MichaelGG
The idea of having to worry about offending people at all costs is silly.

If there was a group that murdered people for using the color purple, I'm sure
tons of people and companies would proudly display people. Why should it be
any different here? Why cower because someone might be offended over some
arbitrary rule?

~~~
rtpg
Because unlike the color purple, the Islamic community of France is an
oppressed underclass. If this was a bunch of racist stereotypes of blacks,
would our answer be to continue to publish racist trash?

These things can offend more than just extremists. Obviously this massacre is
absolutely terrible, but the content of Charlie Hebdo regarding Islam was
extremely offensive, and served mainly to increase the isolation of the French
Muslim community

~~~
aswanson
Please dont equate mockery of a set of beliefs with mockery and oppression of
a set of people based on genetic traits. I guarantee the French Muslims have
not gone through a fraction of what blacks have gone through in terms of
outright physical violence and state-sanctioned oppression.

If anything France, and Europe as a whole, seem more than welcoming to
muslims, at least from an immigration and social safety net perspective.

Belief systems from Christian to Muslim to atheism must be subject to public
criticism and mockery in a free society without threat of violence. People who
dont feel this way should be free to leave.

~~~
Normati
France is not a free society in the same way America is. French people are
happy to live under many more restrictive laws but we don't often see it. For
instance, Charlie Hebdo's staff could have gone to prison if they had
published a cartoon mocking the holocaust. Some people's offense is treated as
more valuable than others in France.

~~~
pascal_cuoq
In “America”, laws forbid people drink beer in public. Not old, forgotten
laws: policemen use these everyday as reason to arrest and search people in
the street.

In fact, in recent weeks, did US courts not repeatedly find nothing illegal
had happened when the police executed someone who was standing in the street
not being a danger?

France is not perfect but you need to get out more if you think “America”, as
you call it, is better.

~~~
Normati
I was just thinking about freedom of speech. I don't deny America has a
problem with police violence. It has a bigger problem with violence in general
too.

It is still quite bizarre that not being in France, I can safely say "The
holocaust didn't happen" But a French person is at risk of having their online
identity discovered, then imprisoned just for making a political claim like
that. This is really quite scary.

------
duncan_bayne
My (hastily written) email to the EFF on this issue:

=====

"Even as we mourn the losses at Charlie Hebdo, we must be wary of any attempt
to rush through new surveillance and law enforcement powers, which are likely
to disproportionately affect Muslims ..."

May I suggest the following thought experiment?

Imagine if Hebdo staff had been murdered by Neo-NAZIs (it's certainly within
the realm of possibility; the publication skewered the political right as much
as it did other groups like Muslims, and fascist groups are known for their
love of violence).

Would you be decrying the possibility that new laws might disproportionately
effect Neo-NAZIs?

There are many parallels between the politics of Islam and the politics of
National Socialism: the rejection of individualism, the anti-semitism, the
subordination of all aspects of life to the philosophy, the hero-worship of
the leader, etc. etc.

The fact that most Muslims are not actively engaged in Jihad has parallels
with the observation that most Germans during WWII weren't actively fighting
for the NAZI party. To support an evil philosophy is morally wrong, regardless
of whether that philosophy is or is not religious in nature.

I'm particularly saddened to see the EFF join in the pretence that Islam, in
and of itself, is worthy of respect. The philosophy, and the mainstream
religious movement itself, is inimically opposed to the freedoms you seek to
protect.

=====

~~~
kossTKR
I agree that the phrasing was debatable. Replacing the words: "affect muslims"
with "affect everyone" would have been more precise and less biased.

But the comparison you just made, equaling todays regular law abiding muslings
with passive nazi onlookers in the third-reich, is delusional from a
historical standpoint, and despicable from a diplomatic one.

The state fuelled propaganda targeting the jew population after the German
economic struggles was a majority culture fuelled by state propaganda that
created a scapegoat with racial overtones.

Most muslim "anti-semitism" in the west today stems from a frustration with
israels war policy. Not an inherent racial doctrine.

Comparing Jihad to State sponsored activities like SS or Hitler Jugend makes
no sense.

Jihad in western countries is created mostly with foreign training, money and
initiative springing from international social media.

Being active in the the Nazi army was for most people forced conscription,
completely outside of personal volition, e.g. Hitler Jugend, SS etc.

Nazism and Radical Islam are of course both extremely right-wing, conservative
and fascistic in their nature. They share a lot of common traits, but their
roots and causes doesn't compare.

Lets be careful before we compare all of our fellow muslim citizens with Nazi
sympathizers shall we?

~~~
duncan_bayne
Re. anti-semitism in Islam: to claim that it's a response to Israeli politics
is utterly false. It has existed in the religion for centuries, in a similar
fashion to anti-semitism in Catholicism.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_antisemitism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_antisemitism)

Re. conscription: participation in Jihad is mandatory in Islamic states.
Currently, volunteer Mujahideen are fighting an asymmetric war against Western
countries on their own soil. Those who volunteer to fight are in fact more
morally culpable than those conscripted into service.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad)

Re. sympathy for Sharia:

[http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-
religi...](http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-
politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/)

~~~
kossTKR
"Utterly false". How do you know that? Yes i to can link to a long wikipedia
article about Christianity and Antisemitism. Long wiki lists doesn't count as
arguments.

I don't believe most modern anger against jews stems from religious doctrine,
i really do believe it stems from a more general sense of frustration with
western foreign policy.

All religions hate on each other. I know you want to pick out islam as the
root of much evil but i just do not agree with how the whole debate is being
framed.

I myself am not religious and probably share a good deal of opinions with you.
But i have come to despise the way the "new-atheism" conducts itself. It
creates tensions and stops conversation. It focuses a beam so narrow, the
public discourse has become one dimensional.

The current discourse in atheistic communities, and lately also the general
consensus in the media - of deriving some sorts of inherent psychological
constants from islam, is detrimental from an academic perspective. It
disregards so many other factors at play other than the religion itself e.g.
geography, local culture, economics, foreign policies, geopolitics, history
etc. People and cultures are different, everywhere.

Do you think most muslims practice their faith based on intense historical
investigation and religious reading? And do you think that they come to the
same conclusions? They don't.

Most muslims get cherry picked info. They read a little, some don't, many gets
lots of info from moderate imams, few get loads of material from radical
imams. Some are Sunni, some are Shia, some left-wing like parts of the kurds,
some are progressive like much of the youth in Iran. Many people have daily
battles with the radical parts of islam all over the middle east. The Arab
Spring was a strong testament to this. I have met many progressive muslims
from all over the middle east over the years. Highly educated, well spoken.
Many of them still cultural muslims whoms most fundamental problems with the
west stems from the incessant and extremely detrimental foreign meddling in
the middle east.

Several countries in the middle east were pretty progressive before war tore
them apart in the mid to late twentieth century. Proxy warfare between the US
and Russia. CIA funding of assorted radicals up through the decades, coups
that lead to theocracies. Israels wars that lead to a radicalisation of large
parts of the muslim youth. And western alliance with the largest promoter of
radical islam, Saudi Arabia.

Furthermore the incredibly incompetent way the US war machine played out Shia
against Sunnis, and therefore directly aided the creation of ISIS today.

the list goes on. Watch the frontline documentaries on Iraq or Isis to get a
gist of how catastrophic the western countries still act to this day.

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/losing-
iraq/](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/losing-iraq/)

All of these factors and more, have now created this radical, angry and war-
damaged version of Islam, that now clashes increasingly with western values.

My point is that i think it is extremely detrimental to focus on Islam as some
sort of absolute culprit of the atrocious acts, rather than create an
explanatory model with the myriad of factors spanning a century, that has made
certain groups of people come this.

------
bsaul
People here live in a bubble. We're afraid of an orwelian society, but in the
case of france, we're still unable to catch those guys eventhough they : \-
killed people in the center of Paris, including cops protecting the area.

\- left their id card at the back of the car

\- had 2 car accident while running away inside Paris and changed the car
twice

\- stopped at a gas station a few kilometers away from paris to get some
gas,where the owner recognized them.

\- were already under monitoring by the counter terrorism, for having tried to
go to war in iraq ten years ago.

\- have 8000 cops chasing them all over the country, and 24 hours later, they
lost their tracks, for the second time.

We don't live in an orwelian society. We REALLY don't.

~~~
pyre
> We don't live in an orwelian society. We REALLY don't.

1\. This is _France,_ so it really only speaks to how things are happening in
France. The majority of the people on this site are probably concentrated in
Bay Area, which is not in France. Life in East Germany under the Stasi was
pretty bad, but it also didn't describe conditions _everywhere_.

2\. You could almost view this in the same light as DRM on media. The
criminals easily skirt it, but the normal people are left paying the price (a
degraded experience in the case of DRM; a watchful government eye in the case
of surveillance).

~~~
jasonm23
> The majority of the people on this site are probably concentrated in Bay
> Area

Please, we're everywhere.

~~~
pyre
The majority only need be greater than 50%.

Note: I've never been to the Bay Area, so this isn't some "omg, we're all
SanFran start-up bros" line of thought.

------
quonn
Also worth mentioning: The authorities already knew the subjects. The
supposedly even had recent warnings regarding Charlie Hebdo. They have had
police officers there for a long time, too. And for most cases of terrorism in
the last decades it was the same.

Generally, the police usually knows about the suspects before. They just can't
do much before they commit a crime. The unwarranted surveillance of everyone
can't possibly prevent attacks by people who already were filtered anyway.
Much better to invest the budget in classical targeted intelligence and police
work and into improving the response _if_ something has happened.

~~~
Crito
> _" They have had police officers there for a long time, too."_

In fact, one of the police officers that was killed was present for the
shooting because he was assigned as a police bodyguard for Charb.

------
Trisell
The general population has been sold a bill of goods by those in power that
those in power cannot possible make good on. As long as there are small groups
of armed individuals, highly motivated and unmoved by the fear of laws or
death, a government cannot guarantee the general populations safety.

Only when the people finally come to understand this fact and decide to make
good on the need to provide their own protection will you see a change in the
reaction to these events.

This idea is what continues to drive the gun vs. anti-gun movement in the USA.
Individuals still want to be able to provide for their own protection, while
the other side wishes that we rely upon government to provide that protection.

Like it or not the unarmed police officers on bikes were just more sheep sent
to the slaughter by a government that had convinced the people that it could
provide for their safety. When it not only failed totally, but is still
failing today as the people are no safer then they were yesterday.

~~~
elinchrome
It's far from proven that armed individuals can provide their own safety,
whatever that means (or if that's even possible).

But, a day has passed, so it is surely time for every special interest to
start using this tragedy as a shoehorn for their cause.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I read somewhere that most mass-shootings in the USA occur at schools and in
shopping malls, where conceal-carry is prohibited. Is this true?

------
higherpurpose
Congress is way ahead of you EFF:

[http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/228945-top-house-
dem...](http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/228945-top-house-dem-to-
reintroduce-major-cyber-bill)

It's also interesting to see how American media is reacting to this attack, in
a manner that's completely opposite of how the French media reacted, or other
journalists in other countries.

Just like with the Sony threat, Americans seem ready to holds their hands up
at any threat now:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-
wemple/wp/2015/01/0...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-
wemple/wp/2015/01/07/fox-news-has-no-plans-to-air-charlie-hebdo-cartoons/)

The best way to hurt the terrorists is not to kill them. They _want_ to die
for their cause. It's to show that you are not afraid of them. Terrorist
attacks are meant to create "terror" in populations, so the population or its
government react a certain way.

The US gov/population is reacting exactly the wrong way to terror attacks.
France or Norway (that massacre a couple of years back) reacted the _right_
way. Being "scared of offending the terrorists" is exactly what the terrorists
are going for, and if it works once, why not try it again when something else
offends them?

~~~
throwaway344
So the US is now "soft on terror"? This isn't what I recall happened after the
attacks on the WTC on 9/11 or on the Murrah Building in OKC. In one of those
cases, the US launched a "global war on teror" along with an invasion of a
country thousands of miles from home.

The US can be blamed for making a lot of mistakes regarding terrorism, but I
don't think being too gentle is one of them.

~~~
dean
> along with an invasion of a country thousands of miles from home

The U.S. didn't invade Iraq as a response to terrorism. They invaded Iraq
because of the threat of "Weapons of Mass Destruction". Many people just
assumed Iraq was behind 9/11 simply because the government wanted to invade
them after 9/11, and the government did little to dispel that mistaken notion.
And we all found out that Iraq having "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in the
first place was a mistaken notion as well.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The U.S. didn't invade Iraq as a response to terrorism.

Fear of terrorism was one of the reasons for public support of the war and it
was heavily pushed in the pro-war propaganda.

> They invaded Iraq because of the threat of "Weapons of Mass Destruction".

In the run-up to war, both supposed direct ties between the Iraqi regime an
al-Qaeda (and direct ties between Iraq and one of the 9/11 attack
specifically) and the threat that _if_ Iraq acquired WMDs it might transfer
them to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups for use against the US were
trumpeted. WMD and terrorism are not mutually exclusive motivations for war.

The supposed connection between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda (including a
supposed link between Iraq and 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta) was still be
trumpeted months after the 2003 war began, even just before the 9/11
Commission issued its finding that no such connection existed. [0]

[0] [http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5223932/ns/us_news-
security/t/pane...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5223932/ns/us_news-
security/t/panel-sees-no-link-between-iraq-al-qaida/#.VK8R-VIXIeE)

------
pknerd
_As free speech advocates, we mourn the use of violence against individuals
who used creativity and free expression to engage in cultural and political
criticism. Murder is the ultimate form of censorship_

It always amaze me why do world want to practice freedom of expressions
against Islam only. Why not one is allowed to mock Holocaust like things by
using same tool of freedom of expression?

~~~
arjn
You clearly have not seen all the cartoons that Charlie Hebdo published, have
you. That would have answered your very silly and uninformed question.

------
azinman2
Too soon. The main dudes are still out there, and now there's some warning
about legislation? You can't warn about consequences when the wound is so
fresh -- we're still in emotional-trying-to-process-land.

I saw this after 9/11... people protesting generically against war on 9/12 in
SF. I normally am a big supporter of the EFF but this feels out of touch with
reality.

~~~
pluma
The legislation that enabled the perpetual state of not-quite-war the US has
been in since then[1] was passed after a memorial ceremony mere days after
9/11\. The text itself was drafted within less than a day after the events.

[1]:
[http://www.radiolab.org/story/60-words/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/60-words/)

------
unclebucknasty
It's really just bullshit, all the way around.

The terrorists, the various governments, people killing each other, the EFF,
the predictable media response, the endless commenting and discussing by
everyone who has a keyboard--as if what they have to say really matters--and
the fact that nothing will change. Absolutely nothing.

Bullshit. All of it.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
Lot of people getting mad about Charlie Hebdo and staying quiet about Brandon
Duncan.

~~~
drawnalong
Interesting! I didn't follow the Tiny Doo story too closely but read more
after you posted.

Except I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying that people SHOULD be mad
that we're prosecuting Brandon Duncan because of his published work? I'm
assuming that's what you mean, and if so, I suppose I agree.

------
DickingAround
Let's call a spade a spade here. Government's don't care even a little about
protecting their people with the surveillance bills that come from events like
this. They're just using events as an excuse to grab power from the people. We
all know that. If they did care, they'd be pouring money into driver-less cars
to reduce road fatalities. Let's stop even attributing decency and sense to
government actions and just admit they're power grabs.

The EFF is already probably too aggressive/extreme in their messages for most
of the public, so I see why they say it this way. But we don't have to be PC
about it. This article should be titled "Governments, please mar the
trajectory at Charlie Hebdo by claiming you care about it."

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Some of what you said carries merit but it overall smacks of rash
overgeneralizations. Most government actions start with good intentions at
heart, but they are often gamed and manipulated to personal benefit by those
capable of doing so.

Also, we can agree that much less should be spent on intelligence activities,
but pouring money into driverless cars is a terrible example of what they
"should" be spending money on.

~~~
DickingAround
It's fair that I'm not providing enough evidence here. I think we'd both agree
they good intentions when they outlawed unpasteurized milk or made a patent
system. It's hard to get clear evidence on intentions, but recent laws about
internet surveillance of Americans that are justified by saying the prevent
terrorism are pretty clearly not about terrorism. Before terrorism, there was
the cold war, before that there were countries that might invade us, etc.
History is littered with lies from governments about why they spy on their own
citizens and most of the time governments and government officials seem to do
it for their own gain and protection. In this sense, it's fair to assume the
people doing it now are also doing it for that reason.

Also, I'll admit I don't want them doing driverless cars either, but it would
at least be clearly intended to reduce fatalities. Perhaps medical research is
a better example? You tell me.

------
shaurz
The problem is, you actually need an all-seeing surveillance state if you're
going to mass-import millions of Muslims in to a non-Muslim country. The
violence will keep getting worse as their numbers in Western countries grow
and the spineless dhimmis continue to apologise for them. Unfortunately beyond
a certain point (which we seem to have already passed) it is simply impossible
to stop, no matter how efficient the state is at foiling their plots.

