[IkmoIkmo]

omfg... can we please have a body count in western countries proposing these laws.

And can we then please put that into perspective? (e.g. compare it to traffic casualties)

And then look at the price we're willing to pay (ridiculous amounts of corrupting power without oversight that affects mostly innocent people)?

For example, let's take one of the countries with the gravest terrorist threat: Israel. Its civilian deaths from any mortar attack from Gaza (let's assume 100% terrorism) in the past 14 years? 30.

Now how many people die in traffic in Israel every year? Today about 260, in 2000 about 450, let's average that at 350.

Alright, so in 14 years, 30 civilian deaths from rocket terror attacks, and about 5.000 people dead in traffic.

Now obviously, that's 30 and 5.000 to many, respectively. And if we can prevent them, we should. But when these are the numbers for a country under what is considered some of the greatest threats of terrorism, and still its terrorism casualties pale in comparison with its traffic casualties... do we really want to pay the price by implementing ridiculous anti-terror laws in a place where it's much safer, and where thus this gap is much, much bigger, like Canada?

I mean, let's look at Canada. Does anyone know some stats on e.g. loss of life due to terror attacks in Canada for say the past 10 years? I know more than 2.000 people die in traffic every year. I can hardly find any substantial casualties in Canadian terrorism history.

I'm familiar with a few shootings where one or two people died. Regular homicide numbers (or e.g. traffic casualties) humble the stats. I remember in the 80s, 30 years ago now, a plane was bombed, not in Canada, over Irish airspace, but it had departed from Montreal so you could call it terrorism in Canada in a way. But that was by a Sikh group who wanted to target India (India Airways airplane going to India) rather than Canada, so you could also argue it was terrorism concerning India. That was horrible in any case, over 300 people died. Other than that, it's been small-time as far as I know. A few (fire) bombings without casualties, some marxist attacks, a soldier attacking members of a political party. In fact I think the worst one (after the aircraft) was an American soldier who killed 3 people.

Now of course I appreciate these casualties ought to stay insignificant. The fact terrorism barely registers in stats in most OECD countries is a great thing, and I agree we should keep it that way. But at what cost? We don't ban alcohol or driving either, when they're our biggest threats. We don't shut down factories when global warming will, at current pace, kill billions of future people. I'm completely for fighting terrorism, but I also believe the tools we employ have to be proportional. And this NSA type stuff, surveillance without oversight, detaining without a charge, none of that is proportional and it doesn't seem necessary, either. We have yet to hear of major terror attacks that such programs prevented. Yet government is all too willing to give up a great piece of modern society, a piece that makes these countries great to live in.

Anyway that's just my two cents. Apologies for what is obviously a silly comparison (traffic & terrorism casualties), and yes I appreciate terrorism is more than a casualty number. But I'm trying to show here that our legislative response is out of proportion and I hope people see that.

[piovertoo]

C-51 is not predicated on evidence. It's predicated on fear, and that fear is based on media and political coverage, not silly things like numbers and facts. For C-51 they really strongly played up a "terrorist" attack on the Canadian Parliament that resulted in a single military casualty and a subsequent shootout. This single incident has been played up almost like some kind of Canadian 9/11 attack - but the reality of it is a lot less interesting - just some disillusioned youth with a gun that got up close to an unarmed solider, then got stopped by trained security forces.

[xnull2guest]

This is all fine and good, but rising surveillance and propaganda legislation was never and will never be about terrorism. Civilians don't understand that globalization and hybrid warfare require extreme technical capabilities that amount to a sort of cyber cold war.

[PhasmaFelis]

> omfg... can we please have a body count in western countries proposing these laws.

US agencies will tell you that surveillance has totally saved thousands and thousands of lives, but you'll have to take their word for it because the actual incidents are all top secret.

[beagle3]

While I generally agree with the gist of your things, neither body count nor Israel is a good subject in any of these discussions.

Would you say polio vaccines in e.g. Canada are useless because there are zero polio cases in Canada and have been for years?

The main claim of governments while making those rules is (generally) the same one behind vaccinations: "If we didn't spend all that money / curtail all that freedom / record all that communications - there would have been many casualties", and it is this argument that should be addressed.

According to [0], The NSA was unable to point at a single success. If they did have any, it is too sensitive to share, or they would have paraded it already - but either way, the count is surely ridiculously small for the price paid. AFAIK, Canadian and British intelligence has equally abysmal [public] record.

But Israel is different:

> For example, Israeli civilian deaths from any mortar attack from Gaza (let's assume 100% terrorism) in the past 14 years? 30.

This is the wrong number to look at, but let's look at it anyway, because the discussion is relevant:

The reason this count is so low is because Israel has spent so much effort making it that low, continuously since inception. e.g. Israeli building code requires a bomb shelter as part of every single building (older code), a bomb proof core (last 25 years) and additionally public bomb shelters; That's been going on for 70 years now. The most recent "Iron Dome" system uses $50,000-$100,000 rockets to target $500-$1,000 incoming rockets (each with rather small potential - say, to kill 10 people -- but of which there were 5,000-10,000 launched at Israel over 2014)

What would the death toll have been if Israel did not have these measures in place? Arguably 10-50 times higher; this is much less of a hypothetical discussion as the rockets were actually launched. But that's irrelevant to the C-51 discussion, I think; what is relevant is that when Israelis discuss these matters, they tend do disagree on their cost-benefit estimation (It cost us this-and-this-liberty, but it saved us this-many-lives, but it cost the palestinians that-many-lives and thus our humanity, but ....) and many actually object to e.g. Iron Dome. But there's mostly factual data to consider and debate. That is missing from the debate in other countries.

The number that does matter in this kind of discussion, I think is from [1] - which is over 600 casualties between 2000 to 2014. Israel actually had a serious suicide bombing problem back in the early 2000s, averaging about one deadly attack per week. It was, effectively, solved by 2006, and you are welcome to reach your own conclusion about how this was solved (HN is probably the wrong place for this discussion ....). However, I will say this: I'm not familiar with anyone who claims that this was solved by eroding the rights and privacy of the Israeli public -- which for some reason appears to be the preferred solution in just about every country (would probably have been in Israel as well if there was anything left to erode ...)

It's almost as if all those domestic spying bills actually have more sinister objectives. But we should all trust our governments to do the right things. /s

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/08/nsa-bul...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_att...

[IkmoIkmo]

Generally agree with your points.

On the Iron Dome, it was launched in 2011. Interestingly, in the 10 years before, 17 people died from rocket attacks from Gaza. It's often used to explain the death toll difference between Israel and Palestine (not something either of us mentioned) when it really was a relatively minor factor in casualties before and after the dome. In fact, rocket attacks have always been a relatively minor factor in casualties (despite being of course outright frightening to live in a place where every year you find yourself in a bomb shelter at some point). So I'm not sure that 10-50x higher is very probable although it'd definitely be more.

I agree about the biggest threat being solved around 2006, the separation wall is highly controversial (and I oppose it, in general), but it's been absolutely effective and its benefit is as visible as its cost (unlike many anti-terror laws whose benefits are much more vague).

> I'm not familiar with anyone who claims that this was solved by eroding the rights and privacy of the Israeli public -- which for some reason appears to be the preferred solution in just about every country

Agreed. Although here in the Netherlands our carriers recently stopped saving telephone records on everyone after it appeared the judge said this wasn't necessary anymore, which really surprised everyone haha. Wasn't a Dutch thing btw, the European court of justice ruled the telecommunications retention law invalid. There's some good things happening here and there.