I too think measurements like that are "fair", it is one of THE events in the US, so it makes sense to take special precautions.
That being said, the NFL should pay for this 100%. They should also pay for their stadiums (not threaten local fans / politicians they will move if not being financially supported), and frankly they should pay for any security measures during any NFL games.
The government paying for it is nothing but a quite heavy subsidy they don't need. It's the same though with any big sports league around the world where police / government is handling such affairs and the league is not paying for it.
I have to agree. It's pretty disgusting how the owners threaten cities until they get a new hundreds million dollars stadium, and how the NFL, MLB, and other leagues are complacent in this.
But what's worse, far worse, is how the fans have no problem with their own governments being fleeced. Their tax dollars are used to build the lavish stadiums and then they're expected to pay exorbitant amounts just to go see a game.
The Roman government at least paid for the bread and circuses, right? They didn't ask the populace to pay for the right to pay for circus season tickets ...
The role of government is to govern it's citizens. Major social events should be assisted by the government, in my opinion - if that's what people want to congregate to do, they should be able to do so safely. You'll often see this in smaller-scale events in the form of a few police officers thrown nearby to keep tabs on things.
The NFL could handle a few less sweetheart deals in other areas though, for sure.
To be clear, the bombing of the Super Bowl would be both a symbolic and a devastating coup for a terrorist. It's perfectly pragmatically reasonable for the law enforcement agencies to take special precautions. What those are, I decline to comment through ignorance: but precautions are exactly what I'd like to see.
Large scale responses to purely imagined nightmares do not come without consequences to civility and society. On the contrary, it elicits a response to something that will probably not happen as if it actually already occurred!
The purpose of terrorism is to elicit this exact response. When we have the same reaction whether they show up or not, their goals are met without any effort or risk on their part!
Extraordinary success. They've gotten all they asked for and didn't have to lift a finger. Good job for them!
>The purpose of terrorism is to elicit this exact response.
I don't buy this argument. Sure, you defeat your enemy in war by either destroying his legions or sapping his will to fight, but the last thing that you want him to do is take defensive positions that will hamper your attacks while being minimally invasive to his productivity and happiness.
Now, if fear causes your opponent to take self-defeating measures, like ones that severely hamper economic activity or suppress individual freedom, that's a different story. It comes down to what the specific measures are.
If I am amassing political power by putting people in fear of say, the United States, I ought to depict the US as a bunch of people to be feared.
So I show the political leaders saying that they want to kill us and I get more power. I show all the repressive state tactics of the Americans on their own people, I get more power. "Look", I say "Even at their sports games, the evil Americans treat their own citizens like they are in a prison!"
Make no mistake, much of this is puppetry in the same way that the cold war, or terrorism, or the reds etc was used as a mechanism to gain political power in the US.
Extreme things like this give an assist to facilitate a foreign orchestration of political attacks on the other (in this case, the US) and help them consolidate power. It's geopolitically and intrapolitically counter-productive --- well that is unless you are trying to control people through the forced-hand of FUD and not their actual consent.
If this is still hard, think of WW2. It was justified historically because of how Germans treated the Jews. Everyone is on board with the presumed necessary large scale destruction of Europe because of the holocaust. It was the internal horrific politics of the Nazis on people they considered foreigners which justify this.
If you want your people on board to what they think is a good, justifiable moral war, depicting your enemy as horrific and anti-freedom is a great effective way to do this. This only has to be true in the minds of the people you need to persuade - not objectively true in any sense.
These tactics enfold hawkism and make a mockery of diplomacy and civility. What kind of world do you want?
One where terrorism campaigns are a smashing success for winning local support or one where they don't actually work so people stop doing them?
>If this is still hard, think of WW2. It was justified historically because of how Germans treated the Jews. Everyone is on board with the presumed necessary large scale destruction of Europe because of the holocaust. It was the internal horrific politics of the Nazis on people they considered foreigners which justify this.
This is just not true. The plight of the Jews was not a major factor in the United States entering the war, or in the war at all for that matter. The US entered in response to a direct attack, though we could say that that was just the tipping point that escalated America's involvement to outright war. The underlying factors were the defense of allied democracies, and particularly the fear of a hostile international order where America would stand alone against the massive totalitarian regimes in Germany, Russia, and Japan, who likely would have controlled the rest of the world (and thus people and resources, and thus industrial capacity, and thus military might) between them. As for how we look back at it, Lincoln's formulation for the Civil War could apply just as well:
[...]that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
I referred to it as historically. I did not claim that the 1945 policies justified a 1941 entry.
Unlike with say Desert Storm, the Spanish American War, Vietnam, Iraq round 2, Afghanistan, or the Korean War, nobody I've seen argues in hindsight that we should have stayed out of the European theater in WW2.
>Make no mistake, much of this is puppetry in the same way that the cold war, or terrorism, or the reds etc was used as a mechanism to gain political power in the US.
It turns out that protecting people from their enemies is (sometimes) good politics. It's very much a desired quality of a democracy, that politicians pursuing their own self-interests will be driven to pursue the interests of the people. Unfortunately, it can also work when the enemies are imagined or exaggerated. Again, we can only look to the particular circumstances for the answer. I take strong issue with your particular implication that the Cold War threat from the Soviet Union was in any sense overstated. If anything, McCarthy was more right about Soviet infiltration than he was ever given credit for until recently. That doesn't justify blacklists and the horrifying HUAC sessions; those are the self-defeating measures I was talking about.
>So I show the political leaders saying that they want to kill us and I get more power. I show all the repressive state tactics of the Americans on their own people, I get more power. "Look", I say "Even at their sports games, the evil Americans treat their own citizens like they are in a prison!"
There's a lot of clever propaganda against the US, but I can't imagine this being a big winner. And anyway, the ability of demagogues to twist our actions for their propaganda purposes cannot be an overriding consideration. The US is very rich and very powerful, so people will hate us no matter what we do. And if they can't find any facts to base it on, they'll just make some up. Defending 50,000 people's lives from an attack has to be the primary consideration.
Military protection is the primary quality of feudalism, not democracy.
The cold war threat from the soviet union was factually incorrect and had many theories like the domino theory which are irrefutably wrong. It was more about placing neoclassical economics as the only framework to think about markets. And if you don't know what I'm talking about it's because it was a huge success.
And if you don't think anti American propaganda is what created groups like ISIL, I strongly advise you to do a very small bit of research just about anywhere - Wikipedia is probably fine. Heck, even conservapedia might be OK here.
And finally, there's thousands of attack vectors daily. You have the subway system, theme parks, universities, tourist attractions, busy intersections, elementary schools, transport hubs, parades, celebrity at the local book store, water towers, shopping malls during the holidays, festivals, sporting events, music concerts...
The probability of terrorism is very likely p < 0.001. More people will die traveling to and from the events by many orders of magnitude.
Just like how you'll stop mass shootings is when you stop making the shooters celebrities, you'll stop terrorism when the entire world stops reacting in batshit crazy ways to it.
>The purpose of terrorism is to elicit this exact response.<
I agree with this statement...
>bombing of the Super Bowl would be both a symbolic and a devastating coup for a terrorist.<
I agree with this statement...
>precautions are exactly what I'd like to see.<
I agree with this statement...
Precautions...what other reasonable option is there?
Terrorism's modus operandi is the disruption of an enemy's "comfort zone"....if you don't want your zone disrupted, for whatever reason you are forced to do what you can to prevent it from happening...
"Terrorists" are viewed as extremists...unwilling to work through conventional societal means to effect change, or achieve an end...they lack the consensus necessary to coalesce majority opinion...they act, non-the-less, in brutal ways...
Their willingness to act brutally, and kill innocents, ultimately makes putting a bounty their heads perfectly acceptable...
Surveillance has been around for years...there are good and bad aspects, the acceptable and the unacceptable...this is being sorted out globally, not just in the U.S....
I think that the point of terrorism is fear itself - hence the name terrorism.
If they've gotten the population to behave in a fearful manner, they've accomplished their goals, regardless of economic impact, loss of life, etc. The whole point is to elicit an emotional response and establish (psychological) dominance.
I don't necessarily think that prudent security measures are a bad thing, but some aspects of post 9/11 security like the "see something, say something" program or the security theater at airports are absolutely playing into the terrorist's hands. Good security is generally invisible.
That no one should criticize or make fun of islam seems to be one thing, if you look at the targets they have gone after. I assume they also want The West not to interfere when they create a space for themselves by killing and/or displacing other peoples in the Middle East.
They demand the removal of Western influences from their society, the removal of current governments in the Middle East (and elsewhere), and the establishment of an expansionist caliphate with Sharia law in their place. Terrorism is not their goal, it is their method.
Look, I'm not trying to say that we have to turn into a police state. Far from it. But it's within reason to increase security at a major symbolic event with thousands of people.
Agreed 100%. But I don't know, and I'm betting you don't either - how much surveillance information has been fed from the Three Letter Agencies through backdoor measures to ensure that things have worked fine.
I'm all for being against security theater and police states. I'm not an anarchist though: I believe security forces have a valid place in society. My basic question is: "How much of the hoopla being put in place for Super Bowl 50 is reasonably lawful, useful, and coherent with the American tradition of liberty". Because I'm quite prepared to bet that a non-zero amount is, as well as a non-zero amount isn't.
A stroke well put by. But what if you are in elephant country, and you have both repellent and a tasty elephant snack - yet no elephants showed up. Perhaps it works? Or perhaps they are down the valley having a party. Hard to say more without fundamental knowledge. :-)
To paraphrase nassim taleb, the turkey thought his evaluation of risk was perfectly accurate, and history confirmed this notion. until thanksgiving morning.
I agree with you in regard to this (or similar) event.
I think the larger question is does this stuff really ever get turned off after the game? As the article notes, many of the surveillance techniques and such were in place well before the Super Bowl event: license plate readers, cameras, etc. The real issue isn't what happens during a high profile event, but how much of this is really just the normal course of governing... and why it needs to be that way.
I think it reveals a more fundamental problem in our society: a tolerance for unnecessary intrusion by those with the power to disrupt our lives.
Nobody has a problem with security at or around the super bowl.
Where people have a problem is in the use of surveillance that's both very invasive and very ineffective in actually stopping terrorist attacks. Dragnet surveillance of internet packets fall into that category.
So, interesting question that I don't have an answer to (or position on).
Suppose we say, look: no surveillance of packets without a warrant or due process. Fine and dandy. The FBI comes to a judge and says, hey - we have this major event which we consider to be a super high risk for an attack. We'd like to run a dragnet on the location for electronic surveillance for a month prior to try and detect attackers. No exemptions; they all go into a graph database and compared against known patterns and known malicious datapoints. After the event is over and the crowd has dispersed, we'll tear down the surveillance infrastructure and go home.
What do you think the judge should say...
(Let's say the tech is freaky effective: can isolate attackers 90% of the time. Does that change your answer? How come?)
I don't have an answer to the above question. I can argue both sides of the debate, I think. :-)
I think the judge should evaluate, with the best available knowledge, the degree to which this approach is likely to be effective, and weigh that against the invasion of privacy it entails.
>Let's say the tech is freaky effective: can isolate attackers 90% of the time. Does that change your answer? How come?
Clearly, he should say yes. My entire argument stems from the fact that the most credible sources place the probability in the neighborhood of zero.
I would argue that from a civil liberties standpoint, the efficacy really doesn't matter, the intrusion onto privacy from such a technology is so great that it essentially grants a total awareness by the FBI into all the citizen's lives as they pursue their 'life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness'. And, if the surveillance is more effective, the ability to control harmless behaviour is more, and thus the infringement is worse.
I think the counter-argument (in this specific case) is that it's geographically restricted, which I think is fair from the standpoint of civil liberties. Does your example posit global dragnet surveillance, or are we still working within the frame of the superbowl exemplar?
In the superbowl exemplar, you've determined to have near-total visibility on a large (200K?) number of people (assuming 75K going to the stadium, roughly 3x that in the general region). Many of whom are not going to be involved; they are just passing by on their private business. Why should the government inquire deeply into their private lives without a specific warrant (as opposed to a general warrant)? It strains the bounds of credibility that a specific warrant can apply to hundreds of thousands of people.
However, if we set aside the idea of privacy as a civil liberty to be protected, and assume that the greatest good would be to stop a terrorist attack, I think that we would be justified in
It won't even take an actual attack to provoke an extreme response.
Imagine, for example, a troublemaker group putting together a fleet of 100+ consumer-grade drones with empty spray cans attached and painted as to provide the illusion of a chemical or biological attack. What does security do? Ignore it all, or shut the place down? I don't see an intermediate response happening.
Or, imagine the same thing being used as a diversion to a real attack elsewhere. Waiting within viewing range of the exits, for example.
In situations like this, I think I'd prefer that the majority of security be covert, mixing in the crowds.
It's ridiculous and disgusting. Spending all this public money on a private event. Shoving the homeless problem under the rug to put on a pretty face for all the visitors.
Everyone knows that the terrorists will detonate a nuclear bomb at the Super Bowl when it's in Denver. [1] In all seriousness, if event security is as lax as the TSA is at airports, what chance do they have of stopping it? Intercepting the cell traffic of those who are at the game will likely be too late. If they don't have credible intelligence beforehand, it's still going to be disasterous.
I had totally forgotten that the movie and book were different. You're remembering the movie correctly and I was remembering the book (which I read several times before the movie came out).
That being said, the NFL should pay for this 100%. They should also pay for their stadiums (not threaten local fans / politicians they will move if not being financially supported), and frankly they should pay for any security measures during any NFL games.
The government paying for it is nothing but a quite heavy subsidy they don't need. It's the same though with any big sports league around the world where police / government is handling such affairs and the league is not paying for it.