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Journal perfessor multigeek's Journal: A Look at "Anti-Terrorism" Policy 8

I just came across a good overview on Wired on just what all the post- 9/11 "security" measures look like from a rational perspective. I'm pasting it in below to route around the risk of Wired taking it off line.

I've included my comments in italics and below.
And, hey, Mr. Schneier, if you're upset about this unauthorized reproduction, drop me a line and tell me to what your fee is for low-traffic reproductions of your work.

Wired: Issue 12.03 - March 2004
America's Flimsy Fortress
All the money spent on security since 9/11 has done little to make us safer.

By Bruce Schneier

Every day, some 82,000 foreign visitors set foot in the US with a visa, and since early this year, most of them have been fingerprinted and photographed in the name of security. But despite the money spent, the inconveniences suffered, and the international ill will caused, these new measures, like most instituted in the wake of September 11, are mostly ineffectual.

Terrorist attacks are very rare. So rare, in fact, that the odds of being the victim of one in an industrialized country are almost nonexistent. And most attacks affect only a few people. The events of September 11 were a statistical anomaly. Even counting the toll they took, 2,978 people in the US died from terrorism in 2001. That same year, 157,400 Americans died of lung cancer, 42,116 in road accidents, and 3,454 from malnutrition.
Think of what those numbers look like if we use a twenty year average. In that case terrorism is less of a threat to American citizens then being hit by lightning. The average American is more likely to win the lottery then to die in a terrorist attack.

One problem with securing the nation is the scope of the threat. Terrorists can attack airplanes, sports stadiums, water reservoirs, power plants, chemical storage facilities - the possibilities are endless. Securing the air transportation system isn't much of a solution, because countermeasures that aren't comprehensive are of limited value: If you want to defend targets, you have to defend them all. Protect half the reservoirs and the others will still be at risk. Protect all of them, and the sports stadiums are still vulnerable.
And keep in mind that every location secured becomes one that is more expensive to build, harder to maintain, and more difficult to upgrade.

Even defending against a specific threat is very difficult. Security is only as strong as its weakest link; three locks on the front door do little good if the back door is open. Likewise, the air transportation system is only as secure as the country's most insecure airport, because once someone passes through security at one location, they don't have to do so at another. Los Angeles International Airport is planning a redesign partly for security reasons, but the weakest-link principle posits that a terrorist could simply drive to San Diego and catch a commuter flight to LAX.
And remember, we have yet to even make a serious start on securing our ports or other shipping.

Many of the security measures we encounter on a daily basis aim [to] pinpoint the bad guys by treating everyone as a suspect. The Department of Homeland Security counts on technology to come to our rescue: databases to track suspected terrorists, facial recognition to spot them in airports, artificial intelligence to anticipate plots before they unfold. But that creates a problem similar to the one you see when airport security screeners waste their time frisking false alarms. Terrorists are so rare that any individual lead is almost certainly a false one. So billions of dollars are wasted with no assurance that any terrorist will be caught. When an airport screener confiscates a pocketknife from an innocent person, security has failed.

The only effective way to deal with terrorists is through old-fashioned police and intelligence work - discovering plans before they're implemented and then going after the plotters themselves. Every arrest of an al Qaeda member weakens the organization. Every country that's unwilling to harbor such individuals interferes with its operation. Of course, we still need some perimeter defenses around airports and government buildings. But more damage was done to al Qaeda by disrupting its funding and communications than by all the guards and ID checks in the US combined.

Security always involves compromises. As a society we can have as much protection as we want, as long as we're willing to sacrifice the money, time, convenience, and liberties to get it. Unfortunately, most of the government's measures are bad trade-offs: They require significant sacrifices without providing much additional safety in return. And there's far too much "security theater" - ways of making people feel safer without actually improving anything.

Airport screening isn't completely ineffective, and there may be ways to do it better. But the US needs to get smarter about its security trade-offs. Our money would be better spent tracking down terrorists abroad than on enforcing intrusive measures at home. Instead, guards at borders and airports should be encouraged to rely more on their instincts than on the technology they're using. With all the technology at our disposal, Fortress America may look impressive, but building it won't make anyone safer.
We should keep in mind that an old truism is no longer true. When trained in microexpressions and working in pairs, people actually now can do an effective job of discerning much suspicious behavior. But that requires paying security personnel well, treating them with respect, and giving them serious training *before* putting them in critical jobs. It also, on the other hand, means demanding that they be alert, accountable, and respectful of the people they encounter. Just ask Penn Jillette about what happens otherwise.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bruce Schneier is CTO of Counterpane Internet Security and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World.

- - -End Inset - - -

I think that this piece is a good starting point. Personally, I would recommend that anybody who intends to have an opinion about security worth treating with respect pick up a copy of Dale Brown's Hammerheads for a good capsule overview of a serious border security system all wrapped up in a Clancyesque thriller.
Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals gives a solid grounding in strategy and tactics as seen from the other side, as do (if one chooses to read them that way) Edward Abbey's Monkeywrench Gang and Dave Foreman's Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching.
Le Carre's Little Drummer Girl while now a bit dated, still neatly lays out some of the parts of how to stop terrorism at the command level.
And, let's face it, every meeting of 2600 has enough talented social engineers to sneak past just about every public venue security system ever made.

Anybody with the balls, the time and the right few volumes from Loompanics could show the Department of Homeland Defense for the bumbling busybodies that they are. ID checks and infringements on liberties may make the whackjobs in Washington and their supporters feel like big men but it's not what's good for America. Not when Hoover tried it, not now, not ever.

Some wingnut could build, for example, a potato cannon, any time they felt like it that would have the range and oomph to do very bad things. You gonna tell me that they watch the Home Depot closely enough to prevent it? You think that's trivial? Give some more serious thought to the possible loads of such a device and what happens if it is driven by a Mindstorms system controlled by 802.11g and then see if you're still laughing.
The explosive charges in a few dozen passenger car airbags add up to enough primer to equip a terrorist for years.

I could keep going but we all should know this already.
"Homeland Defense" is bullshit. Multibillion dollar bullshit that holds the Constitution in contempt and doesn't do a hundredth the job it would have to to make us "safe" from a threat that is less danger to most Americans then slippery bathroom tile.

You want to feed me some line about my not understanding that "it's bad out there in the real world beyond our shores"?
Then try to keep in mind that I've already lived through sitting by the television for days wondering if my father was dead in some alley halfway across the world. I have done my fucking time as an American overseas walking past burnt out storefronts as the crowds chanted and marched.
Blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, I've really done that and gotten all sorts of other very real personal experience. So yeah, I know what the threats are. Better than most.

And I'm tellin ya that this is a shellgame. A scam pointed mostly at Americans that provides less real security then a hundred thousand free classes in Arabic and French would.

You want security? Real security? Then we'ld better get serious about reversing course, fixing our rep and our international relations, and fucking well permeating the entire fucking globe with wandering Americans with local residences and solid language and cultural skills.
Fifty thousand Americans living so that they shop in the local bazaars of the developing world, sleep with the locals, and do business with the local manufacturers would do more to prevent future 9/11s then all the security checks our airports could ever fit.
As we contemplate taking a hand in the Sudan and increase our presence in Haiti, we would do well to keep that in mind.
A smart administration would head in looking for excuses to leave a few thousand civilians behind. Maybe pass a law that forgives the student debt of any American who spends three years overseas in any location where the median income in the surrounding ten miles is under two thousand dollars a year.

You want to make our airplanes safe from boxcutter wielding scum? Then follow the lead of Stanley Milgram and figure out what it takes to train the next generation of Americans to not knuckle under when threatened.

Spying on and infringing the liberties of Americans is the worst way to fight terrorism and techofixes run a clear second. Terrorism is fought human to human with brave citizens, strong intelligence gathering, and rational, honorable evenly applied givernment action.

Rustin
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A Look at "Anti-Terrorism" Policy

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  • Questions (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Should we liberate countries that are enslaved by dictators to French, German and Russian oil contracts and risk upsetting our relations over their continued abeyance to colonial aspiration?
    Or should we liberate the countries and give them a chance at political and economic self-determination?

    And exactly what civil liberties have you lost since 9/11?

    500 words. Typed. Double-spaced.
    Due by Monday.
    • Freedom from unreasonable search? I'm not talking about airport searches, though some people have been unreasonably searched there too (see previous about Jillette, stories about women being groped, etc), I'm talking about databases of information about me being sifted and sorted and collected. To date, no one has harassed me. But it wouldn't take too many searches of old usenet stuff to get law enforcement curious about whether I still do the same things I talked freely about doing back in the day. Whi
  • Explanation for the Penn Jillette reference?

    Good luck getting college kids into the hinterlands. They want to graduate in May, and be well on their way to upper middle class by August.

    • Penn got harassed [pennandteller.com] and made something of a deal of it at the time.
      • Somehow missed that one when it made the rounds. But I'm not surprised. Welcome to the world of the working slob Mr. Jillette.
        • I think his main point was that it was ridiculous that the only reason anyone took him seriously (and offered him the VIP pass) was his celebrity, and he was outraged that it would happen to anyone. But maybe I'm reading into it because I think highly of Mr J.
    • Good luck getting college kids into the hinterlands. They want to graduate in May, and be well on their way to upper middle class by August.
      Well, actually, I was trying to figure out the cheapest way to get slackers to move overseas. Back in the Sixties and Seventies when the crowds of drugged-out, wierded out, too-broke-to-get-home, or just mellowed kids were a common sight in places from India to Colombia, sneaking in a few anti-terrorist agenst would have been child's play. So, beyond the issue of "wha
  • That's the second time in a week that Dale Brown has come up [1], maybe it's time to re-read some of his books. I loved Hammerheads, and the way he drove home the lesson that if you really want to lock down a border, there's a non-negotiable price you pay. I also agree on the peace corps thing, especially the "sleep with the locals" bit is guaranteed to get lots of takers. Main problem would be to screen out the fakers. You don't want to send out a bunch of wanna-be opium smugglers or rabid rednecks, we'll

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