Thursday, March 29, 2012

How we have inflicted Terrorism on ourselves:

Bruce Schneier has just published (in his blog) the conclusion of his dialog with Kip Hawley about the "value" of the TSA. This little essay is marvelous, and  I encourage you to read it.

Here's one of Schneier's chilling paragraphs. I'm quoting without permission, and I hope he doesn't mind:

The goal of terrorism is not to crash planes, or even to kill people; the goal of terrorism is to cause terror. Liquid bombs, PETN, planes as missiles: these are all tactics designed to cause terror by killing innocents. But terrorists can only do so much. They cannot take away our freedoms. They cannot reduce our liberties. They cannot, by themselves, cause that much terror. It’s our reaction to terrorism that determines whether or not their actions are ultimately successful. That we allow governments to do these things to us—to effectively do the terrorists’ job for them—is the greatest harm of all.

No comments: