Friday, August 25, 2006
Stop helping the terrorists! Schneier on Security: What the Terrorists Want
The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.
And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.
Once again Bruce Schneier is right on point. We've effectively given terrorists a whole new weapon; our own over-reaction. They can pretty much count on us mucking things up royaly even when there's been no attack. The guys in London with their magic liquid bombs were no where near blowing anything up and they were caught but we're still banning liquids on planes for who knows how long (which itself is pretty useless but that's a different topic). All any smart terrorist group has to do now is make up a plan for using laptops as bombs and leak the info to the authorities and watch global business flying evaporate when laptops are banned for real. All without really having to do any hard work. We need to chill the hell out and start thinking instead of pissing ourselves every time 2 people with dark skin check their watches at the same time.
Tags: grommes, schneier, terrorism, terrorists, airlines