Is speculating about the nature of future terrorist attacks harmful?

Great Debates
1

There are several threads floating around the board right devoted to speculating the nature of future terrorist attacks.

Invariably, someone will pop us and say “Hey, we should stop discussing this because we are just giving them ideas”. A reference to “loose lips sink ships” usually follows.

Is it harmful to participate in this kind of speculaltion. Is there a reasonable chance that by dreaming up terrorist scenarios are helping out the terrorist?

I say no. First off, almost all of us are just wildly speculating. We have no real background for our speculation, nor are we seriously investigating and working out the logistics of potential terrorist attacks (e.g. Bob at the Hoover dam told me that if you put a charge here and here the thing will collapse). The idea isn’t the hard part- it is finding out exactly how to carry out that idea.

Secondly, the chance that terrorists read the 'dope is next to nothing. The Internet is vast, and the 'dope is but a small part of it. In my life I have met only one other person that has ever heard of the SDMB. The chances of a terrorist knowing about this site is pretty small- the chances of them devoting their time reading every thread relevent to terrorism (an act that could take a couple hours on a daily basis) are even smaller.

Finally, I propose that our speculation actaully does good. If we could have forseen that passenger planes could be used as flying bombs, then we could figure out how to plan and react to that scenario. One of the hardest things about the Sept. 11 attacks was that we had never seriously considered that possibility. If we had, a lot of things would have happened differently (such as more passenger revolts on the planes). By thinking about and discussing less obvious attack scenerios we alert ourselves to our current weaknesses and put us in a position to correct them.

What do you all think?

2

And hey, maybe if they do read the SDMB, they’ll stop, because I think terrorism comes from ignorance.

:wink:
But seriously, the only risk we run is maybe, to start ourselves panicking…

3

I’ve been going through this in another forum and I agree with your last point. The terrorists probably have ideas we haven’t even thought of yet because they’re so obvious and simple. Their main objective are plans which no one would think of and no one is expecting, so by publicizing these possibilities we’re reducing their chances for success.

It’s like you leaving your keys in the car and the door unlocked at night. Eventually someone is probably going to steal your car, but if someone goes on TV and says “Even Sven keeps his keys in his car and the door unlocked” it alerts every car thief in the area, but it will also lead you to take out the keys and lock the car. By the time they get their the opportunity has been erased.

4

And I think that we may have possibly prevented something from happening already by publicizing credible information that may have caused some plans to be put on hold or disregarded. I’m hoping that is the case being that I live in California where the bridges are supposedly potential targets.

But I think crying wolf, intentional or not, has the expected result of people lowering their guard and taking these “credible threats” far less seriously. Blanket statements like “Well, something is going to happen soon” will only be effective so many times.

Also, false alarms can further tax an already over-burdoned system. A bunch of sidetracked police officers could leave a wide window of opportunity in an unrealized area. Just a thought.