Entries Tagged "cost-benefit analysis"

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More Than 10 Ways to Avoid the Next 9/11

From yesterday’s New York Times, “Ten Ways to Avoid the Next 9/11”:

If we are fortunate, we will open our newspapers this morning knowing that there have been no major terrorist attacks on American soil in nearly five years. Did we just get lucky?

The Op-Ed page asked 10 people with experience in security and counterterrorism to answer the following question: What is one major reason the United States has not suffered a major attack since 2001, and what is the one thing you would recommend the nation do in order to avoid attacks in the future?

Actually, they asked more than 10, myself included. But some of us were cut because they didn’t have enough space. This was my essay:

Despite what you see in the movies and on television, it’s actually very difficult to execute a major terrorist act. It’s hard to organize, plan, and execute an attack, and it’s all too easy to slip up and get caught. Combine that with our intelligence work tracking terrorist cells and interdicting terrorist funding, and you have a climate where major attacks are rare. In many ways, the success of 9/11 was an anomaly; there were many points where it could have failed. The main reason we haven’t seen another 9/11 is that it isn’t as easy as it looks.

Much of our counterterrorist efforts are nothing more than security theater: ineffectual measures that look good. Forget the “war on terror”; the difficulty isn’t killing or arresting the terrorists, it’s finding them. Terrorism is a law enforcement problem, and needs to be treated as such. For example, none of our post-9/11 airline security measures would have stopped the London shampoo bombers. The lesson of London is that our best defense is intelligence and investigation. Rather than spending money on airline security, or sports stadium security—measures that require us to guess the plot correctly in order to be effective—we’re better off spending money on measures that are effective regardless of the plot.

Intelligence and investigation have kept us safe from terrorism in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. If the CIA and FBI had done a better job of coordinating and sharing data in 2001, 9/11 would have been another failed attempt. Coordination has gotten better, and those agencies are better funded—but it’s still not enough. Whenever you read about the billions being spent on national ID cards or massive data mining programs or new airport security measures, think about the number of intelligence agents that the same money could buy. That’s where we’re going to see the greatest return on our security investment.

Posted on September 11, 2006 at 6:36 AM • View Comments

Random Bag Searches in Subways

Last year, New York City implemented a program of random bag searches in the subways. It was a silly idea, and I wrote about it then. Recently the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld the program. Daniel Solove wrote about the ruling:

The 2nd Circuit panel concluded that the program was “reasonable” under the 4th Amendment’s special needs doctrine. Under the special needs doctrine, if there are exceptional circumstances that make the warrant and probable cause requirements unnecessary, then the search should be analyzed in terms of whether it is “reasonable.” Reasonableness is determined by balancing privacy against the government ‘s need. The problem with the 2nd Circuit decision is that under its reasoning, nearly any search, no matter how intrusive into privacy, would be justified. This is because of the way it assesses the government’s side of the balance. When the government’s interest is preventing the detonation of a bomb on a crowded subway, with the potential of mass casualties, it is hard for anything to survive when balanced against it.

The key to the analysis should be the extent to which the search program will effectively improve subway safety. In other words, the goals of the program may be quite laudable, but nobody questions the importance of subway safety. Its weight is so hefty that little can outweigh it. The important issue is whether the search program is a sufficiently effective way of achieving those goals that it is worth the trade-off in civil liberties. On this question, unfortunately, the 2nd Circuit punts. It defers to the law enforcement officials:

That decision is best left to those with “a unique understanding of, and responsibility for, limited public resources, including a finite number of police officers.” Accordingly, we ought not conduct a “searching examination of effectiveness.” Instead, we need only determine whether the Program is “a reasonably effective means of addressing” the government interest in deterring and detecting a terrorist attack on the subway system…

Instead, plaintiffs claim that the Program can have no meaningful deterrent effect because the NYPD employs too few checkpoints. In support of that claim, plaintiffs rely upon various statistical manipulations of the sealed checkpoint data.

We will not peruse, parse, or extrapolate four months’ worth of data in an attempt to divine how many checkpoints the City ought to deploy in the exercise of its day to day police power. Counter terrorism experts and politically accountable officials have undertaken the delicate and esoteric task of deciding how best to marshal their available resources in light of the conditions prevailing on any given day. We will not and may not second guess the minutiae of their considered decisions. (internal citations omitted)

Although courts should not take a “know it all” attitude, they must not defer on such a critical question. The problem with many security measures is that they are not a very wise expenditure of resources. It is costly to have a lot of police officers engage in these random searches when they could be doing other things or money could be spent on other measures. A very small number of random searches in a subway system of over 4 million riders a day seems more symbolic that effective. If courts don’t question the efficacy of security measures in the name of terrorism, then it allows law enforcement officials to win nearly all the time. The government just needs to come into court and say “terrorism” and little else will matter.

Posted on August 16, 2006 at 3:32 PM • View Comments

Last Week's Terrorism Arrests

Hours-long waits in the security line. Ridiculous prohibitions on what you can carry onboard. Last week’s foiling of a major terrorist plot and the subsequent airport security graphically illustrates the difference between effective security and security theater.

None of the airplane security measures implemented because of 9/11—no-fly lists, secondary screening, prohibitions against pocket knives and corkscrews—had anything to do with last week’s arrests. And they wouldn’t have prevented the planned attacks, had the terrorists not been arrested. A national ID card wouldn’t have made a difference, either.

Instead, the arrests are a victory for old-fashioned intelligence and investigation. Details are still secret, but police in at least two countries were watching the terrorists for a long time. They followed leads, figured out who was talking to whom, and slowly pieced together both the network and the plot.

The new airplane security measures focus on that plot, because authorities believe they have not captured everyone involved. It’s reasonable to assume that a few lone plotters, knowing their compatriots are in jail and fearing their own arrest, would try to finish the job on their own. The authorities are not being public with the details—much of the “explosive liquid” story doesn’t hang together—but the excessive security measures seem prudent.

But only temporarily. Banning box cutters since 9/11, or taking off our shoes since Richard Reid, has not made us any safer. And a long-term prohibition against liquid carry-ons won’t make us safer, either. It’s not just that there are ways around the rules, it’s that focusing on tactics is a losing proposition.

It’s easy to defend against what the terrorists planned last time, but it’s shortsighted. If we spend billions fielding liquid-analysis machines in airports and the terrorists use solid explosives, we’ve wasted our money. If they target shopping malls, we’ve wasted our money. Focusing on tactics simply forces the terrorists to make a minor modification in their plans. There are too many targets—stadiums, schools, theaters, churches, the long line of densely packed people before airport security—and too many ways to kill people.

Security measures that require us to guess correctly don’t work, because invariably we will guess wrong. It’s not security, it’s security theater: measures designed to make us feel safer but not actually safer.

Airport security is the last line of defense, and not a very good one at that. Sure, it’ll catch the sloppy and the stupid—and that’s a good enough reason not to do away with it entirely—but it won’t catch a well-planned plot. We can’t keep weapons out of prisons; we can’t possibly keep them off airplanes.

The goal of a terrorist is to cause terror. Last week’s arrests demonstrate how real security doesn’t focus on possible terrorist tactics, but on the terrorists themselves. It’s a victory for intelligence and investigation, and a dramatic demonstration of how investments in these areas pay off.

And if you want to know what you can do to help? Don’t be terrorized. They terrorize more of us if they kill some of us, but the dead are beside the point. If we give in to fear, the terrorists achieve their goal even if they were arrested. If we refuse to be terrorized, then they lose—even if their attacks succeed.

This op ed appeared today in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

EDITED TO ADD (8/13): The Department of Homeland Security declares an entire state of matter a security risk. And here’s a good commentary on being scared.

Posted on August 13, 2006 at 8:15 AM • View Comments

Anti-Missile Defenses for Passenger Aircraft

It’s not happening anytime soon:

Congress agreed to pay for the development of the systems to protect the planes from such weapons, but balked at proposals to spend the billions needed to protect all 6,800 commercial U.S. airliners.

Probably for the best, actually. One, there are far more effective ways to spend that money on counterterrorism. And two, they’re only effective against a particular type of missile technology:

Both BAE and Northrop systems use lasers to jam the guidance systems of incoming missiles, which lock onto the heat of an aircraft’s engine.

Posted on August 3, 2006 at 7:30 AM • View Comments

Remote-Control Airplane Software

Does anyone other than me see a problem with this?

Some 30 European businesses and research institutes are working to create software that would make it possible from a distance to regain control of an aircraft from hijackers, according to the German news magazine.

The system “which could only be controlled from the ground would conduct the aircraft posing a problem to the nearest airport whether it liked it or not,” according to extracts from next Monday’s Der Spiegel released Saturday.

“A hijacker would have no chance of reaching his goal,” it said.

Unless his goal were, um, hijacking the aircraft.

It seems to me that by designing remote-control software for airplanes, you open the possibility for someone to hijack the plane without even being on board. Sure, there are going to be computer-security controls protecting this thing, but we all know how well that sort of thing has worked in the past.

The system would be designed in such a way that even a computer hacker on board could not get round it.

But what about computer hackers on the ground?

I’m not saying this is a bad idea; it might be a good idea. But this security countermeasure opens up an entirely new vulnerability, and I hope that someone is studying that new vulnerability.

Posted on July 28, 2006 at 2:09 PM • View Comments

Complexity and Terrorism Investigations

Good article on how complexity greatly limits the effectiveness of terror investigations. The stories of wasted resources are all from the UK, but the morals are universal.

The Committee’s report accepts that the increasing number of investigations, together with their increasing complexity, will make longer detention inevitable in the future. The core calculation is essentially the one put forward by the police and accepted by the Government – technology has been an enabler for international terrorism, with email, the Internet and mobile telephony producing wide, diffuse, international networks. The data on hard drives and mobile phones needs to be examined, contacts need to be investigated and their data examined, and in the case of an incident, vast amounts of CCTV records need to be gone through. As more and more of this needs to be done, the time taken to do it will obviously climb, and as it’s ‘necessary’ to detain the new breed of terrorist early in the investigation before he can strike, more time will be needed between arrest and charge in order to build a case.

All of which is, as far as it goes, logical. But take it a little further and the inherent futility of the route becomes apparent – ultimately, probably quite soon, the volume of data overwhelms the investigators and infinite time is needed to analyse all of it. And the less developed the plot is at the time the suspects are pulled in, the greater the number of possible outcomes (things they ‘might’ be planning) that will need to be chased-up. Short of the tech industry making the breakthrough into machine intelligence that will effectively do the analysis for them (which is a breakthrough the snake-oil salesmen suggest, and dopes in Government believe, has been achieved already), the approach itself is doomed. Essentially, as far as data is concerned police try to ‘collar the lot’ and then through analysis, attempt to build the most complete picture of a case that is possible. Use of initiative, experience and acting on probabilities will tend to be pressured out of such systems, and as the data volumes grow the result will tend to be teams of disempowered machine minders chained to a system that has ground to a halt. This effect is manifesting itself visibly across UK Government systems in general, we humbly submit. But how long will it take them to figure this out?

[…]

There is clearly a major problem for the security services in distinguishing disaffected talk from serious planning, and in deciding when an identified group constitutes a real threat. But the current technology-heavy approach to the threat doesn’t make a great deal of sense, because it produces very large numbers of suspects who are not and never will be a serious threat. Quantities of these suspects will nevertheless be found to be guilty of something, and along the way large amounts of investigative resource will have been expended to no useful purpose, aside from filling up 90 days. Overreaction to suggestions of CBRN threats is similarly counter-productive, because it makes it more likely that nascent groups will, just like the police, misunderstand the capabilities of the weapons, and start trying to research and build them. Mischaracterising the threat by inflating early, inexpert efforts as ‘major plots’ meanwhile fosters a climate of fear and ultimately undermines public confidence in the security services.

The oft-used construct, “the public would never forgive us if…” is a cop-out. It’s a spurious justification for taking the ‘collar the lot’ approach, throwing resources at it, ducking out of responsibility and failing to manage. Getting back to basics, taking ownership and telling the public the truth is more honest, and has some merit. A serious terror attack needs intent, attainable target and capability, the latter being the hard bit amateurs have trouble achieving without getting spotted along the way. Buying large bags of fertiliser if you’re not known to the vendor and you don’t look in the slightest bit like a farmer is going to put you onto MI5’s radar, and despite what it says on a lot of web sites, making your own explosives if you don’t know what you’re doing is a good way of blowing yourself up before you intended to. If disaffected youth had a more serious grasp of these realities, and had heard considerably more sense about the practicalities, then it’s quite possible that fewer of them would persist with their terror studies. Similarly, if the general public had better knowledge it would be better placed to spot signs of bomb factories. Bleached hair, dead plants, large numbers of peroxide containers? It could surely have been obvious.

Posted on July 14, 2006 at 7:25 AM • View Comments

A Minor Security Lesson from Mumbai Terrorist Bombings

Two quotes:

Authorities had also severely limited the cellular network for fear it could be used to trigger more attacks.

And:

Some of the injured were seen frantically dialing their cell phones. The mobile phone network collapsed adding to the sense of panic.

(Note: The story was changed online, and the second quote was deleted.)

Cell phones are useful to terrorists, but they’re more useful to the rest of us.

Posted on July 13, 2006 at 1:20 PM • View Comments

Economics and Information Security

I’m sitting in a conference room at Cambridge University, trying to simultaneously finish this article for Wired News and pay attention to the presenter onstage.

I’m in this awkward situation because 1) this article is due tomorrow, and 2) I’m attending the fifth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security, or WEIS: to my mind, the most interesting computer security conference of the year.

The idea that economics has anything to do with computer security is relatively new. Ross Anderson and I seem to have stumbled upon the idea independently. He, in his brilliant article from 2001, “Why Information Security Is Hard—An Economic Perspective” (.pdf), and me in various essays and presentations from that same period.

WEIS began a year later at the University of California at Berkeley and has grown ever since. It’s the only workshop where technologists get together with economists and lawyers and try to understand the problems of computer security.

And economics has a lot to teach computer security. We generally think of computer security as a problem of technology, but often systems fail because of misplaced economic incentives: The people who could protect a system are not the ones who suffer the costs of failure.

When you start looking, economic considerations are everywhere in computer security. Hospitals’ medical-records systems provide comprehensive billing-management features for the administrators who specify them, but are not so good at protecting patients’ privacy. Automated teller machines suffered from fraud in countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, where poor regulation left banks without sufficient incentive to secure their systems, and allowed them to pass the cost of fraud along to their customers. And one reason the internet is insecure is that liability for attacks is so diffuse.

In all of these examples, the economic considerations of security are more important than the technical considerations.

More generally, many of the most basic security questions are at least as much economic as technical. Do we spend enough on keeping hackers out of our computer systems? Or do we spend too much? For that matter, do we spend appropriate amounts on police and Army services? And are we spending our security budgets on the right things? In the shadow of 9/11, questions like these have a heightened importance.

Economics can actually explain many of the puzzling realities of internet security. Firewalls are common, e-mail encryption is rare: not because of the relative effectiveness of the technologies, but because of the economic pressures that drive companies to install them. Corporations rarely publicize information about intrusions; that’s because of economic incentives against doing so. And an insecure operating system is the international standard, in part, because its economic effects are largely borne not by the company that builds the operating system, but by the customers that buy it.

Some of the most controversial cyberpolicy issues also sit squarely between information security and economics. For example, the issue of digital rights management: Is copyright law too restrictive—or not restrictive enough—to maximize society’s creative output? And if it needs to be more restrictive, will DRM technologies benefit the music industry or the technology vendors? Is Microsoft’s Trusted Computing initiative a good idea, or just another way for the company to lock its customers into Windows, Media Player and Office? Any attempt to answer these questions becomes rapidly entangled with both information security and economic arguments.

WEIS encourages papers on these and other issues in economics and computer security. We heard papers presented on the economics of digital forensics of cell phones (.pdf)—if you have an uncommon phone, the police probably don’t have the tools to perform forensic analysis—and the effect of stock spam on stock prices: It actually works in the short term. We learned that more-educated wireless network users are not more likely to secure their access points (.pdf), and that the best predictor of wireless security is the default configuration of the router.

Other researchers presented economic models to explain patch management (.pdf), peer-to-peer worms (.pdf), investment in information security technologies (.pdf) and opt-in versus opt-out privacy policies (.pdf). There was a field study that tried to estimate the cost to the U.S. economy for information infrastructure failures (.pdf): less than you might think. And one of the most interesting papers looked at economic barriers to adopting new security protocols (.pdf), specifically DNS Security Extensions.

This is all heady stuff. In the early years, there was a bit of a struggle as the economists and the computer security technologists tried to learn each others’ languages. But now it seems that there’s a lot more synergy, and more collaborations between the two camps.

I’ve long said that the fundamental problems in computer security are no longer about technology; they’re about applying technology. Workshops like WEIS are helping us understand why good security technologies fail and bad ones succeed, and that kind of insight is critical if we’re going to improve security in the information age.

This essay originally appeared on Wired.com.

Posted on June 29, 2006 at 4:31 PM • View Comments

U.S./Mexican Security Barrier

Great article comparing the barrier Israel is erecting to protect itself from the West Bank with the hypothetical barrier the U.S. would build to protect itself from Mexico:

The Israeli West Bank barrier, when finished, will run for more than 400 miles and will consist of trenches, security roads, electronic fences, and concrete walls. Its main goal is to stop terrorists from detonating themselves in restaurants and cafes and buses in the cities and towns of central Israel. So, planners set the bar very high: It is intended to prevent every single attempt to cross it. The rules of engagement were written accordingly. If someone trying to cross the fence in the middle of the night is presumed to be a terrorist, there’s no need to hesitate before shooting. To kill.

As such, the Israeli fence is very efficient. The number of fatalities from terror attacks within Israel dropped from more than 130 in 2003 to fewer than 25 in 2005. The number of bombings fell from dozens to fewer than 10. The cost for Israel is in money and personnel; the cost for Palestinians is in unemployment, health, frustration, and blood. The demographic benefit—keeping out the Palestinians—is just another positive side effect for the Israelis.

No wonder the fence is considered a good deal by those living on its western side. But applying this model to the U.S.-Mexico border will not be easy. U.S. citizens will find it hard to justify such tough measures when their only goal is to stop people coming in for work—rather than preventing them from trying to commit murder. And the cost will be more important. It’s much easier to open your wallet when someone is threatening to blow up your local cafe.

Posted on June 13, 2006 at 6:50 AM • View Comments

The Security Risk of Special Cases

In Beyond Fear, I wrote about the inherent security risks of exceptions to a security policy. Here’s an example, from airport security in Ireland.

Police officers are permitted to bypass airport security at the Dublin Airport. They flash their ID, and walk around the checkpoints.

A female member of the airport search unit is undergoing re-training after the incident in which a Department of Transport inspector passed unchecked through security screening.

It is understood that the department official was waved through security checks having flashed an official badge. The inspector immediately notified airport authorities of a failure in vetting procedures. Only gardai are permitted to pass unchecked through security.

There are two ways this failure could have happened. One, security person could have thought that Department of Transportation officials have the same privileges as police officers. And two, the security person could have thought she was being shown a police ID.

This could have just as easily been a bad guy showing a fake police ID. My guess is that the security people don’t check them all that carefully.

The meta-point is that exceptions to security are themselves security vulnerabilities. As soon as you create a system by which some people can bypass airport security checkpoints, you invite the bad guys to try and use that system. There are reasons why you might want to create those alternate paths through security, of course, but the trade-offs should be well thought out.

Posted on April 26, 2006 at 6:05 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.