The worst part for me (and I really am feeling bad about this) is that I should be concerned about the victims right now, but I can't stop thinking about what freedoms I'll be losing as a result of this.
I feel like everyone expects a reaction and increased security and such, but sometimes this type of reaction won't be fruitful. What could we learn from this -- check every trash can for a bomb at every big event? There are an unlimited number of places you could hide a bomb. If someone trying to blow people up saw the 'reaction' being checking every trash can, they would just learn not to hide their bomb in a trash can. There's just no chance we can prevent disasters like this with security increases alone.
I feel like at this point that we should be examining who did it, and what caused them to do it rather than how it could have been prevented with security measures. Get to the root of the problem and solve it there, rather than a surface-level patch. Was it a mental health thing? Was it spurred by our culture of violence and/or attention to violence? Was the attacker after a specific person? Certainly not easy to find out these answers, but would probably be effort better spent than checking trash cans.
I'm sure there will be some silly knee-jerk response that serves no good for the public and likely just inconveniences everyone. I'm also sure that people working in the government understand these short-term reactions are almost always useless. Why does it continue happening?
Is there some "silly knee-jerk" response to every such event? I don't remember the knee-jerk response to the Oklahoma City bombing. Or the Atlanta Olympics bombing. Or the first WTC bombing. Or the attempted 2010 Times Square bombing. The response to Sandy Hook is better described as "belabored" rather than "knee-jerk."
As for 9/11, that involved 3,000 people dead and the collapse of a major American icon. It killed more people than the Pearl Harbor bombing and involved direct costs and losses approaching $100 billion.[1] Jury's still out on whether it was a "silly knee-jerk" response or a reasonable wake-up to the threat of global islamic terrorism.
The response to even the most serious disasters can qualify as a "silly knee-jerk" if the response does little or nothing to ameliorate the disaster or prevent another one. 9/11 was bad, but that still doesn't justify security theater.
AEDPA is designed to keep people from spamming the federal courts with frivolous habeas petitions, particularly in capital cases. It has 'anti-terrorism' in the name, but it's almost entirely about the 'effective death penalty' part.[1] Among other things it's heavily focused on forcing federal courts to give more deference to state court judgments and avoiding situations where prisoners invoke minor technical violations in order to argue that their detentions are "illegal." It doesn't limit habeas rights--it creates stricter procedures for invoking that right that are less susceptible to abuse.
[1] The "terrorism" part seems to come from using the example of people like McVeigh to argue for procedures to keep people from defeating a death sentence by filing endless habeas petitions.
Well, we're certainly going to disagree about whether the AEDPA is good law or not. I happen to think it abridges liberties, but that's beside the point. The
point is that its passage was very much in response to the Oklahoma City Bombings, even if its legacy today has to do with habeas petitions.
See this:
"But within weeks of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Senate voted 91 to 8 to pass the Comprehensive Terrorism Protection Act of 1995, which cut back sharply on state death-row inmates’ access to federal court. This bill eventually morphed into the broader Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which President Clinton signed shortly after the first anniversary of the bombing. Standing on the south lawn of the White House, in the presence of family members of the victims of Oklahoma City and other recent terrorist incidents, the president declared that the new law “strikes a mighty blow” against terrorism." [1]
And also [2], which notes that a draft of the AEDPA also contained additional surveillance powers, among other things.
I'd definitely call the AEDPA a knee jerk reaction.
Just because a bill is motivated by an event does not make it a "knee-jerk" reaction. There has to be some element of "poorly thought out." AEDPA is a perfectly reasonable solution to the problem it addresses.
"It doesn't limit habeas rights--it creates stricter procedures for invoking that right"
Much like free speech zones don't limit free speech rights, they just create stricter procedures for exercising those rights.
AEDPA was not just about habeas corpus rights. It covers penalties for conspiracies that involve explosives and for hacking into government computers. It covers counterfeiting activities. It covers law enforcement training and assistance. It covers international terrorist funding and investigation.
It is like an embryonic version of the PATRIOT act.
Not every attempt to address security and terrorism can be deemed "rights-contracting." The other stuff in AEDPA doesn't contract any rights, just addresses particular kinds of crimes. The only thing that arguably contracts rights are the habeas portion, and that's more appropriately seen as improving habeas procedures rather than contracting rights.
"Not every attempt to address security and terrorism can be deemed "rights-contracting.""
Of course; only those that restrict our rights should be so labeled. That, unfortunately, is what the majority of attempts to address security concerns do.
"The other stuff in AEDPA doesn't contract any rights, just addresses particular kinds of crimes."
That is a tautology: take away the things that are bad, and you are left with something good. Ignore the sections that reduce, restrict, or eliminate our rights, and every knee-jerk reaction just addresses particular kinds of crimes (whether or not they do so in an effective way is another story).
"The only thing that arguably contracts rights are the habeas portion, and that's more appropriately seen as improving habeas procedures rather than contracting rights."
More appropriate according to you perhaps, and perhaps the right wing politicians who passed and signed the bill, but it is hard to say that we are "improving" civil rights by restricting them. Restricting habeas corpus is not an "improvement," it is a restriction on civil rights -- or alternatively, a contraction of our rights.
The entire argument for restricting habeas corpus in this manner was this: people facing the death penalty might try to avoid being executed by exhaustively testing every technical detail of their case in court. That does not sound like a bad thing to me, it sounds like people are making use of their rights in a life or death situation. Far too many innocent people have been executed to claim that there are too many ways for death row inmates to stave off their executions.
AEDPA was drafted by the kind of people who think The Ox-Bow Incident is a how-to manual on law enforcement. It is the mindset that sees a man like McVeigh challenging his execution and says, "How dare he! We are supposed to kill him, because he is GUILTY!" That is not how America is supposed to work. The criminal justice system in this country is meant to ensure that innocent people are not imprisoned or killed even if it means allowing guilty people to walk free and even if it means using tax dollars to pay for guilty people to challenge their conviction.
> I don't remember the knee-jerk response to the Oklahoma City bombing.
nor the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which may almost mirror this in terms of venue, injuries, & deaths. But, I think the fear is that we're now in a post-9/11 world where knee-jerk reactions are far more common.
> What could we learn from this -- check every trash can for a bomb at every big event? There are an unlimited number of places you could hide a bomb.
France, in response to terrorist attacks in the 1995 mandated that all public locations have transparent bags held by posts [1] [2]. I don't think that's a unreasonable compromise, considering the alternatives.
don't trust that your cell phone will work, the authorities are quite capable of disabling cell access in the area.
That is a very important item that many will overlook. To the person bemoaning what rights they will lose, well its not like your going to lose more, just be reminded of ones you lost and did not even realize, like that of a working cell phone.
how does that help? You could still stick a bomb in amongst the trash. Ok, it's no longer enclosed in a container that will make the blast worse but you could stick plenty of malice into a bomb the size of a football which would easily go into that bag.
You're right - it's not going to solve an inherently unsolvable engineering problem.
What it does do is solve a political problem: "What the hell did you do in response to terror attacks" in a way that does't compromise liberty much.
It does make it just that bit harder to stow a bomb, because now the bomber needs to have it packaged properly, and hope that the package doesn't a) ruin the bomb or detonating device and b) that the bomb doesn't slip out and become visible.
It also helps the police identify - they can just machete all trash bags and grab/dump the contents and sort - compared with opening up the can - which might in some areas be locked or difficult to open.
Compared with moves like the creation of the TSA, I prefer this kind of security theatre - at least there's some plot here. It's like locking out the pilot doors from the cabin.
This is missing the whole point of the parent post though.
The OP's point is that even if you can ensure 100% of the trashcans dont contain bombs for a reasonable cost, the terrorists will now just put them somewhere else.
> check every trash can for a bomb at every big event?
Actually, I think they already do that, with bomb-sniffing dogs. But they have dubious reliability, and don't catch someone who's willing to place the bomb shortly before it detonates, as may have been the case here.
When 9/11 hit my first thought was, "Travel is really going to suck now." When the Bali bombing hit, I thought, "I've been to that bar, holy sh*t!" This time around I'm thinking, "I know some people who were running."
Reaction to issues is tied to how much you can personally relate to the victims. It's also why 2 people dying in a stream in your neighborhood seems so much more relevant than 100,000 people dying in an earthquake halfway around the world.
If you are feeling bad, why are you saying it? This feels like you are standing on a soapbox and it's hard to think you are actually sorry for it when you are doing it intentionally.
I'm just a dude facing a big stab of mental dissonance right now. I'm not trying to push a political agenda. My brother ran in and finished the marathon last year. I didn't make it out to see him and I wish I had. So the first thing I feel is dread, it takes a moment to resolve that he wasn't there, and then I think will I ever be able to get close enough to reach out my hand to him as he comes down the final stretch again or did I miss that chance forever?
Will it be all police cars, dogs and jersey walls from here on out? This sucks.
> Will it be all police cars, dogs and jersey walls from here on out?
The video from the camera man on the ground at the finish line shows countless cops at the finish line. All that police presence did not prevent the detonation.
I felt the same way. My first thought was that I was glad there weren't any assault weapons involved, for which I was immediately ashamed. Immediately after that I was disgusted that Bloomberg.com wanted me to watch an ad for a new Mercedes before I could check on the well-being of my fellow humans.
I'm not proud of my thoughts, and I'm not proud of the hundred or so sarcastic remarks that I've thought of since I first heard the news either.
I am genuinely saddened that this happened, and my most sincere hope is that whomever did so is apprehended quickly and that nobody else is injured or killed while that happens. At the same time, the explosion looks (at least to me) like Tannerite, and I'm also thinking that perhaps Tannerite is going to get banned, or regulated, despite being, basically, iron oxide; which would make such a ban pretty futile.
" Immediately after that I was disgusted that Bloomberg.com wanted me to watch an ad"
Are you suggesting that they should have some automatic kill switch implemented in advance which they can hit to show sensitivity? [1] Networks also run commercials to make money it's part of how they can afford to do what they do. Of course I've seen cases where networks don't run commercials on rare occasions.
[1] And why do they need to do this? Are you willing to pay for access instead so they don't have to run any advertising?
I work for a large media organization and we have the ability to suspend advertising in response to crisis events. I'd assume other major outlets would have equivalent capabilities.
At the end of the day advertisers don't want to be associated with certain stories, and there's a public good imperative that drives rapid, open access in these tragic situations that overrides commercial interest even if that were of concern.
They're not running commercials on TV right now, but I agree that it's unrealistic to expect websites to just switch into non-commercial mode on the fly.
What's interesting though is that events like this are in fact an advertisement for TV itself and a show of value which keep people needing to have TV access. So even if they don't run advertising they also might need to do (to keep their license at least the broadcast networks) a certain amount of public good.
So they build good will as the place to go when some major event has happened and you are looking for every morsel of information or discussion about it.
Tannerite ignition is dependent on the impact of a high speed projectile. How would a terrorist with a rifle get a clean shot of the explosive through the crowd? I think it is unlikely that Tannerite was used.
Feeling bad about having a legitimate stance in the face of a tragedy isn't cause for self censorship. It might be social pariahism, but it's not cause enough for one to bite their tongue.
My second thought is how weird it is that for the next couple of days the attention and focus of a 100s of millions of people's will be directed at the circumstances surrounding the deaths of perhaps 20 people of no particular notability. It's as if these are the only 20 people that died lately. The attention and focus of the public in this modern era of global communications is a strange thing.
Sounds legit to me. Do you feel bad about the hundred of people murdered every day? I don't. Its just that they aren't on the news.
I'd feel bad for the people i remotely know, or for the families if I were to meet them, but otherwise.. it's not any different. It's bad, but doesn't make one feel bad - and that's perfectly fine.
what he says actually makes perfect sense. thousands of syrians are dying everyday, and I don't see much mentions about them on HN for example. yes you will feel bad, but you will quickly move on and forget about it as long as it doesn't relate directly to you.
Who knows. But after every crisis there should be a post mortem and we should learn from what went wrong. And why does every change in policy and approach have to be seen as a threat to anybody's freedoms? Not that many of the short-sighted response aren't just that, but this sort of knee jerk reaction seems just as unhealthy.
Try saying that when you are directly affected by actions like this.
It is easy to stand back at 100ft and say this type of crap, but the fact is, crazy people are all around us, and we should try to be proactive instead of reactive.
We as a society owe it ourselves to reflect on events such as this, and see if there was anything that could have been done to prevent it. If the answer is yes, then we SHOULD act. Does that mean freedoms need to be restricted, laws to be enacted? No, it could mean better technology, maybe better security, maybe MORE security.
I hope no new laws come of something like this, but if it means reducing the chance that this happens again, I am all for it.
Our rights are absolute, but we also need to compromise. We can't let ourselves become 1984, but we can become safer, smarter, more efficient with regards to security.
"No, it could mean better technology, maybe better security, maybe MORE security."
Is it cold to point out that we are already living in an age of more security? There were paramilitary police teams at the marathon, ready to take on a small army -- but the attackers found a way to plant their bombs anyway.
When the TSA was established and billions of dollars were spent on securing our airlines, a tiny minority of people were saying that if another attack occurred it would not be on an airplane. Now we have seen another attack, it was not on an airplane nor anywhere near an airport. We do no need another massive security bureaucracy designed to prevent marathons or city streets from being attacked, because that will just push terrorists to attack something else. There are far too many ways to attack a country as large and developed as the United States to have a sprawling bureaucracy for all of them.
"I hope no new laws come of something like this, but if it means reducing the chance that this happens again, I am all for it."
The problem is that there's always "something" more that could be done to prevent these types of incidents, but eventually the costs of additional preventative measures will outweigh the reduction in risk they provide, if they haven't already.
No, people will always kill other people, that is the unfortunate truth of human nature. That doesn't mean there aren't multiple problems here, and each one with multiple solutions.
Our lawmakers know just as well as we do, that more laws won't fix events like these, but better messaging ("See something say something"), better trained police officers, etc.. these are things that are controllable, changeable, and have a hugely positive impact on preventing horrible things like this from happening.
"See something say something" is still far too late in the process. As a society we need to do a better job of preventing people from being abused, neglected, and marginalized.
No doubt some "reforms" will be implemented that will funnel even more money into the pockets of lobbyist-using companies and big-time campaign donors.
Watershed events always create these emotional knee jerk reactions. As opposed to "well we can save lives by driving 50 mph instead of 70 mph but since that's legacy we aren't likely to not consider the impact on society as a whole by lowering the speed limit."
No worries, you're simply thinking pragmatically, when everyone else is emotional. The killings are nothing but a mode of transport for destruction of freedom.
I think you're being too hard on yourself. I live in Boston and have friends who were in very real danger, and I still had that same thought go through my head. On the merits of the the thought, we should not accord much weight to the "it's too soon!" line of thinking. Nor is the tragedy of a death proportional to its media coverage. So you aren't being monstrous.
But more importantly, having a thought you aren't proud of is no mortal sin, nor is publishing it honestly on the internet. You're supposed to feel conflicted and confused; something bad happened and we're all going to have a wide range emotionally-charged responses.
I didn't read it as attention whoring. I'd be inclined to think that the relatively few (but nevertheless very visible) harsh responses you've received are at least in part expected, valid, and understandable reactions to the possibility that you might just be right. After all, we don't want to believe that a tragic event like this might be used to tighten the noose of security around our collective necks. But what if it does?
Given recent history, there's little reason to feel that it won't and plenty to worry that it will.
Well stop agonizing about it and delete it then. I'm not saying that to be snarky, I'm pointing out that it's something useful you can do right now to get it off the top of the page.
That doesn't accomplish anything useful. A day or two from now, someone who hasn't yet seen the thread will wonder what the "deleted" part of the conversation was for.
The best thing to do if you disagree with the position of the OP's comment is to upvote other siblings. Personally, I think this discussion is interesting because it addresses in real time the implications of what this attack might be (if any).
Why is this the top thread? I'm being serious here... I honestly don't understand how this got all the way up to the top where as others of much greater worth (IMHO) sit below...
I agree totally. I'd delete it if it would take it from the top instead of leaving the discussion there behind a curious "deleted".
I've scrolled down and up-voted as many of those more valuable comments as I could. I encourage everyone who reads this far to go and do the same.
As I said, I thought this would be a "one voice among many" kind of post, not become the lightning-rod of this thread. Parent is right. Go read the better stuff.
You seem to be implying that because North Korea is less free than us, we are completely free with nothing to lose. That's pretty faulty logic. Better to be aware of the freedoms we are losing (even though we still have many) than to risk ending up like North Korea.
> You seem to be implying that because North Korea is less free than us, we are completely free with nothing to lose. That's pretty faulty logic. Better to be aware of the freedoms we are losing (even though we still have many) than to risk ending up like North Korea.
Clearly my point completely flew over your head. I was only commenting on how ridiculous it was that tomjen3 claimed that we had already lost all our freedoms in the very same sentence that he mentioned a country that is far more oppressive than our own.
It'll probably kick-start an invasive drone surveillance bill and some unrelated oil-rich country being turned into dust. I wish this was hyperbole but based on previous US reactions this makes the most sense.
For what it's worth, I upvoted this question despite so many comments bemoaning its existence.
The facts will be fleshed out over time on the regular news, so I see less value in comments just parroting that. Rather, (if this is to be discussed on Hacker News at all), I'd prefer it to be about the ramifications of the event, and especially how it relates to technology, or laws/regulations that foster the development of technologies.
I'm a Bostonian (at work about a mile from the explosions), and I wish everyone would just cool their jets a bit until more is known about what's going on.
If anything a successful terrorist attack should be a condemnation of the freedom-sacrificing mechanisms that have been put in place like the PATRIOT Act. They just failed.
The most likely change to your freedoms is 'none whatsoever' -- tragedies on this scale don't threaten society as a whole and therefore are dealt with by existing laws.
I think it largely depends on who will be found as the culprit.
If it would be found that this is an Islamist terror attack the aftermath will be much more pronounced then a scenario where the blame will be on say some extreme right wing group.
Much of the lose of freedom we all suffer from is due to entrenched xenophobia becoming political agenda, it seems much harder to enact changes when the criminals are white Americans ala Timothy McVeigh or some horrific mass shooting
Another thing to focus on is the infrastructure. Telephone lines and data networks must be clogged, it just goes to show how much we need reliable networks and data infrastructures for such vital occurrences!
Fuck off. How much blood has the western world lost to achieve freedom, privacy, and a government by the people for the people? We cannot continue to allow the enemy to terrorize us into giving up our liberties.
Harsh as it may be, the people dying and losing their limbs will have no direct impact on my life, or on most other people's lives. It's a tragedy for their friends and loved ones, but I'm not in that group, so it's a very abstract thing - I feel bad, but it won't affect me personally.
Losing freedom has the potential to affect me personally, so I'm more concerned about it.
And I don't necessarily agree it's too early to discus the consequences of this. The authorities on the scene are handling the immediate situation, and there's very little to be done from 2K miles away.
> And I don't necessarily agree it's too early to discus the consequences of this. The authorities on the scene are handling the immediate situation, and there's very little to be done from 2K miles away.
I agree. Chance are, the friends and family who are directly affected by this aren't going to be trawling through comments on HN--there are more pressing concerns.
The rest of us, and maybe this will sound equally harsh, need to divorce ourselves from the emotional impact if there's nothing we can do (or donate to the appropriate organizations if so inclined). Right now, there's little that can be done, and even less information still. That leaves the most objective option as what we're doing right now: That is to say the discussion of potential policy changes.
I'm not sure this event is significant enough to affect anything on a large scale (e.g. TSA on every street corner), but you do have to wonder what changes might be made to future marathons as a consequence. I don't necessarily think that's harsh as much as it is objective.
100's of people die and lose their limbs in an tragic, yet oddly sensational event, and your first move is to decry a person angry about how the government uses similarly sensational events to systematically impose restrictions of freedom on (more or less) the entire world.
People losing lives, in this case, will likely not be the end of the tragedy. I think it is legitimate to be concerned about how much worse it may get with political involvement and the resulting unreasoned "do something" responses.
Even moreso of a reason to not waste energy and thought on phantom evils. Spending nonstop conscious effort confiscating useless attack vectors leaves you less prepared for actual danger.
