Lessig

I disagree with this article and Lessig's assessment of it. Schneier claims that "Few people remind us how minor the terrorist threat really is." This is a version of the same argument that was promulgated by people on the left after 9/11 that the events of that day were largely symbolic and of little practical consequence (a view published in Harper's magazine, in an article by an author from the New Left Review); it's a view that I heard echoed at Universities and is I think is deeply flawed. On 9/11, precisely because of a lack of the kind of identification Schneier decries, terrorists attacked the financial hub of the United States, the Pentagon, and were it not for an act of selfless heroism by the passengers of Flight 93, may have struck the Capitol building. Does this, in Schneier's mind, constitute "a minor threat?"

The rest of his article poses interesting questions, answers few of them, takes a few of the standard potshots at the Justice Department and John Ashcroft, and ends with the assertion that "we didn't even get any temporary safety in return" - a statement that, it seems to me given fact that there have been no further attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11, is demonstrably false.

I agree with the effort to encourage debate about the Patriot Act and the antiterrorism measures being undertaken in our name by the government, and Schneier helps a little by suggesting whether or not there might be better (read: more effective) ways to spend our money, but offers no data and does no real analysis in this article. Instead he raises the police-state bogeyman, which to critics of the Administration is every bit as much a fixation as John Kerry's remarks on China a few posts down from this.

Ok, let's say you're correct. Where, then, does Schneier come up with the risk numbers to arrive at his assessment that the threat is minor (perhaps near, say, the risk of dying from leukemia because of background radiation) Did he just make them up? Does he know them at all? Or is a more plausible explanation that Schneier has posed some interesting and politically controversial questions and made some very broad pronouncements to stimulate the sales of his book? What standing does Bruce Schneier really have to comment on the risk of terrorist attacks any more than you or I do, with you analogy of living by the el tracks in Chicago? I'll guarantee that if thieves started using the el tracks as a platform to commit burglaries you'd hear about it in the papers, and in all probability the CPD has some statistics on that question and have concluded that the threat is low.

On 9/11, precisely because of a lack of the kind of identification Schneier decries, terrorists attacked the financial hub of the United States, the Pentagon, and were it not for an act of selfless heroism by the passengers of Flight 93, may have struck the Capitol building.

Perhaps we should wait for the final report from the commission to come out before jumping to this conclusion, as there may have been more lapses than simply whether or not the hijackers had valid identification.

Alex,

I respectfully disagree not with your statements (they seem factual to me) but with the frame of mind in which you state them.

The real genius (strategically thinking) of terrorism is that it erodes liberty piecemeal. Our foreign policy might be the cause of the attacks, but the attacks themselves are designed to affect our way of life and, in that regard, the attacks of 9/11 were incredibly effective.

Results of the 9/11 attacks:

• Flying is significantly more time-consuming both time-wise and money-wise.


• The nation is polarized regarding the invasion of Iraq and its relevance (or lack thereof) to the interminable War on Terror.


• Out of fear, we have relinquished civil liberties to the government that would have been incomprehensible prior to 9/11.

It's understandable how this came to be. We were attacked and we expected our elected officials to protect us. But, given the fact that hindsight is 20/20, it's time to re-evaluate those knee-jerk decisions and make more intelligent choices.
For example:

• What if, instead of color-codes for terrorism levels, our intelligence community simply communicated with us. "Warning: There's an indication that taxi cabs in New York might be an attack vector in the month of March." It seems to me that if governments are able and willing to advise the cancellation of flights (thus revealing relatively specific intelligence information), they should be able to publish public notices of potential threats.


• How about, instead of CAPPS II, the government publishes the criteria they use to label people. That way, we could spot suspicious behavior in areas where it's most relevant.

Terrorism doesn't attack loopholes in law; it attacks culture and mindset. Our government's response seems to be precisely the outcome the terrorists hoped for. You point out the heroes aboard United Airlines Flight 93; I believe that that incident created a nation of heroes should the same attempt be made again.

Bruce Schneier understands security. Mitigate, detect, investigate, and prosecute is a very broad view of his philosophy. I believe that our government (again, completely understandably), in their rush to calm our fears, completely skipped over the most important first step: mitigate. And the best to way to mitigate terrorist attacks in the United States of America is to inform the populace of the potential threats. That step would allow for more heroes and less degradation of our civil rights.

One cannot defend against a person that is willing to die to accomplish their goal. The best that one can do is keep them from launching their attack (mitigate), spot their attack (detect), figure out how they did it after the fact (investigate), and make them and their associates pay for it after the fact (prosecute).

--Jason