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Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

(www.nytimes.com)
623 points franzb | 1 comments | 14 Nov 15 00:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.27s | source
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po1nter ◴[14 Nov 15 00:34 UTC] No.10563599[source]▶
According to iTele there are now 118 dead.

Edit: Now it's up to 140. What a sad day :(

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toyg ◴[14 Nov 15 00:42 UTC] No.10563630[source]▶
Reworded to avoid offence (hopefully): deaths are not irrelevant, but their exact precise number is irrelevant. What matters is the scale of the security failure, compounded by the fact that they suffered a similar one less than a year ago and they were currently on high-alert (because they've only just started bombing Syria).

The knowledge that a network could carry out such a widespread and well-coordinated attack without being preempted, in a situation of maximum alert, will heavy on the minds of any French citizen regardless of whether victims were 118 or 119. Basically, the French security system has been revealed as completely ineffective. That is a huge problem.

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1. Asbostos ◴[14 Nov 15 02:49 UTC] No.10564190[source]▶
They already failed to prevent 600 common murders each year. You could call that completely ineffective or you could call it diminishing returns on investment in security. You can't prevent all of them without an unacceptable number of false positives or harsh restrictions on freedom.

Anyone who's upset by this and doesn't have a personal connection to the victims is not being rational. They should be upset by all other killings - the vast majority which don't get into the international news, let along HN. Those are far more prevalent, and perhaps easier to prevent because they're done by amatures.