Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts

It took hundreds of police and probably millions of dollars to catch a teenager who didn't even bother to leave the area or go into hiding - and even TWEETED after the event.<p>If we were attacked by real, organized terrorists, we are screwed.<p>I really do not get all the celebration and back-patting, it's disturbing.<p>Oh and while this huge distraction was going on - no background checks for guns, the most basic bill failed.<p>But several senators were quick to voice their desire for no miranda rights.

Stupid and tone deaf.<p>These guys filled hospitals with people who had their limbs blown off. And they shot cops willy nilly. The fact that only a few people are dead is small comfort. These were some of the most dangerous people in the entire country, comparing their danger to the danger of industry or automobile transit is just silly. Those are very different problems with very different solutions.

As unfeeling as his statement might sound, he's entirely correct. I told a family member today that the saddest thing about this whole Boston incident isn't the (still very sad and senseless) loss of life and limb, but that it's undoubtedly going to be used as an excuse to further degrade civil rights nationwide in the coming years, to continue to justify state-sponsored human suffering like Guantanamo, and to further enforce money-wasting, civil-rights-violating theater like the TSA... all while <i>real</i> threats to life like car accidents and disease get left behind.

He seems to make the mistake of comparing damage done to response instead of potential damage done to response.<p>The two suspects, after settings off anti-personnel bombs in a civilian area, executed a police officer, then got into a firefight with automatic weapons, grenades, and more anti-personnel bombs.<p>They demonstrated the means and the lack of conscience to do a LOT of damage in an urban area. A lot more than the average day in greater Boston's automotive death toll and as such were met with a massive response to prevent that possible outcome.

&#62;4 people killed in a week is not a lot compared with the background level of deaths in the US. It's not as many as in the Texas explosion. Car accidents in the US kill around 100 people a day, and surely grievously injure hundreds more.<p>============================<p>Difference being of course, one was a deliberate attack on human life, and the other a very _very_ unfortunate accident.<p>Stupid comparison to make for the sake of pushing his agenda of "free software". I expected more from someone so smart.

And how do you suppose this broad-brush lockdown could have been avoided? The first ideas that come to my mind involve better surveillance and other privacy intrusions.<p>In fact, it's pretty unavoidable and perhaps even desirable that government have access to a fine level of information which could be used for utter tyranny. So the energies spent worrying about or averting such threats had best be focused on controlling what government will actually do with the information it has.<p><a href="http://www.dbms2.com/2010/04/04/privacy-liberty-continued/" rel="nofollow">http://www.dbms2.com/2010/04/04/privacy-liberty-continued/</a> on the subject is 3 years old, but I think it still holds up pretty well.

Even though there is some rather sharp back and forth here, I think it's awesome that this discussion is happening. The points on both sides are really good.<p>Personally, I don't think this is purely emotional elation. I live in Boston, the bombing happened down the street from me. I think it's important to point out that the disruption here should not just be measured in terms of number of dead or injured. It's the threat to the way we are used to living our life every day, and the perceived threat to the future way we will live our life.<p>This week, I have..<p>* Closed down my office because I was afraid for the safety of my employees * Heard from one of my best friends that his former colleague got killed on-duty (Sean Collier) * Listen to my friend express fear because she is planning to take a train to the waterfront for dinner * Had my mom show up out of nowhere to meet me at the airport because she heard there wasn't a way to get into the city<p>I didn't lose my life. My friends didn't either. I have nothing to complain about. But I want to make the point that there isn't an easy metric to put around the way life has ground to a halt here over the past week (at least none that I know of). We all experienced a type of stress that is hard to capture in numbers. And, we're happy to get our lives back to normal.

This is what Stallman wrote right after the suspect was caught. My personal response is: There will always be a situation that is worse or where more people died, but that doesn't mean this isn't a very emotional and trying time for many, where the police and people of Boston were desperate to catch a person throwing explosives and shooting magazines of bullets in their city. Telling people to stay home for a few hours does not seem unreasonable in this situation. Have some decency and respect for the lives lost, and save your opinions for a more appropriate time.

Surely it's overly reductive to imply -- as he does -- that it's simply the number of deaths, or even the number of deaths and serious injuries combined that should drive our response to these events. The social significance of a truly terrorist act directed at one of the biggest annual events in the Boston area warrants some degree of extraordinary effort, not to mention the public danger of literal bomb-throwers on the loose.

Boston authorities grossly over-reacted when they were attacked by the Cartoon Network too. So I'm not surprised to see how they handled a real terrorism event. I'm just relieved that they haven't managed to kill any bystanders. I hope people apply some scrutiny to what's happened here. Two amateur terrorist/griefers shut Boston down for days, caused the police to impose a de-facto martial law type curfew. If there are any "professional" terrorists, they are paying attention and taking notes. They will leverage this kind of buffoonery and it will not be funny if they succeed.

It less of a "manhunt" and more what I can only describe as dress up. Most of the cops I saw on TV weren't doing anything. I watched a group stand around in the middle of the street. I watched another different group stand around. I watched a group dressed in full Batman-looking-black body armor hang onto the side of the civilian version of an APC and ride it around town. It honestly looked like dress up. They could have quadrupled the number of boots on the ground and it wouldn't have found him faster for that reason—most of the people weren't contributing.

Wow. I agree with RMS 100% on this point. (Should I be worried?) For all of our wonderful attributes, humans are irrational.

Never confuse actual security with the theater of security.<p>It is the latter than our country wants, or at least our politicians say we want.

How many commenters in support of this perspective were in the area and part of all this? As someone who was a short distance from the explosions during the marathon, and the focused area of the manhunt during todays lockdown, I'd expect the answer would be none. And if I'm wrong, I'm shocked at the lack of empathy, or even lack of ability to emulate empathy through simple taste and common sense. This is a really disappointing thing for me to see on HN.

"Please don't promote fear of shadows."<p>Well shit guys we should have got big balls Stallman out there to apprehend the suspect who was known to be homicidal, heavily armed, and possibly wearing an explosive device.<p>100 people die in cars everyday. That's such an irrelevant statement I still don't fully understand the point. 100 people die in cars everyday so unless a murderer's body count breaches national aggregate auto fatality statistics we shouldn't worry about it? Stallman appears to be confusing "the appropriate resource allocation to the threat of terrorism in general" with "the appropriate resource allocation to an actual active known terrorist".

What an unmitigated asshole...seriously RMS, go fuck yourself.<p>(I had something more pithy to write but I think this captures the essence better)

I didn't really hear about any responses to law enforcement entering homes. If they were sweeping the area did anyone refuse entry?<p>Also really looking forward to the knee-jerk anti 2nd ammendment lobby using another tragedy as a prop.

As terrorists, these guys sucked. The Swedish guy, even the Columbine schoolboys had a much higher body count.<p>Still, in economic cost, it was a creditable effort, not on the level of 9/11 but not bad, for two presumed amateurs to shut down Boston for a day.<p>When you do that, you're giving these guys a lot of power.<p>Imagine if London had shut down every time there were IRA attackers on the loose.<p>One comes to expect an extremist point of view from RMS, but I find myself mostly agreeing. What the victims experienced is heartbreaking, and we should honor them by catching the bad guys, and also finding ways to make ourselves more resilient.

I think it was worth it. The police reacted quickly and caught him alive. Now they can get valuable information out of him, which they couldn't do if he was killed/died from wounds.

Carmen Ortiz (Same DA who prosecuted Aaron Swartz) said that because of some public safety exemption loophole they didn't read him his maranda rights.

I wish I knew more people (AFK) who thought like this...

I've noticed this tack a lot recently (three arguments like this in 24 hours), and I'm concerned by it.<p>There seems to be an inability on the part of some people, apparently Richard Stallman included, to realize that <i>active</i> intent to harm human beings is not in the same ballpark as <i>passive</i> intent to harm human beings. They're not even playing the same sport. A fertilizer plant has a <i>chance</i> of harming someone in an accident, and while it is <i>definitely</i> wrong if those concerns go unheeded, there is not even a remote comparison to the actions of demonstrated sociopathic behavior to harm, kill, and decapitate eight-year-olds watching a marathon. There just isn't. A man waking up one morning and saying, "gee, I'm going to drop explosive devices in the middle of a fucking crowd in Boston" isn't even in the same universe as "our unstable manufacturing process exploded after an accident".<p>Let's say, for a moment, that Stallman is in effect proven right about the danger of the chemical plant, and that the chemical plant owners, say, willfully traded employee safety for money. That's wrong. However, inability to be appalled by and react accordingly to a human being intentionally killing and maiming fellow human beings using explosive devices on the streets of a populated city during a marathon, demonstrating <i>full intent to kill</i> and <i>complete disregard</i> for the free agency of children as young as 8, and blowing people's limbs off <i>on purpose</i>, is the mark of a sociopath.<p>You concern me if you present an argument to me along these lines, that we should "care more" about the fertilizer plant or auto accidents on the interstates in a day or ... whatever. I'm more and more convinced lately that the people in my life who have arguments with me like this, including Richard Stallman, are sociopaths, and I'm sorry. I'm going to make active strides to remove these people from my life, and so should you; the complete disregard of basic social empathy, the understanding of why normal human beings consider the Boston bombings a life-changing event but the chemical plant marginally less so, indicates to me a conscience that is capable of thinking unspeakable things. What else can a conscience like that justify?<p>Some people can manage being a sociopath long-term, and I think we can all name some examples in the tech industry. It's arguable a bit of sociopath can be a valuable tool for career and business building. I don't think being sociopathic is a death sentence, but it should give you pause when dealing with them, that their conscience leads to hypothetical discussions like this rather than "it's just business" types of transactions in the working world.<p>None of this commentary considers the media or law enforcement response to the Boston events, which Stallman does discuss, and I do not present an opinion on that point (I do have one, but it clouds the issue). Only the point I've discussed above.<p>EDIT: I've edited through to adjust a point I mistakenly attributed to Stallman which he really <i>didn't</i> say, but is the logical conclusion. I misread one key sentence in the e-mail that I responded to, and should have paid better attention, and I'm sorry. Thank you for bringing it to my attention; my point still stands in the edited form above, and if you've quoted the prior version, I'd appreciate a second chance at making my point. I'm not going to respond individually to those of you who have quoted the prior version, since it would waste column inches, and I hope you notice my edit and act accordingly.

I get his point, it raises an important lesson. But the lock down was fairly voluntarily throughout most of the Boston metro area, perhaps except those areas where active investigations were being conducted. People were outside in Back Bay; I walked by plenty of uniformed officers, none of which asked me to return to my home.

I think RMS raises some good points. The response is out of proportion, just as in the Chris Dorner, Randy Weaver, and Branch Davidian cases. There seems to be a mob mentality looking for a small number of suspects to blame "easily" to explain our societal problems, and then everyone's efforts are directed towards lynching those suspects, as if it will rid the world of evil. It merely kicks the can down the road, without addressing real issues.<p>Other thread: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5579687" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5579687</a>

The point that's up for debate is: Are maimings and killings that are designed to change US govt policy more important than other maimings and killings. I think the answer is yes.<p>I agree that we don't know yet if that was the aim here. I also would agree that the level of terrorist attacks the west is subject to are too small to make us change any policy at all in the way the terrorists wish.

once again Stall man says something that is a bit insensitive, a little bit crazy, but very, very true.

Stallman is a God Tier troll.<p>He is sincere. He is mostly right. (He's predicted quite a lot of the modern computing ecology). He is extreme.<p>His one post will generate many posts from polarised commenters, sometimes those threads will devolve into bitter angry flames.<p>Everyone already knows this.<p>Yet it still happens.<p>It's amazing. God Tier.

rms is rms.<p>this is not a bad thing.

@dcurtis: "Those who would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."<p>-- Benjamin Franklin

&#62; 4 people killed in a week is not a lot compared with the background level of deaths in the US<p>It's not every day that people have their legs blown off while enjoying a public social event.<p>There's an expectation of danger while driving a car. There is no expectation of danger while spectating at the Boston Marathon.<p>It's not complicated.