Difference between feeling secure and being secure
If we make security trade-offs based on the feeling of security rather than the reality, we choose security that makes us feel more secure over security that actually makes us more secure. And that's what governments, companies, family members and everyone else provide. Of course, there are two ways to make people feel more secure. The first is to make people actually more secure and hope they notice. The second is to make people feel more secure without making them actually more secure, and hope they don't notice.LinkThe key here is whether we notice. The feeling and reality of security tend to converge when we take notice, and diverge when we don't. People notice when 1) there are enough positive and negative examples to draw a conclusion, and 2) there isn't too much emotion clouding the issue.
Both elements are important. If someone tries to convince us to spend money on a new type of home burglar alarm, we as society will know pretty quickly if he's got a clever security device or if he's a charlatan; we can monitor crime rates. But if that same person advocates a new national antiterrorism system, and there weren't any terrorist attacks before it was implemented, and there weren't any after it was implemented, how do we know if his system was effective?
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This reminds me of a "The Simpsons" episode where Springfield spends a ridiculous amount of money in a "Bear Patrol" to keep polar bears from raiding the town, then Homer says that they are now safe from bears but Lisa points out that there where no Polar Bears previously in Springfield either.
Same for Homelad Security...
It wasn't polar bears, it looked like a brown bear, but anyway, yeah that's weird I don't remember September 11th either, terrorists were never here right? Sounds like a thinly veiled jab at the bush administration to me, very original. Not that I'm a fan of the bush administration, but come on, does everyone in the magazine and news industry have to say the same thing?
Labour chairman and deputy leader Harriet Harman went on a tour of Peckham (inner London) this week and was pictured wearing a stab-proof vest. Some very burly members of the Metropolitan police accompanied her on the ‘walk about’. This has caused a lot of consternation and the lesson is that public perception of security and personal safety are not greatly helped by pictures of the local MP wearing ‘body armour’ on the streets. I wonder what Schneier would make of that conundrum. Was she safer, did she feel safer, or did she make the rest of us feel less safe and less forgiving of the ‘rhetorical spin’ of falling crime rates.
I have a rock that keeps tigers away. "How does it work?" you ask. Simple, you don't see any tigers around here, do you?
To quote Harlan Ellison,"There ain't no security this side of the grave."
If you focus on terrorism, but not on health and enviromental issues, are you safe? If the gov't will spend to buy tanks and guns, will hire Blackwater goons, but not make an effort for health insurance, are you safe?
What is more frightening, a random act of violence, or a random disease that is common and treatable, but you have no money to treat.
Does a giant wall and big brother spy eyes make you feel safe in a place with an unsustainable way of life is about to come tumbling down for most folks, if it hasn't already, and the safety nets have been removed.
What makes you feel safe?
First of all, the administration had enough warning from people in the FBI.
The guy who tried to blow up LAX in 2000 confirmed that there were people like him in cells throughout America planning an airline hijacking.
AG Ashcroft thought the memos were serious enough that he stopped flying on commercial airliners in the summer of 2001.
So the system worked. The problem with the Bush Administration has always been that they tend to not give a shit when it matters.
First 9/11 and then Katrina.
I was in Florida during the 2004 election. Bush was on the ground in a matter of hours after the devastation from the hurricanes pledging money and support. He won Florida in the election.
2005 wasn't an election year. So who cares. Let 'em rot.
The system worked. Its like giving your computer to the local geek squad store to repair a broken ethernet port only to find its staffed by a bunch of Connecticut hicks with cowboy fetishes and texan affectations who have replaced your entire motherboard, wiped the hard drive and installed a new buggy O/S that nobody wants and wastes most of your system resources on graphics.
We have an important difficulty here. Politicians tend to operate almost entirely on how people feel (or rather, how the politicians think, given their own biases, people feel). Because that's the way to get elected: justifying yourself to people who ask dificult questions is far less effective than trying to appeal to people's feelings.
Indeed, politicians often don't seem to realise that there is any other way to operate. But it does make them rather ill-suited to distinguishing between things that make people feel safer, but are ineffective, and things that people don't notice, but which are effective.
Even if maintaining a feeling of fear wasn't an important electoral tactic in the US and the UK at present, we'd be going the wrong way. As it is, we're screwed.
#6
I agree. On newsnight last week, they interviewed Colin Powell's former chief of staff about intelligence leading up to the Iraq war after a segment featuring evidence from every intelligence agency that they tried to warn the White house there was no reason to think there were WMD in Iraq.
Paxman asked: I submit to you that, given the testimony of intelligence agents here about Iraq that the decision to go to war had already been made and the White house couldn't care less about the intelligence.
I cannot dispute that, was the reply.
So, obviously there wasn't a lot wrong, with the set-up from the perspective of collecting data, the problem has been people at the top seeing what they want to see and doing what they want to do.
Funny how philosophical the article is. What is the difference between feeling and being from a subjective point of view? From a subjective POV one can only be differentiated from the other after the event, which would result in a greater need to feel secure, so the process is self-replicating. There's a lesson in Hegelianism here, if one cared to look.
Schneier always has something very thoughtful and interesting to say. I think he gets it right on this count, especially the point about the two ways to handle the trade offs- make everyone more secure and hope they notice, or just do crap that does not make us more secure and hope that they don't. I think #8 is right- it is philosophical in nature.
#2- I don't really think it's "thinly veiled", and I think what he's saying can't really be said enough on some level. They have dropped the ball on security. They are engaged in all these exercises intended to make us feel safer, but are actually engaged in activities that might in the long run make us less safe- Iraq, threatening Iran, etc.
#5- Harlan Ellison is a wise man! what a great quote.
Mindy
Anangbhai (#6):
I think I will be forced by the brilliance of your lyrical illustration to regurgitate it elseplace.
If the terrorists want to blow something up in the USA, they're going to be able to do it. We're an open society. That means you can buy the ingredients necessary to build a car bomb at Wal-Mart, Pep Boys and CVS within about an hour.
I don't think any government on earth is competent enough to monitor all of its citizens all the time, so I think we should probably take a view similar to the one people have in Israel. Security is tight, but you know there will be attacks and that life is never certain.
@2:
ONE incident does not make a trend. The point is that you need a TREND to monitor. "If crime *rates* go down..." There isn't a terrorism "rate" from one event.
I could say that my hat wards of major meteor strikes wiping out most of the life on the planet. IT happened once, too...
#11- I agree we will never be 100% secure. We have to accept that, but maybe we could try dealing with some of the underlying causes of terrorism instead of having policies that inflame it? I think that Israel has the same problem. Ignoring the underlying cause.
Mindy
The amount of hazard we allow in our lives is enourmous at times, but we just avoid thinking about it. Our "sense" of security is predicated on the illusion that we can predict the future. Which we can, just not regarding everything.
Why in the world would anyone want to address the underlying causes? This arrangement has been working pretty sweet for them so far. Why ruin it all by capturing Bin Laden or by making people actually safe? People who are actually safe are not afraid. People who only have the illusion of safety are constantly afraid and can be controlled and manipulated. They can be herded in the Psychocivilized Society that is the end game for all this.
Something interesting I just remembered: they did a study in the UK and found that people felt considerably less safe when police stepped up patrolling in an area, presumably because it is the police admitting there is a problem. It stands to reason that if police did not patrol, people would be less safe, but feel safer. Funny, that. or else people just don't trust police.
but there's a fairly evident contradiction in US culture. traditionally the US is machismo incarnate, but if one watched the news or listened to some politicians, one would think the us is petrified of everything. Historically, tourism in Europe has dropped every couple of years because of some new terror threat scarring off the US tourists. people i know in the us aren't particularly walking around, looking over their shoulders, so who exactly is getting scared here? The classic lou reed track waves of fear comes to mind.
It's similar in the Uk, mind, when a few years ago friends of mine of slightly darker skin would get weird looks from certain excitable elders of society if they happened to be on public transit, not to mention as I'm sure has been brought up before on bb,the fact that after the bombings, /every/ person of Asian descent was searched if they took the underground. or once, stepping two feet away from a bag while I went to buy a pass for the underground got me a severe telling off from a white haired stranger. For some reason it seemed more appropriate to them to make a fuss, rather than simply find out if the luggage belonged to anyone nearby.
Schnr's cmmnts r ls pplcbl t mst frms f gn cntrl.
"f w mk gn cntrl dcsns bsd n th flng f sfty rthr thn th rlty, w chs lws tht mks s fl mr sf vr lws tht ctlly mks s mr sf."
@4 - I would like to buy your rock ;)
I recently had an experience with security theater meant to make me feel safe that made me feel less safe in the form of an additional security screening checkpoint between connecting flights. I would have merely thought of it as an annoyance but then thought that since we had been contained in the secure area the entire time since de-boarding the presence of the additional checkpoint meant they had doubts about the area being kept secure meaning that the checkpoints presence was itself an admission that the terminal was not secure. I thought about suggesting this to a staff member but figured making my flight was better than dealing with the fallout
Please continue shopping. Metal detectors and anti-tiger rocks have been placed at all entrances to the mall.
aw JL, yer not even tryin.
Feeling secure as a base state -in society - is a lot of work. It entails reflection, self-review of actions and consequences and worst of all , taking responsibility. Thats why it's usually contracted out. Problem, is then the work doesn't always get done right.
Hey wanna know how to how some semi-innocent fun and maybe get shot? Smile at cops. It has to be a genuine smile, a warm smile with real commiseration and affection, direct eye contact and ease of bearing. You have to be absolutely and obviously sober too for it to be effective. It's a bit mean, but worth it to see the poor guys mental gears lock up and primate-kill reflex surge forward - right up until it hits his higher mental process.
Wonder what's more work? Being vaguely afraid all the time or making the effort to SEE?
Tkn,
Tht's hw rspnsblty gts bdctd - by "cntrctng t" scrty t mk y fl sf. Scrty s n ndvdl rspnsblty, prd.
so,if you see me drowning, I'll get a smile and a wave?
f crs nt. Bcs scrty nd sfty r n ndvdl rspnsblty, wll jmp n t sv y rthr thn cllng 911 t "cntrct t" th srvc.
pushing it further, it's winter, over ice, professional gear is needed, jumping in is suicide...wiat a minute, did you just say :"Because security and safety are an individual responsibility, I will jump in to save you:?
Hah! Gottcha! How can my individual responsibility extend to you? JL Braun, you're a communist!
@22
Security as an individual responsibility doesn't mean you won't help others.
It's like birth control; it gives us the feeling of having reproduced, without actually having done so.
Strw mn, tkn. Syng "Gttch! wn!" dsn't mk t s.
Rscng smn n frzng lk rqrs mmdt ctn wthn 2 mnts. Cllng 911 nd wtng wll rslt n y bng dd. Rmmbr, whn y nd ssstnc rght nw, th plc/fr/MS s nly 15 mnts wy.
Rscng smn frm frzn lk s smpl nd rqrs vry lttl skll r qpmnt.
Prhps y nd t pck n xmpl mr std t yr frgn cnclsn?
f crs, 'm nt syng tht plc nd MS srvcs rn't ncssry - vn thgh 90% f th tm thy rrv t lt t d mch. 'm syng tht scrty nd sfty lwys lwys lwys strts wth th prvt ctzn, nd f n bdcts tht, y'll fl sf bt nt b sf.
never mind the window dressing, you clearly made the leap from rabid "individualist- yer-on-yer-own-buddy" to altruistically helping another human at one's own risk - clearly beyond duty to self. Or should I say "Comrade" Braun?
@28
I know I should just sit back and watch because it is often more fun (at least with comment threads) but...
I will re-iterate that there is no necessary conflict with an individualist helping others - even to their own detriment.
" wll r-trt tht thr s n ncssry cnflct wth n ndvdlst hlpng thrs - vn t thr wn dtrmnt."
xctly.
nd th pnt tht 'm tryng t mk t Cmmslngr hr s tht f w bdct scrty t gvrnmnt srvcs nd nglct t rslvs, w wll crtnly fl sfr bt wll b n sfr (r lss). f w tk rspnsblty fr rslvs nd thrs *s ndvdls*, mnng f s smn hlp, nd kp myslf sf, thn wll *fl* lss sf (mstly bcs 'm pyng ttntn t ptntl thrts rnd m), bt nd thrs wll n fct *b* sfr.
As so often happens in arguments like these you are both talking past each other. JlBraun's point that safety is a matter of personal responsibility is uncontested by Takuan. Takuan raising the question of altruism has not been addressed by the (I assume) Libertarian JlBraun.
There is of course a middle ground that acknowledges the concerns of both sides. That's where I usually pitch my tent.
Noen,
You miss the point, which is that JLBraun has never posted on any topic other than gun control. And then he posts every five minutes. In fact, I believe that he is banned from posting on this subject until he makes as many comments on other subjects as he has made on this one.
Well now Mr. Braun (IF THAT IS YOUR REAL NAME!), putting aside your naming of fellow travelers for the moment; You in one breath say everyone is responsible for themselves , and in the next contradict that by interfering in the fate of another, are you not then suggesting that security of person is in fact a "social" and not "individual"
matter,pleaseanswerthequestionMr.Braun.
Come now Mr. Braun, The Subcommittee is waiting....
Let the record show,let the record show that the person styling himself as "Comrade Braun" is unresponsive to the Subcommittee. Bailiff! Bring in the next vict-, witness.
Lizardman @18 who said "I recently had an experience with security theater meant to make me feel safe that made me feel less safe "
You've got it backwards. The theatrics are designed to make you feel less safe.
@36
Well, the theatrics may be designed to make you feel less safe (I think I may agree with you) but the claim made about them is that they make you safe. Really, it is an intrincate art form - creating something that makes people worry more about safety but is ostensibly for their safety so that it is self-justified and the basis for future abuse.
Regardless, my point about the extra checkpoint was that it was a tacit admission of their lie - it should not exist UNLESS it was ineffective.
Hlpng thrs hs nvr bn ncmptbl wth slf-rspnsblty. Ths shld b bvs.