comment-questions on liberties/terrorism

[lehighguy]

You can stop terrorist from hijacking planes again, but you can't stop them from strapping on a bomb and walking onto a bus.

With this is mind, why are we curtailing our civil liberties even though it doesn't make us safer.

[ QUOTE ]
You can stop terrorist from hijacking planes again, but you can't stop them from strapping on a bomb and walking onto a bus.

With this is mind, why are we curtailing our civil liberties even though it doesn't make us safer.

[/ QUOTE ]

I take it that you entirely discount any notion that an intercepted phone call from a foreign terrorist leader to his domestic cell awaiting instructions which bear details of the suicide attack could in any way prevent the attack.

I specifically addressed part of my post to you:

<font color="green"> To you I ask, what if entirely credible evidence surfaced, along with the open declaration by Al Queda, that Al Queda had possession of dozens of nuclear bombs and was fully committed to detonating them in American cities? Now how much of that X amount of terrorist attacks are you willing to tolerate from your suburban nests?
</font>

[lehighguy]

No, not really. Anyone can find bomb making instructions and materials on the internet. They don't need any kind of vast network. The Isrealis have much tighter security and they can't stop it, we can't either.

As for your second scenerio, your best bet would be to lock up every Arab in the country in camps. At the end of the day that is the only effective method of stopping terrorism. If there is a nuclear attack on the US that will probably happen.

If not then I don't see why we are wasting time and money on [censored] that doesn't work.

I'm reminded of a story. After a battle a greek king had captured 10,000 POW. He had imprisoned them and didn't know what to do with them. His advisor suggested that he kill them all to save resources and send a message to his enemies. The king said no, he did not want to anger is enemy. The advisor then suggested he return the prisoners to the enemy to gain favor. The king again said no, saying that he did not want to face these soldiers again on the battlefield. Then the advisor said that the current cost of action was the least favorable option. Not only would his enemy be mad at him for keeping prisoners, but he would spend precious supplies tending to them. Choose one extreme or another, because the middle ground accomplishes nothing and costs a great deal.

The creation of the department of homeland security, wiretaps, all of that is [censored] that doesn't do anything. Either do what you know will work or do nothing and stop wasting everyones time.

[Exsubmariner]

[ QUOTE ]
No, not really. Anyone can find bomb making instructions and materials on the internet. They don't need any kind of vast network. The Isrealis have much tighter security and they can't stop it, we can't either.

As for your second scenerio, your best bet would be to lock up every Arab in the country in camps. At the end of the day that is the only effective method of stopping terrorism. If there is a nuclear attack on the US that will probably happen.

If not then I don't see why we are wasting time and money on [censored] that doesn't work.

I'm reminded of a story. After a battle a greek king had captured 10,000 POW. He had imprisoned them and didn't know what to do with them. His advisor suggested that he kill them all to save resources and send a message to his enemies. The king said no, he did not want to anger is enemy. The advisor then suggested he return the prisoners to the enemy to gain favor. The king again said no, saying that he did not want to face these soldiers again on the battlefield. Then the advisor said that the current cost of action was the least favorable option. Not only would his enemy be mad at him for keeping prisoners, but he would spend precious supplies tending to them. Choose one extreme or another, because the middle ground accomplishes nothing and costs a great deal.

The creation of the department of homeland security, wiretaps, all of that is [censored] that doesn't do anything. Either do what you know will work or do nothing and stop wasting everyones time.

[/ QUOTE ]

I find this post intensely interesting, lehigh, are you saying you are in favor of and advocate concentration camps for Muslims in the US?

[lehighguy]

No. Just that camps and leaving everyone alone are the two options. I favor leaving everyone alone.

[tolbiny]

"I take it that you entirely discount any notion that an intercepted phone call from a foreign terrorist leader to his domestic cell awaiting instructions which bear details of the suicide attack could in any way prevent the attack"

Fisa was set up just to do this- you know how long it takes to get a wire tap from them? -3 days. Thats right, negative three days. you are allowed to apply for a tap up to 3 days after installing it.
So tell me again, why is it nessecary to circumvent the law.

[CORed]

[ QUOTE ]
"I take it that you entirely discount any notion that an intercepted phone call from a foreign terrorist leader to his domestic cell awaiting instructions which bear details of the suicide attack could in any way prevent the attack"

Fisa was set up just to do this- you know how long it takes to get a wire tap from them? -3 days. Thats right, negative three days. you are allowed to apply for a tap up to 3 days after installing it.
So tell me again, why is it nessecary to circumvent the law.

[/ QUOTE ]

Because the FISA courts might ask the administration for inconvenient things like evidence and probable cause. We can't have that when there's millions of terrorists with thousands of nuclear bombs lining up to destroy America. Can't you understand that? The President ha to be able to act, even if he couldn't find a terrorist walking down Pennsylvania avenue with an AK-47 in one hand and bundle of dynamite sticks in the other hand.

way to break the string of three respectable posts CoRed

[img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[sweetjazz]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You can stop terrorist from hijacking planes again, but you can't stop them from strapping on a bomb and walking onto a bus.

With this is mind, why are we curtailing our civil liberties even though it doesn't make us safer.

[/ QUOTE ]

I take it that you entirely discount any notion that an intercepted phone call from a foreign terrorist leader to his domestic cell awaiting instructions which bear details of the suicide attack could in any way prevent the attack.

[/ QUOTE ]

While I will be the first to admit that almost anything is possible, I think you (as well as much of the American public) is vastly overestimating the value of intercepting phone calls. Mind you, I don't suggest we stop trying to intercept phone calls, only that we be realistic as to what we hope to accomplish.

First, there's a huge parlay that needs to take place in order for an intercepted phone message to work. First, we have to intercept a relevant conversation. We have to suspect it is relevant enough that we prioritize it in giving it to our translators. When it is translated, we need to be able to figure out that it is indicating an attack is occurring, even though it is unlikely to do so explicitly. Even when we do, we have to hope there is enough information available in that conversation (and perhaps future intercepted conversations as well) to successfully prevent the attack.

That's a lot of things to break our way. Because of the value of success, it's worth going for this parlay even though the chances of success are going to be rather slim.

I know this is obvious, but it's worth emphasizing...

We are unlikely to intercept a phone message that says "Mr. Zarqawi is calling to inform you that the mission should begin on Saturday, January 13 at 2:45 P.M. Don't forget that you are going to Smith's shopping plaza and you are to wear a green shirt and a black mask. That's Smith's shopping plaza, on the corner of Lee and Third."

We are much more likely to intercept a message that says (in a dialect of Arabic of course), "The plans should begin on the seventh day of the third moon in the Land of the Evil Infidel." Presumably the person receiving the information can figure out the day and the place based on previous conversations. We have to hope that we can find other conversations which make similar references to times and dates, and hope that we can figure out the "key" that encodes their messages.

Similarly, terrorists can make hundreds of phone calls between themselves that tell an attack to take place. However, it might be that only one or two of them contain a code word or phrase that "activates" the message and informs the terrorist to carry out his attack. It's pretty hard to fight through all of that "noise" and figure out where the attack is really happening, and it would be a terribly expensive drain on resources even if we could somehow manage to translate all 100 messages and act on all of them just in case.

Obviously, things are more sophisticated than my silly examples, both in how terrorists try to pass information without it being comprehensible to anyone who should manage to come across in and in the techniques that the U.S. government can use.

But basically, the idea that we are going to prevent an attack in this way is probably grounded more in wishful thinking than in reality than most of us would like. It's possible and it is worth trying, but I think we need to be realistic as well.

(Also, the spying has other benefits as well, which may help us to catch terrorists after they have commmitted an attack or make it more difficult for them to communicate with each other.)

My biggest criticism of Bush and the "War on Terror" is that in my opinion, he has a very poor strategy to prevent terrorism. It's basically the "try at any cost to stop terrorism in the most naive way possible" approach. So we have basically spent a huge amount in resources which have only made it marginally more difficult for a terrorist attack to succeed. (Let me be clear, though. Some of Bush's decisions, such as to pursue al Qaeda in Afghanistan and to remove the Taliban from power, were good strategic decisions. I mostly refer to his claim that we are making ourselves safer from a terrorist attack through the War in Iraq -- a naively short-term view of things in my opinion -- and many of his domestic homeland security principles.)

In my opinion, there are steps that are sensible for us to take in order to help reduce the possibility of a terrorist attack, and some of them may involve a loss of previous liberties. I am okay with that. But I happen to think that transparency in government is a great thing, and while we cannot disclose everything we know, I find the burden of proof to be with the administration when they say something is protecting American lives. If their arguments tend to be accepted among a vast majority of retired agents from the CIA, then I will tend to support their policies.

When I hear the president claim that we are being endangere by having a newspaper report that he is spying on people who the FISA law says can be spied on, I find that rather lacking in credibility. The newspaper article didn't inform terrorists anything they couldn't find out by keeping up with American laws, except that Mr. Bush was ignoring a provision to obtain court warrants from a court that generally rubber stamps most requests.

Anyway, that's just my perspective, and I hope it is helpful to you in forming your own opinion, even if you end up figuring out that I am completely wrong. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]