Slashdot Mirror
Schneier On the War On the Unexpected
jamie found this essay by Bruce Schneier, The War on the Unexpected. (It originally appeared in Wired but this version has all the links.) "We've opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested — even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats... After someone reports a 'terrorist threat,' the whole system is biased towards escalation and CYA instead of a more realistic threat assessment... If you ask amateurs to act as front-line security personnel, you shouldn't be surprised when you get amateur security."
people using the excuse of a boogieman in the shadows to lash out against those they don't understand and/or fear?
unheard of in all of human history.
Is a war against an emotion... Anything which can cause fear is therefore subject to the war. In that way it's the perfect war for politicians.
Deleted
Our whole lives are spent dealing with people and their reactions to what is 'acceptable' and taking the risk that what you try and accomplish is 'unexpected'. Wear long hair in the executive world? Get fired. Dye your hair green in high school? Get teased. Run down a street naked? Get arrested.
Humans are exceptional at detecting differences, its part of our nature, intellectually - we integrate similar concepts and differentiate between different ones. Our brains pick out differences. Thats why profiling at airports actually works.
Its nice to see someone publish something about this, but its hardly insightful.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This sounds like a throwback to the 50's and early 60's when "Communism" was the buzz word, and a conforming America was key to not being "outed" as a Commy.
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
...if their goal was to create fear in the U. S. population.
The fear is real. I hate to admit it, but it affect me.
Everyone knows that there will be further terrorist attacks on the U. S. On the one hand, we're not serious about beefing up homeland security, which is a disappointment to me--I was expecting at least a competent, good-faith effort. But we're doing all the "security theatre" stuff and none of the expensive, difficult, serious stuff. On the other hand, the Iraq war has inflamed passions in the Muslim world and created enemies where we didn't have them before. So the threat is getting worse and our defenses are not getting much better and all the "security theatre" just keeps reminding us of the issue.
On my last plane trip, the gate was near security, and my wife and I were watching as some woman got some kind of very, very extended attention from the TSA people. She was dressed in some kind of dark robe that covered her body, her head, and most of her face; it looked to me like a burkha, but I don't really know anything about such things. She also had a somewhat disfigured face, with a golf-ball-sized lump of some kind on one side of her forehead.
From our vantage point it was all pantomime. I don't know why they were searching her. But they would ask her questions, then wave those handheld metal-detector frisking things, have her sit down for a while, go away and come back with other officials who would ask her more questions and so forth. After about a half an hour she was still sitting there in the security area waiting. They announced that our flight was boarding and we got on and don't know anything more.
What I hated myself for was that I personally was creeped out by this person and her appearance. And what I particularly hated myself for was that the things creeped me out were a) her style of dress, and b) her disfigured face.
Part of me was indignant at what looked from a distance to be discriminatory treatment. And part of it was great relief that she was not on my flight.
I think it's time for new moderator points.
"+1 Terrorist" and "-1 Sheep".
Whether you want to swap the signs depends on your political preference.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Choice 1: Over react and be labeled a fascist.
Choice 2: Do nothing and be blamed when people die.
No wonder we only get shit bags running for public office.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
For those interested in hearing Bruce Schneier dispassionately and quite reasonably shred a lot of the "security" measures implemented since 9/11, I suggest reading his book Beyond Fear. The subtitle says it all: thinking sensibly about security in an uncertain world. The book was reviewed on Slashdot not long ago.
The book takes a very general approach to security, analyzing it with the most basic categorizations, while using very clear real-life examples to illustrate. The final chapters deal specifically with security against terrorism, particularly since 9/11. His conclusion is that, from a security standpoint, most of the measures put in place - additional airport scrutiny, massive centralized databases looking for suspicious patterns, the move towards national ID cards, etc. - are largely ineffective as security measures. The massive trade-off of decreased privacy and liberty coupled with enormous cost for these measures make them especially unreasonable. In short, the widespread perceived risk and culture of fear it has fostered has made our response to the new terroristic threat wildly out-of-proportion with the actual risk.
It's mostly preaching to the choir here at Slashdot, but I think this book should be as widely read as possible.
If you think that the next administration - Republican or Democrat - is going to be substantially different, you haven't been paying attention for very long.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I hear NPR mention a "war on terror", and I want to call in a correction/complaint.
A war on terror or fear is quite different than a war on terrorism.
And a war on terrorism is quite different than a war against terrorists.
And of course a war on terrorists is quite different that a war against a specific group.
A war against an generic term, a tactic or unspecified groups of people cannot be won.
(It cannot be lost either).
How about:
Choice 3: React appropriately and install security measures that work, without unduly stressing people?
The problem isn't that there are two extremes the people in power must choose from, the problem is that the two choices you gave are actually being done at the same time.
"Sure there are outliers, people put on watch lists they shouldn't. It'll get smoothed out eventually, but it's not like they're being dragged out into the street and shot "to set example for the other jews" or whatever godwinninian example you are trying to set."
You're right, they're not being dragged out into the street and shot. They're being secretly deported, flown in shackles to third-world dictatorships, and tortured by third parties with our implicit consent.
They're mostly Muslims. If it hasn't become clear to you yet: Muslims are the boogeyman whom neoconservatives hype in order to increase their own power, just as Jews were the boogeyman Nazis hyped to increase their own power. No, America is not anywhere near as bad as Nazi Germany at its height, but the direction and modus operandi are extremely similar.
1984 is nice, but I prefer "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street"
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record: prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own, for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that such things cannot be confined... to The Twilight Zone."
My twitter
It's weird to me that no-one seems to have realised yet that you could mass-murder much more people, and in a much easier fashion, just coordinating directly in an airport, in the checkin queues. No one has checked your bag at all yet, and you can blow yourself to smithereens just for the price of not looking too suspicious. At least in cheap European flights like Easyjet or Ryanair, the queues sometimes amount to two or three planes full of passengers. Do it simultaneously, in a few airports, and we wouldn't be able to fly anymore due to fear.
Basically, the problem of getting the bomb to the useful place has just changed the place: it used to be the plane. Now it can be the airport check in queues. Next would be the airport entrances. There will always be a mass of people checking in somewhere, at least until the damn flying cars are finally here.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
Until that happens, I believe we're much closer to "absolute security" than reasonable security.
Here's a nifty quote I like to remember when talking to people like you. "Sure there are outliers" and "it's just a few people who got mixed up" and "they were being stupid anyway" are just variations of "It wasn't me, so I don't have to worry." Because you weren't unlucky enough that a known terrorist happened to use your name while boarding a flight, because you weren't unlucky enough that you weren't identified by some hapless guy on a street looking to make a quick buck, because you weren't unlucky enough that you didn't fit the completely arbitrary criteria for what a terrorist is, you think that it isn't a problem. Here's the problem you're overlooking: the criteria ARE arbitrary. That's what the term "security theater" means. Everyone who complains about the current state sees that and is worried that these arbitrary criteria might be applied to them one day. This is the time to fight back - not when your ass is sitting in a police van headed to god knows where. Furthermore, no one is complaining about airport security, except to point out that it is a rather silly exercise. What people are truly worried about (and that includes me) is the completely arbitrary and CYA approach that puts EVERYONE at risk of being arrested and have their lives turned upside down. If you can't see that.... gimme your name, cuz I'll just laugh if they ever come for you.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
If we were really facing the kind of dedicated, wide-spread super-terrorist organization that most politicians preach about, there would be hundreds of thousands of dead across the country.
What's weird is that so few people have yet to see through the fear-mongering. It's almost as if having the threat of a super-al-queada boogeyman that our politicians are 'protecting' us from is a sort of security blanket.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I say having my laundry looked over is a small price to pay to fly 3000 miles in 6 hours to visit some friends.
And my problem with that attitude is this: I wouldn't mind that you're so willing to give up your freedom from unjustified search, your privacy, your status as a person innocent until proven guilty, if it wasn't for the fact that you want to give up MINE at the same time!
If that counter terror expert offered cogent arguments, sure, why not? If the arguments are wrong, refute them, don't engage in the logical fallacies of ad hominem attacks and appeals to authority. Security isn't some magical concern that only a few high priests can speak on. Security is a day-to-day issue that everyone needs to consider. Security is a matter of government a politics, an area that every interested citizen can debate and try to influence our government.
Indeed, it is. And Schneier agrees (although he calls it acting "hinky," a word a custom's agent used to describe someone's behavior that led to their arrest). But you're suggesting a false dichotomy between ignoring everything and calling in the most minor of suspicions. Schneier's proposal is pretty clear: you need knowledge to be able to accurately identify hinky.
Search 2010 Gen Con events