What about finding out your home address is on a list?
I really wouldn’t expect the US Army to roll into a foreign country because some assholes threatened me. Hell, if TV is to be believed :), the local police won’t generally act against someone merely based on a threat. And I’m a lot more likely to be in actual danger if someone within my area code threatens me than if I’m threatened by ISIS.
In the complete absence of any actual attacks having occurred, the actual level of risk is not well defined. I’m not saying it’s not higher, nor am I discounting the risk as totally insignificant, but based on historical data the risk of any US citizen, on US soil, dying in a terrorist action is nowhere near the risk of dying in an auto accident.
I was reading, in the most recent issue of the Atlantic, an article explaining that America is more secure than ever, and Americans are four times as likely to drown in their own bath as to die in a terrorist attack. Terrorism is not the public health threat we should be spending hundreds of billions of dollars on.
Agreed, to a point. I have little doubt that some effort is being made by the authorities to identify the source of the threat by the “Islamic State Hacking Division” and I would not be surprised if some discreet added security were being provided to the personnel identified as possible targets and their familes, and that’s all perfectly reasonable.
One would think, though: the language of the announcement strongly suggests that they indeed have no practical means of carrying it out, except to perhaps incite some random nutjob into doing their dirty work for them. Seems most likely that the threat itself is the end rather than the means, and judging from this thread the tactic has been at least marginally successful.
On the other hand, the first Gulf War cost 3.5% of that and only 146 killed, so there’s something to be said for a war run by someone who knows what they’re doing.
The sequel is always ‘bigger’ then the original.
I definitely think we should jeopardize the lives of tens of thousands of our soldiers to start a ground campaign that may or not protect 100 soldiers from a threat that may or may not be real.
Well, to be fair, I am pretty sure that all the people who are advocating this idiotic course of action today would also have advocated it yesterday, before ever hearing of this particular provocation.
I am disgusted by the irresponsibility of the US media here. Although I think the risk that anyone will suffer harm as a result of this list being on the Internet is thankfully small, it is surely orders of magnitude greater than it would have been if Newsweek could have restrained itself from pointing out that it is out there for the Googling. Way to sell a couple thousand extra copies, guys.:mad:
So let me get this straight, some folks who openly don’t like the USA posted the names and addresses of some miltary people. And I’m supposed tobe concerned? Balls.
I have access to a bit of software which I use for work. It’s an investigative tool. You give me a license plate number, a VIN, a name and town of residence, basically very little information at all, and within a few minutes (like 5) I can get you names, all previous addresses for at least the past 10 years, birthdates, SSNs, family members and their associated information, what kinds of cars they drive… If I wanted to, I could EASILY and within a day or two, identify 100 people whom I would be 99.99% certain are military. No need for hacking a government computer system, just accessing a single database with an unbelievable gob of public record information. What the ISIS cats have done doesn’t amount to anything. Take a walk around any town with a military base. The Soldiers are easily spotted, and their families tend to stand out as well. If you’re predisposed to digging on ISIS, you don’t need their list–you just need your eyes.
I’d be a bit more concerned if they could make such a list of names of soldiers, their ranks, military specialties, past and present deployment history, and sort them in descending order of importance to any given hostile theater. THAT’D be a problem.