Letters to the Editor
prunes
Published Letters: 784
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Ralph Kramden... if that IS your real name... ;)
[Read the article: Our benevolent surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If one claims that they don't want government collecting information like this, then because of the gun laws as they exist in this country, one has to accept that these incidents are highly likely, if not inevitable.
It's not so much the laws as the fact that 'security' does not come from the government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
GovCorp(tm) databases would not have prevented the Bath massacre or OK City.
Proponents of giant spy databases expect us to believe that these kinds of security problems are actually identifiable from indifferently-collected data (not shown to be remotely true), that the detriments from false positives would not outweigh the benefits (very unlikely, most such "security" database schemes have something like 10:1 false positive:true positive ratios), and that databases will never be abused by the government for persecuting unpopular political/religious beliefs.
That whole tenuous chain of reasoning is required to POSSIBLY prevent an event so unlikely as to be statistically insignificant.
Fatal car crashes in USA, 2005: 39,189
http://www.car-accidents.com/pages/fatal-accident-statistics.html
Are you ready to have your name in the Alcohol Consumption Watchlist? Many states already swipe driver's licenses when purchasing it, and it's a far greater threat to our citizens than the most effective terrorist attacks of all time.
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Bush's initials
[Read the article: Our benevolent surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Better G.W.B. on your neck than another 9/11"
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James Tiberius Jerk
[Read the article: Our benevolent surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You think that if someone votes one way they can't have a divergent opinion on specific issues.
This from the guy who accused us all of clamoring for federal gun registration upthread.
You shake a cry because someone might hear a conservative viewpoint, maybe even a radical one, and they will abandon their core beliefs.
What the hell are you referring to? Are you sure you're posting to the right site?
Glenn is, right now, in this post and thread, articulating THE conservative viewpoint.
What "conservative" viewpoint do you think he is avoiding here?
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Faith-based systems 2
[Read the article: Our benevolent surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here's where I lack faith: I don't have any faith whatsoever in any of these profiling databases. I know enough statistics, have enough serious programming experience, and read enough of current security research to know that anyone who puts their faith in a system that passively and indifferently gathers data and expects magic 'data mining' algorithms to suddenly pop up potential shooters is crazy.
Look up ANY report on the effectiveness of the TSA program which has eaten up so much money and time to see how completely ineffective such a scheme is. Life just doesn't work that way. Your expectation of producing actionable data from a needle in a haystack is zero. I could go into detail here about Bayes' theorem and the proper application of probability theory, but let's not go too far astray.
Such security schemes are universally ineffective and spectacularly vulnerable to abuse. If your objective is to earn fractions of pennies per 1000s of data points from data-mining, that actually works, because your goal is cumulative.
But if your goal is to find the one bit of information that could prevent VA Tech, no data-mining is going to outperform proper school policies and effective law enforcement.
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Faith-based systems 2(a)
[Read the article: Our benevolent surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anyone interested in the proper application of probability theory to catching terrorists, and how this affects TIA-style data-mining programs should read this article:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/rudmin1.html
If you need a nice primer on Bayes', check out:
http://yudkowsky.net/bayes/bayes.html
And here a blogger applies bayes' theorem to judging whether such systems are better suited for catching terrorists or sweeping up political dissidents:
http://scat-he-g4.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw/blog/index.php?entry=entry060524-164934
(oh, go ahead, guess which one!)
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Ahhh, child molesters!
[Read the article: Our benevolent surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The only rhetorical boogeyman scarier than Hitler! So scary, in fact, that their mere invocation suffices to win any argument whatsoever, however far removed from child molestation it may be.
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Bush & Guns
[Read the article: Our benevolent surveillance state]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I swear I saw this on the news (briefly) after Katrina...but didn't the (Bush) gov't go around taking guns away from residents of New Orleans?
Yes.
I found quite a bit by googling "gun confiscation new orleans".
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Irrelevant!
[Read the article: Alberto Gonzales testifies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's clear that wordcounts of Clinton's dithering don't bear nearly as much on this case as the quantified waffling of Warren Harding, William Henry Harrison, or James K. Polk.
Can someone please do a phrase-count on them? That'll clear this up.
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Typo!
[Read the article: Charles Krauthammer takes rank hypocrisy to new lows]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's a big difference when you're talking about the immediate aftermath of tragedy, and I don't see any contradiction in CK's article.
Little mistake, you obviously meant to write that you DO see the bloody blatant-as-all-hell contradiction, but you just feel more comfortable ignoring it.
No need to thank me, fact-checking and erorororr-correction are things we can all pitch in on!
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Dead? No, they're good friends!
[Read the article: Gonzales' Fan Club of One]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bush and Gonzo have shared many a manly hour commiserating over how best to wield the power the people temporarily loaned them:
http://www.correntewire.com/wapo_bush_and_gonzales_deepen_friendship_by_executing_prisoners_together
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Terrorist videos?
[Read the article: Charles Krauthammer takes rank hypocrisy to new lows]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I really fail to see much connection between Cho's videos and Islamic terrorism a such.
Cho photographed himsself in poses lifted directly from the popular South Korean action movie "Vengeance trilogy" by Park Chan-wook.
Do you know what's popular on YouTube-like sites right now? Gang videos, murders, shootings and posing with corpses. Those things can be found easily for those with the stomach.
The Columbine shooters also made videos posing with their weapons and blathering on about how life treated them so unfairly.
But if you already see the Islamic terrorist boogeyman everywhere you look, you'll see it here, too.
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durrrrr
[Read the article: Charles Krauthammer takes rank hypocrisy to new lows]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]BTW why is it no one had anything horrible to say about Krauthammer when he worked for Saint Jimmy of Carter?
Was he a prominent beltway pundit back then?