Entries Tagged "overreactions"

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Classifying a Shape

This is a great essay:

Spheres are special shapes for nuclear weapons designers. Most nuclear weapons have, somewhere in them, that spheres-within-spheres arrangement of the implosion nuclear weapon design. You don’t have to use spheres—cylinders can be made to work, and there are lots of rumblings and rumors about non-spherical implosion designs around these here Internets—but spheres are pretty common.

[…]

Imagine the scenario: you’re a security officer working at Los Alamos. You know that spheres are weapon parts. You walk into a technical area, and you see spheres all around! Is that an ashtray, or it is a model of a plutonium pit? Anxiety mounts—does the ashtray go into a safe at the end of the day, or does it stay out on the desk? (Has someone been tapping their cigarettes out into the pit model?)

All of this anxiety can be gone—gone!—by simply banning all non-nuclear spheres! That way you can effectively treat all spheres as sensitive shapes.

What I love about this little policy proposal is that it illuminates something deep about how secrecy works. Once you decide that something is so dangerous that the entire world hinges on keeping it under control, this sense of fear and dread starts to creep outwards. The worry about what must be controlled becomes insatiable ­ and pretty soon the mundane is included with the existential.

The essay continues with a story of a scientist who received a security violation for leaving an orange on his desk.

Two points here. One, this is a classic problem with any detection system. When it’s hard to build a system that detects the thing you’re looking for, you change the problem to detect something easier—and hope the overlap is enough to make the system work. Think about airport security. It’s too hard to detect actual terrorists with terrorist weapons, so instead they detect pointy objects. Internet filtering systems work the same way, too. (Remember when URL filters blocked the word “sex,” and the Middlesex Public Library found that it couldn’t get to its municipal webpages?)

Two, the Los Alamos system only works because false negatives are much, much worse than false positives. It really is worth classifying an abstract shape and annoying an officeful of scientists and others to protect the nuclear secrets. Airport security fails because the false-positive/false-negative cost ratio is different.

Posted on January 3, 2013 at 6:03 AM • View Comments

This Week's Overreactions

Schools go into lockdown over a thermometer, a car backfiring, a bank robbery a few blocks away, a student alone in a gym, a neighbor on the street, and some vague unfounded rumors. And one high-school kid was arrested for drawing pictures of guns. Everywhere else, post-traumatic stupidity syndrome. (It’s not a new phrase—Google shows hits back to 2001—but it’s new to me. It reminds me of this.) I think of it as: “Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, we must do it.”

I’m not going to write about the Newtown school massacre. I wrote this earlier this year after the Aurora shooting, which was a rewrite of this about the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings. I feel as if I’m endlessly repeating myself. This essay, also from 2007, on the anti-terrorism “War on the Unexpected,” is also relevant. Just remember, we’re the safest we’ve been in 40 years.

Posted on December 21, 2012 at 12:12 PM • View Comments

Security Theater in American Diplomatic Missions

I noticed this in an article about how increased security and a general risk aversion is harming US diplomatic missions:

“Barbara Bodine, who was the U.S. ambassador to Yemen during the Qaeda bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, told me she believes that much of the security American diplomats are forced to travel with is counterproductive. “There’s this idea that if we just throw more security guys at the problem, it will go away,” she said. “These huge convoys they force you to travel in, with a bristling personal security detail, give you the illusion of security, not real security. They just draw a lot of attention and make you a target. It’s better to fly under the radar.”

It’s a good article overall.

Posted on November 19, 2012 at 5:41 AM • View Comments

The Terrorist Risk of Food Trucks

This is idiotic:

Public Intelligence recently posted a Powerpoint presentation from the NYC fire department (FDNY) discussing the unique safety issues mobile food trucks present. Along with some actual concerns (many food trucks use propane and/or gasoline-powered generators to cook; some *gasp* aren’t properly licensed food vendors), the presenter decided to toss in some DHS speculation on yet another way terrorists might be killing us in the near future.

The rest of the article explains why the DHS believes we should be terrified of food trucks. And then it says:

The DHS’ unfocused “terrorvision” continues to see a threat in every situation and the department seems to be busying itself crafting a response to every conceivable “threat.” The problem with this “method” is that it turns any slight variation of “everyday activity” into something suspicious. The number of “terrorist implications” grows exponentially while the number of solutions remains the same. This Powerpoint is another example of good, old-fashioned fear mongering, utilizing public servants to spread the message.

Hear hear.

Someone needs to do something; the DHS is out of control.

Posted on November 15, 2012 at 6:45 AM • View Comments

Internet Safety Talking Points for Schools

A surprisingly sensible list.

E. Why are you penalizing the 95% for the 5%? You don’t do this in other areas of discipline at school. Even though you know some students will use their voices or bodies inappropriately in school, you don’t ban everyone from speaking or moving. You know some students may show up drunk to the prom, yet you don’t cancel the prom because of a few rule breakers. Instead, you assume that most students will act appropriately most of the time and then you enforce reasonable expectations and policies for the occasional few that don’t. To use a historical analogy, it’s the difference between DUI-style policies and flat-out Prohibition (which, if you recall, failed miserably). Just as you don’t put entire schools on lockdown every time there’s a fight in the cafeteria, you need to stop penalizing entire student bodies because of statistically-infrequent, worst-case scenarios.

[…]

G. The ‘online predators will prey on your schoolchildren’ argument is a false bogeyman, a scare tactic that is fed to us by the media, politicians, law enforcement, and computer security vendors. The number of reported incidents in the news of this occurring is zero.

H. Federal laws do not require your draconian filtering. You can’t point the finger somewhere else. You have to own it yourself.

I. Students and teachers rise to the level of the expectations that you have for them. If you expect the worst, that’s what you’ll get.

J. Schools that ‘loosen up’ with students and teachers find that they have no more problems than they did before. And, often, they have fewer problems because folks aren’t trying to get around the restrictions.

K. There’s a difference between a teachable moment and a punishable moment. Lean toward the former as much as possible.

[…]

O. Schools with mindsets of enabling powerful student learning usually block much less than those that don’t. Their first reaction is ‘how can we make this work?’ rather than ‘we need to keep this out.’

Posted on August 24, 2012 at 1:18 PM • View Comments

Overreaction and Overly Specific Reactions to Rare Risks

Horrific events, such as the massacre in Aurora, can be catalysts for social and political change. Sometimes it seems that they’re the only catalyst; recall how drastically our policies toward terrorism changed after 9/11 despite how moribund they were before.

The problem is that fear can cloud our reasoning, causing us to overreact and to overly focus on the specifics. And the key is to steer our desire for change in that time of fear.

Our brains aren’t very good at probability and risk analysis. We tend to exaggerate spectacular, strange and rare events, and downplay ordinary, familiar and common ones. We think rare risks are more common than they are. We fear them more than probability indicates we should.

There is a lot of psychological research that tries to explain this, but one of the key findings is this: People tend to base risk analysis more on stories than on data. Stories engage us at a much more visceral level, especially stories that are vivid, exciting or personally involving.

If a friend tells you about getting mugged in a foreign country, that story is more likely to affect how safe you feel traveling to that country than reading a page of abstract crime statistics will.

Novelty plus dread plus a good story equals overreaction.

And who are the major storytellers these days? Television and the Internet. So when news programs and sites endlessly repeat the story from Aurora, with interviews with those in the theater, interviews with the families, and commentary by anyone who has a point to make, we start to think this is something to fear, rather than a rare event that almost never happens and isn’t worth worrying about. In other words, reading five stories about the same event feels somewhat like five separate events, and that skews our perceptions.

We see the effects of this all the time.

It’s strangers by whom we fear being murdered, kidnapped, raped and assaulted, when it’s far more likely that any perpetrator of such offenses is a relative or a friend. We worry about airplane crashes and rampaging shooters instead of automobile crashes and domestic violence—both of which are far more common and far, far more deadly.

Our greatest recent overreaction to a rare event was our response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I remember then-Attorney General John Ashcroft giving a speech in Minnesota—where I live—in 2003 in which he claimed that the fact there were no new terrorist attacks since 9/11 was proof that his policies were working. I remember thinking: “There were no terrorist attacks in the two years preceding 9/11, and you didn’t have any policies. What does that prove?”

What it proves is that terrorist attacks are very rare, and perhaps our national response wasn’t worth the enormous expense, loss of liberty, attacks on our Constitution and damage to our credibility on the world stage. Still, overreacting was the natural thing for us to do. Yes, it was security theater and not real security, but it made many of us feel safer.

The rarity of events such as the Aurora massacre doesn’t mean we should ignore any lessons it might teach us. Because people overreact to rare events, they’re useful catalysts for social introspection and policy change. The key here is to focus not on the details of the particular event but on the broader issues common to all similar events.

Installing metal detectors at movie theaters doesn’t make sense—there’s no reason to think the next crazy gunman will choose a movie theater as his venue, and how effectively would a metal detector deter a lone gunman anyway?—but understanding the reasons why the United States has so many gun deaths compared with other countries does. The particular motivations of alleged killer James Holmes aren’t relevant—the next gunman will have different motivations—but the general state of mental health care in the United States is.

Even with this, the most important lesson of the Aurora massacre is how rare these events actually are. Our brains are primed to believe that movie theaters are more dangerous than they used to be, but they’re not. The riskiest part of the evening is still the car ride to and from the movie theater, and even that’s very safe.

But wear a seat belt all the same.

This essay previously appeared on CNN.com, and is an update of this essay.

EDITED TO ADD: I almost added that Holmes wouldn’t have been stopped by a metal detector. He walked into the theater unarmed and left through a back door, which he propped open so he could return armed. And while there was talk about installing metal detectors in movie theaters, I have not heard of any theater actually doing so. But AMC movie theaters have announced a “no masks or costumes policy” as a security measure.

Posted on August 3, 2012 at 6:03 AM • View Comments

Overreacting to Potential Bombs

This is a ridiculous overreaction:

The police bomb squad was called to 2 World Financial Center in lower Manhattan at midday when a security guard reported a package that seemed suspicious. Brookfield Properties, which runs the property, ordered an evacuation as a precaution.

That’s the entire building, a 44-story, 2.5-million-square-foot office building. And why?

The bomb squad determined the package was a fake explosive that looked like a 1940s-style pineapple grenade. It was mounted on a plaque that said “Complaint department: Take a number,” with a number attached to the pin.

It was addressed to someone at one of the financial institutions housed there and discovered by someone in the mail room.

If the grenade had been real, it could have destroyed—what?—a room. Of course, there’s no downside to Brookfield Properties overreacting.

Posted on May 8, 2012 at 7:03 AM • View Comments

Possibly the Most Incompetent TSA Story Yet

The storyline:

  1. TSA screener finds two pipes in passenger’s bags.
  2. Screener determines that they’re not a threat.
  3. Screener confiscates them anyway, because of their “material and appearance.”
  4. Because they’re not actually a threat, screener leaves them at the checkpoint.
  5. Everyone forgets about them.
  6. Six hours later, the next shift of TSA screeners notices the pipes and—not being able to explain how they got there and, presumably, because of their “material and appearance”—calls the police bomb squad to remove the pipes.
  7. TSA does not evacuate the airport, or even close the checkpoint, because—well, we don’t know why.

I don’t even know where to begin.

Posted on January 31, 2012 at 5:03 PM • View Comments

Looking Backward at Terrorism

Nice essay on the danger of too much security:

The great lie of the war on terror is not that we can sacrifice a little liberty for greater security. It is that fear can be eliminated, and that all we need to do to improve our society is defeat terrorism, rather than look at the other causes of our social, economic, and political anxiety. That is the great seduction of fear: It allows us to do nothing. It is easier to find new threats than new possibilities.

A decade after 9/11, we look backward and find ourselves in all-too-familiar surroundings. We have, in fact, accomplished very little. We have yet to do any of the serious thinking that might carry us beyond the banal, stifling quest for security. That kind of thinking would require us to have a different relationship to fear: a willingness to accept it, even cause it.

Posted on August 19, 2011 at 1:57 PM • View Comments

Security Fears of Wi-Fi in London Underground

The London Underground is getting Wi-Fi. Of course there are security fears:

But Will Geddes, founder of ICP Group which specialises in reducing terror or technology-related threats, said the plan was problematic.

He said: “There are lots of implications in terms of terrorism and security.

“This will enable people to use their laptop on the Tube as if it was a cell phone.”

Mr Geddes said there had been numerous examples of bomb attacks detonated remotely by mobile phone in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He warned a wi-fi system would enable a terror cell to communicate underground.

And he said “Trojan” or eavesdropping software could be used to penetrate users’ laptops and garner information such as bank details.

Mr Geddes added: “Eavesdropping software can be found and downloaded within minutes.”

This is just silly. We could have a similar conversation regarding any piece of our infrastructure. Yes, the bad guys could use it, just as they use telephones and automobiles and all-night restaurants. If we didn’t deploy technologies because of this fear, we’d still be living in the Middle Ages.

Posted on April 13, 2011 at 1:14 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.