U.S. Port Security and Proxies
My twelfth essay for Wired.com is about U.S. port security, and more generally about trust and proxies:
Pull aside the rhetoric, and this is everyone’s point. There are those who don’t trust the Bush administration and believe its motivations are political. There are those who don’t trust the UAE because of its terrorist ties—two of the 9/11 terrorists and some of the funding for the attack came out of that country—and those who don’t trust it because of racial prejudices. There are those who don’t trust security at our nation’s ports generally and see this as just another example of the problem.
The solution is openness. The Bush administration needs to better explain how port security works, and the decision process by which the sale of P&O was approved. If this deal doesn’t compromise security, voters—at least the particular lawmakers we trust—need to understand that.
Regardless of the outcome of the Dubai deal, we need more transparency in how our government approaches counter-terrorism in general. Secrecy simply isn’t serving our nation well in this case. It’s not making us safer, and it’s properly reducing faith in our government.
Proxies are a natural outgrowth of society, an inevitable byproduct of specialization. But our proxies are not us and they have different motivations—they simply won’t make the same security decisions as we would. Whether a king is hiring mercenaries, an organization is hiring a network security company or a person is asking some guy to watch his bags while he gets a drink of water, successful security proxies are based on trust. And when it comes to government, trust comes through transparency and openness.
Razor • February 23, 2006 7:56 AM
I agree with the proxy analogy, however I don’t agree with the part where the government should explain the security measures they take to protect the American public. It’s like broadcasting your firewall settings to the world! I understand the trust issue and I agree that that most people would be nervous to have a foreigner watch their home, however, where do you draw the line when it comes to trust? The Oklahoma City bombing was performed by one of our own. We have Americans in our communities who think that burning a flag is part of their freedom of expression. We buy billions of dollars worth of products made in China, the last Communist stronghold left in the world. As mentioned in your article, most of what we do is all done by proxy, and I’m glad it is. The American public can’t be trusted to make their own decisions. We’re talking about a society that places more value on who won on American Idol, who’s marrying Agelina Jollie or who’s going to the Super Bowl than on the education of their children. We’re talking about a society who learns world politics thru the eyes of the media and what they see on TV and all of a sudden, they are experts in the matter. Some of the people have never left their home state or even their city. Does that sound like someone qualified to make decisions on world politics or homeland security? As far as I’m concerned, they don’t need to know how the government is protecting them as long as they can get up every day and go about their lives knowing that they are safe and that once in a while, they pay their respects to the flag that represents the people who keep them safe. Let the people they elected take care of their dirty work, by proxy. I’m not a radical fundamentalist or a disgruntled person, I’m just an American that’s tired of people blaming the government for everything that goes wrong and don’t take responsibility for their own actions.