Entries Tagged "security theater"

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Halloween and the Irrational Fear of Stranger Danger

From the Wall Street Journal:

Take “stranger danger,” the classic Halloween horror. Even when I was a kid, back in the “Bewitched” and “Brady Bunch” costume era, parents were already worried about neighbors poisoning candy. Sure, the folks down the street might smile and wave the rest of the year, but apparently they were just biding their time before stuffing us silly with strychnine-laced Smarties.

That was a wacky idea, but we bought it. We still buy it, even though Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, has researched the topic and spends every October telling the press that there has never been a single case of any child being killed by a stranger’s Halloween candy. (Oh, yes, he concedes, there was once a Texas boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix. But his dad did it for the insurance money. He was executed.)

Anyway, you’d think that word would get out: poisoned candy not happening. But instead, most Halloween articles to this day tell parents to feed children a big meal before they go trick-or-treating, so they won’t be tempted to eat any candy before bringing it home for inspection.

[…]

Then along came new fears. Parents are warned annually not to let their children wear costumes that are too tight—those could seriously restrict breathing! But not too loose either—kids could trip! Fall! Die!

Treating parents like idiots who couldn’t possibly notice that their kid is turning blue or falling on his face might seem like a losing proposition, but it caught on too.

Halloween taught marketers that parents are willing to be warned about anything, no matter how preposterous, and then they’re willing to be sold whatever solutions the market can come up with. Face paint so no mask will obscure a child’s vision. Purell, so no child touches a germ. And the biggest boondoggle of all: an adult-supervised party, so no child encounters anything exciting, er, “dangerous.”

I remember one year when I filled a few Pixie Stix with garlic powder. But that was a long time ago.

EDITED TO ADD (11/2): Interesting essay:

The precise methods of the imaginary Halloween sadist are especially interesting. Apples and home goods occasionally appear in the stories, but the most common culprit is regular candy. This crazed person would purchase candy, open the wrapper, and DO SOMETHING to it, something that would be designed to hurt the unsuspecting child. But also something that would be sufficiently obvious and clumsy that the vigilant parent could spot it (hence the primacy of candy inspection).

The idea that someone, even a greedy child, might consume candies hiding razor blades and needles without noticing seems to strain credulity. And how, exactly, a person might go about coating a jelly bean with arsenic or lacing a molasses chew with Drano has never been clear to me. Yet it is an undisputed fact of Halloween hygiene: Unwrapped candy is the number-one suspect. If Halloween candy is missing a wrapper, or if the wrapper seems loose or flimsy, the candy goes straight into the trash.

Here is where I think we can discover some deeper meanings in the myth of the Halloween sadist. It’s all about the wrappers.

Wrappers are like candy condoms: Safe candy is candy that is covered and sealed. And not just any wrapper will do. Loose, casual, cheap wrappers, the kind of wrappers one might find on locally produced candies or non-brand-name candies, are also liable to send candy to Halloween purgatory. The close, tight factory wrapper says “sealed for your protection.” And the recognized brand name on the wrapper also lends a reassuring aura of corporate responsibility and accountability. It’s a basic axiom of consumer faith: The bigger the brand, the safer the candy.

Ironic, since we know that the most serious food dangers are those that originate from just the kind of large-scale industrial food processing environments that also bring us name-brand, mass-market candies. Salmonella, E. coli, and their bacterial buddies lurking in bagged salads and pre-formed hamburger patties are real food dangers; home-made cookies laced with ground glass are not.

EDITED TO ADD (11/11): Wondermark comments.

Posted on October 31, 2010 at 10:02 AM • View Comments

Security Theater on the Boston T

Since a fatal crash a few years ago, Boston T (their subway) operators have been forbidden from using—or even having—cell phones while on the job. Passengers are encouraged to report violators. But sometimes T operators need to use their official radios on the job, and passengers can’t tell the difference. The solution: orange tape:

The solution? Goodbye, sober black; hello, bright orange, a hue so vivid that, MBTA officials hope, no one will mistake the radios for phones anymore. Workers at the agency’s car barns and garages are in the process of outfitting every handset in the fleet with strips of reflective tape emblazoned with T logos.

[…]

… a small but steady number of hot line tips have been found to be cases of drivers or operators communicating with dispatch by radio, according to video and operations-center call logs.

That is where the electric-orange tape should help, Davey said. Over the past two months, the tape has been applied to handheld radios on about 95 percent of the T’s 1,050 buses (each of which has one handset) and one-fourth of its nearly 210 double-ended Green Line trolleys, which have handsets at each end. The rest of the Green Line and the Orange, Blue, and Red line radios will follow.

Taisha O’Bryant, a Roxbury resident who serves as chairwoman of the T Riders Union, said she is more concerned with the frequency and reliability of bus service than the appearance of bus radios. But she said it is a good thing if a driver or operator can call dispatch in the event of a breakdown or service problem without worrying about appearing to talk on a cellphone, and she hailed the cellphone ban.

Of course, no T operator would ever think of putting bright orange tape on his cell phone. Because if he did that, the passengers would immediately know not to report him.

Posted on August 30, 2010 at 5:31 AM • View Comments

"The Fear Tax"

Good essay by Seth Godin:

We pay the fear tax every time we spend time or money seeking reassurance. We pay it twice when the act of seeking that reassurance actually makes us more anxious, not less.

We pay the tax when we cover our butt instead of doing the right thing, and we pay the tax when we take away someone’s dignity because we’re afraid.

We should quantify the tax. The government should publish how much of our money they’re spending to create fear and then spending to (apparently) address fear. Corporations should add to their annual reports how much they spent just-in-case. Once we know how much it costs, we can figure out if it’s worth it.

Posted on August 18, 2010 at 3:48 PM • View Comments

Book Review: How Risky Is It, Really?

David Ropeik is a writer and consultant who specializes in risk perception and communication. His book, How Risky Is It, Really?: Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts, is a solid introduction to the biology, psychology, and sociology of risk. If you’re well-read on the topic already, you won’t find much you didn’t already know. But if this is a new topic for you, or if you want a well-organized guide to the current research on risk perception all in one place, this pretty close to the perfect book.

Ropeik builds his model of human risk perception from the inside out. Chapter 1 is about fear, our largely subconscious reaction to risk. Chapter 2 discusses bounded rationality, the cognitive shortcuts that allow us to efficiently make risk trade-offs. Chapter 3 discusses some of the common cognitive biases we have that cause us to either overestimate or underestimate risk: trust, control, choice, natural vs. man-made, fairness, etc.—thirteen in all. Finally, Chapter 4 discusses the sociological aspects of risk perception: how our estimation of risk depends on that of the people around us.

The book is primarily about how we humans get risk wrong: how our perception of risk differs from the reality of risk. But Ropeik is careful not to use the word “wrong,” and repeatedly warns us not to do it. Risk perception is not right or wrong, he says; it simply is. I don’t agree with this. There is both a feeling and reality of risk and security, and when they differ, we make bad security trade-offs. If you think your risk of dying in a terrorist attack, or of your children being kidnapped, is higher than it really is, you’re going to make bad security trade-offs. Yes, security theater has its place, but we should try to make that place as small as we can.

In Chapter 5, Ropeik tries his hand at solutions to this problem: “closing the perception gap” is how he puts it; reducing the difference between the feeling of security and the reality is how I like to explain it. This is his weakest chapter, but it’s also a very hard problem. My writings along this line are similarly weak. Still, his ideas are worth reading and thinking about.

I don’t have any other complaints with the book. Ropeik nicely balances readability with scientific rigor, his examples are interesting and illustrative, and he is comprehensive without being boring. Extensive footnotes allow the reader to explore the actual research behind the generalities. Even though I didn’t learn much from reading it, I enjoyed the ride.

How Risky Is It, Really? is available in hardcover and for the Kindle. Presumably a paperback will come out in a year or so. Ropeik has a blog, although he doesn’t update it much.

Posted on August 2, 2010 at 6:38 AM • View Comments

Popsicle Makers a Security Threat

Chicago chef Rick Bayless photographed this security sign, posted before airport security as people were returning home from the Aspen Food & Wine Festival:

No popsicle makers are allowed through security.

Anyone have any idea why something like this is so dangerous? Is the TSA prohibiting random things to toy with us? Their blog is silent on this question.

EDITED TO ADD (6/23): Seems that it’s not all popsicle makers, but the Zoku Quick Pop Maker that Williams Sonoma was selling at the festival. It has a small amount of liquid inside. And remember, if there isn’t a printed label stating the volume of liquid, the TSA assumes that it’s over 3 ounces. (Terrorists take note: print official looking labels on your larger-than-three-ounce bottles and you’ll have no trouble at airport security.)

Posted on June 23, 2010 at 1:16 PM • View Comments

New York and the Moscow Subway Bombing

People intent on preventing a Moscow-style terrorist attack against the New York subway system are proposing a range of expensive new underground security measures, some temporary and some permanent.

They should save their money – and instead invest every penny they’re considering pouring into new technologies into intelligence and old-fashioned policing.

Intensifying security at specific stations only works against terrorists who aren’t smart enough to move to another station. Cameras are useful only if all the stars align: The terrorists happen to walk into the frame, the video feeds are being watched in real time and the police can respond quickly enough to be effective. They’re much more useful after an attack, to figure out who pulled it off.

Installing biological and chemical detectors requires similarly implausible luck – plus a terrorist plot that includes the specific biological or chemical agent that is being detected.

What all these misguided reactions have in common is that they’re based on “movie-plot threats”: overly specific attack scenarios. They fill our imagination vividly, in full color with rich detail. Before long, we’re envisioning an entire story line, with or without Bruce Willis saving the day. And we’re scared.

It’s not that movie-plot threats are not worth worrying about. It’s that each one – Moscow’s subway attack, the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, etc. – is too specific. These threats are infinite, and the bad guys can easily switch among them.

New York has thousands of possible targets, and there are dozens of possible tactics. Implementing security against movie-plot threats is only effective if we correctly guess which specific threat to protect against. That’s unlikely.

A far better strategy is to spend our limited counterterrorism resources on investigation and intelligence – and on emergency response. These measures don’t hinge on any specific threat; they don’t require us to guess the tactic or target correctly. They’re effective in a variety of circumstances, even nonterrorist ones.

The result may not be flashy or outwardly reassuring – as are pricey new scanners in airports. But the strategy will save more lives.

The 2006 arrest of the liquid bombers – who wanted to detonate liquid explosives to be brought onboard airliners traveling from England to North America – serves as an excellent example. The plotters were arrested in their London apartments, and their attack was foiled before they ever got to the airport.

It didn’t matter if they were using liquids or solids or gases. It didn’t even matter if they were targeting airports or shopping malls or theaters. It was a straightforward, although hardly simple, matter of following leads.

Gimmicky security measures are tempting – but they’re distractions we can’t afford. The Christmas Day bomber chose his tactic because it would circumvent last year’s security measures, and the next attacker will choose his tactic – and target – according to similar criteria. Spend money on cameras and guards in the subways, and the terrorists will simply modify their plot to render those countermeasures ineffective.

Humans are a species of storytellers, and the Moscow story has obvious parallels in New York. When we read the word “subway,” we can’t help but think about the system we use every day. This is a natural response, but it doesn’t make for good public policy. We’d all be safer if we rose above the simple parallels and the need to calm our fears with expensive and seductive new technologies – and countered the threat the smart way.

This essay originally appeared in the New York Daily News.

Posted on April 7, 2010 at 8:52 AM • View Comments

Jeremy Clarkson on Security Guards

Nice essay:

Of course, we know why he’s really there. He’s really there so that if the bridge is destroyed by terrorists, the authorities can appear on the television news and say they had taken all possible precautions. Plus, if you employ a security guard, then I should imagine that your insurance premiums are going to be significantly lower.

This is probably why so many companies use security guards these days. It must be, because when it comes to preventing a crime, they are pretty much useless. No, really. If you are planning a heist, job one on the list of things to do is “take out the guard”. He is therefore not an impenetrable wall of steel; he’s just a nuisance.

And he’s not just a nuisance to the people planning to hit him on the head. He’s also a nuisance to the thousands of people who legitimately wish to enter or leave the building he’s supposed to be guarding.

At the office where I work, everyone is issued with laminated photo-ID cards that open all the barriers and doors. It is quite impossible to make any sort of progress unless you have such a thing about your person. But even so, every barrier and door is also guarded by a chap who, in a fight, would struggle to beat Christopher Robin. One looks like his heart would give out if you said “boo.” Another has a face that’s so grey that, in some lights, he appears to be slightly lilac. I cannot for the life of me work out what these people are supposed to achieve, apart from making the lives of normal people a little bit more difficult.

EDITED TO ADD (4/13): Another Clarkson essay, this one on security theater.

Posted on March 30, 2010 at 6:06 AM •

Dead on the No-Fly List

Such “logic“:

If a person on the no-fly list dies, his name could stay on the list so that the government can catch anyone trying to assume his identity.

But since a terrorist might assume anyone’s identity, by the same logic we should put everyone on the no-fly list.

Otherwise, it’s an interesting article on how the no-fly list works.

Posted on March 24, 2010 at 6:38 AM • View Comments

Bringing Lots of Liquids on a Plane at Schiphol

This would worry me, if the liquid ban weren’t already useless.

The reporter found the security flaw in the airport’s duty-free shopping system. At Schiphol airport, passengers flying to countries outside the Schengan Agreement Area can buy bottles of alcohol at duty-free shops before going through security. They are then permitted to take these bottles onto flights, provided that they have the bottles sealed at the shop.

Mr Stegeman bought a bottle, emptied it and refilled it with another liquid. After that he returned to the same shop and ‘bought’ the refilled bottle again. The shop sealed the bottle in a bag, allowing him to take it with him through security and onto a London-bound flight. In London, he transferred planes and carried the bottle onto a flight to Washington DC.

The flaw, of course, is the assumption that bottles bought at a duty-free shop actually come from the duty-free shop.

But note that 1) it’s the same airport as underwear bomber, 2) reporter is known for trying to defeat airport security, and 3) body scanners would have made no difference.

Watch the TV program here.

Posted on March 19, 2010 at 12:58 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.