Terrorism is insignificant, stop spending money on prevention

[npts2020]

But with terrorism this does not work. Terrorism -- as opposed to say floods -- is driven by intent.

 

If you scale back your defences because their effect has been to reduce terrorism to a level which you see as negligible, what you are doing is changing a hard target into a soft target. What do you think happens next?

 

I see you don't like cost/benefit comparisons of terrorism to other similarly destructive causes that result in just as gruesome deaths, so lets approach the question from a different angle. I haven't seen anyone claim that it is possible to protect civilization 100% from terrorist attacks, so what exactly is an acceptable level? One Oklahoma City or 9-11 attack every ten years? One city in a century, thousand years? IMO Those who perpetrate terrorism ought to be pusued with the same vigor as any similarly malintented criminal. The question is at what point does further spending not measurably decrease risk? I see that CaptainPanic is asking basically the same thing.

Edited March 3, 2009 by npts2020

[DrDNA]

If I stop applying resources to weed prevention in my yard, what do you predict will happen?

[npts2020]

If I stop applying resources to weed prevention in my yard, what do you predict will happen?

 

You eventually end up with a steady state of weeds or whatever grows there. After some period of time you will not end up with any more than can possibly be there to begin with.

[ParanoiA]

Perhaps we put more focus on dangers presented by other humans since it represents the breakdown of the implied contract for group cooperation. So, maybe that's more insulting and ultimatley more destructive for the group as a whole so we naturally are more dramatic about it.

 

With accidents and illness, the event is not chosen by anyone involved. So, one could say we simply lacked the information or skill necessary to prevent this event.

 

With terrorism and crime, the event is chosen by other humans. There was no need for this event - it was entirely unnecessary had these humans followed the rules of the group, so to speak.

 

So, it's understandable if we can't cure AIDS. It's highly disturbing that we can't keep from beating each other to death. I think it may really be that simple.

 

We spend more money fighting terrorism and other violent crime because those are the most senseless sources of death.

[swansont]

Lastly is the issue of crime as I mentioned before: I'll add a scenario... a man is wanted for murder, and on the run. How much money should the government spend tracking him down? If he keeps popping up on the radar in cities but stays one step ahead of law enforcement with expensive raid after expensive raid on where he just was... when do you call the victim's family and say "You know, it's just not cost effective to follow even promising leads anymore, he's too good and by our calculations has no higher than a 50/50 chance of murdering more people in the future, so we'll just ignore him."

 

Except murders do go unsolved, and the police lower their effort level and then stop actively pursuing investigations after a while. You do prioritize, because resources are limited.

[DrDNA]

You eventually end up with a steady state of weeds or whatever grows there. After some period of time you will not end up with any more than can possibly be there to begin with.

 

Yes.

In other words, Plant Anarachy.

More weeds than I want or will tolerate.

Edited March 4, 2009 by DrDNA

[CaptainPanic]

If I stop applying resources to weed prevention in my yard, what do you predict will happen?

 

I will translate my question to the analogy of maintaining a nice yard.

 

You have a lawn. In fact, let's make it a golf course. The green should have a preferred length of the grass of 2 cm (assumption, there are probably rules about this).

So... do you cut it once per week? (a part-timer can do the work).

Cut it every 2 days? (you need a full time employee)

Or do you constantly have a lawnmower on all 18 greens? (you need 18 full time employees)

 

Obviously, you cannot stop cutting the grass.

 

Choosing better words

I apologise for using the words "stop spending money". I'd like to correct this to either "stop spending more money" or "spend less money".

 

Obviously, we do need some army, some police, and I do not want a complete anarchy... but I believe we're doing too much to solve a particular problem and too little for others.

I need to pay attention on a science forum where people tend to take every word literally (as a good scientist does).

[ParanoiA]

Internal threats are always a waste of money in that they're senseless, but they're worse than external threats. Shouldn't more money be spent on maintaining strong, ethical group cooperation than external threats to the group?

 

I'm just wondering if perhaps breakdown in group cooperation, the breakdown of society, is a larger threat than "external" ones, like disease, accidents, and so forth. Murderous crime between people would seem to undermine the most fundamental element of advantage by pack behavior. So perhaps that's why we interpret crime and terrorism as much worse than other threats that actually kill more total people. Maybe the threat to societal order is a greater one than the other death causing elements of life, and so that justifies greater spending to prevent "murder" than to prevent something like car accidents or AIDS.

Edited March 4, 2009 by ParanoiA

[DrDNA]

So... do you cut it once per week? (a part-timer can do the work).

Cut it every 2 days? (you need a full time employee)

Or do you constantly have a lawnmower on all 18 greens? (you need 18 full time employees)

 

Good point.

 

Along similar lines, I believe that the biggest problem by far is that we are entirely too reactive instead of being intelligently proactive.

 

For example, some idiot tries to light his shoes on a transatlantic flight and now everyone has to take their shoes off.

If someone hijacks a plane by stabbing pencils in people's necks, then pencils and pens will be banned from all flights.

 

What they should do is be proactive and replace the flight attendants on each flight (who mostly only serve beverages now anyway) with a couple of former Navy Seals packing baseball bats and Glocks.

I can pick up my juice or bottled water off of a counter when I board the plane.

OK. Maybe first class can have a regular attendant. They paid extra for it.

And international flights will still need attendants, because I need 5 or 6 little bottles of wine to go with my Benadryl so I can pass out until I arrive in Japan.

 

Conversely, we screen a VERY tiny percentage of containers that come in to our ports from over seas. A hidden nuke, dirty bomb, bio-agent or something similarly devastating in a container is a HUGE threat, but since it hasn't happened yet, it is largely ignored.

[Pangloss]

Security regulations do get a bit silly sometimes. There's a bit of a spat going on in the general aviation industry at the moment over the proposed imposition of airline security rules on small aircraft operating out of small GA airfields. Basically Sean Penn and John Travolta will soon have to doff their shoes off before getting on their privately-owned Gulfstream Vs just like you and I do before getting on American Airlines.

 

There seem to be two objections in the opposition. Some opponents are focused on the intrusion into a private matter (it's not as if they bought a ticket from a company; to which others point out that a fully-loaded GV still represents powerful kinetic energy weapon). Others complain about the lack of security personnel at small airports, or the potential impact on the aircraft manufacturing industry, which is already hurting due to the faltering economy (but is having to take off their shoes REALLY going to prompt them to want to change planes in Atlanta with all the little people?). And there's an interesting sub-argument about the accommodation of Air Marshals (would Travolta and his family really not notice if a stranger were to sneak on board a flight?). All of these matters will likely be debated during the public comment phase of the rules changes.

 

But that's big government for you. They've got a big job to do and it's a little hard for them to focus on the small details.

[padren]

Except murders do go unsolved, and the police lower their effort level and then stop actively pursuing investigations after a while. You do prioritize, because resources are limited.

 

and

 

Your last remark is in fact exactly why small robberies do go unsolved, or why police sometimes give up on a case. Now you may say that a small robbery is not such a big deal... I totally agree that quite a lot of effort has to be put into the arrest of a murderer. Police sometimes use teams of up to 50 people for weeks in a row to track down somebody. But at some point, enough is enough. You cannot use the entire army to track down a common serial killer. It would have to be the world's most wanted person (like Milosevic or Saddam).

 

Of course we move it over to "cold case" if we get no information on a crime for an extended period of time and have no effective means to gain new information, but that's not what I am talking about.

 

If a murder is 30 years old and the trail completely cold, a new lead will result in new resources being dispatched to follow it up - regardless of how much money was spent in the past without yielding a result.

 

This is one of the reasons I have trouble seeing terrorism as a "risk to budget" issue - how can you ignore a solid lead on someone that killed thousands of people and has sworn to do it again?

[CaptainPanic]

Conversely, we screen a VERY tiny percentage of containers that come in to our ports from over seas. A hidden nuke, dirty bomb, bio-agent or something similarly devastating in a container is a HUGE threat, but since it hasn't happened yet, it is largely ignored.

 

That's also a good point. I believe that an investment in a container scanner is a fraction of the investments we do in other fields of terrorism prevention.

 

Since the threat of a dirty nuke is perhaps not very big, but still a real threat (chance is never zero), it's pretty retarded that we scan people so thoroughly while letting the majority of the containers pass unchecked.

 

This is actually a point where I'd advise to increase investments. A relatively small sum of money will have great benefit. (Yes, I keep using the cost-benefit analysis for my risk assessment).

 

Here's a (Dutch) article of a new container scan in Rotterdam: 150 containers per hour with one scanner!

 

It really seems like a small investment. Assuming that you have peak hours and some time offline, you'd need about 10 of such scanners for the whole country. I'm not sure of the price of each, but surely it's less than the billions we spend on our army and police.

Every year, about 1.5 million containers enter the harbor of Rotterdam (source, in Dutch again - sorry).

 

This is one of the reasons I have trouble seeing terrorism as a "risk to budget" issue - how can you ignore a solid lead on someone that killed thousands of people and has sworn to do it again?

That's not the case. Terror prevention moved from "catching the bad guys" to "prevention". We're now arresting people, even killing them, in other countries who might in the future have the intention.

 

The people in guantanamo bay were sometimes just in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was not exactly a "solid lead on someone that killed thousands of people and has sworn to do it again".

 

I'm not saying we should have anarchy. I'm not saying that murder should go unpunished. I'm just saying that we should prioritize, and that terror prevention is receiving too much attention.

[padren]

That's not the case. Terror prevention moved from "catching the bad guys" to "prevention". We're now arresting people, even killing them, in other countries who might in the future have the intention.

 

The people in guantanamo bay were sometimes just in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was not exactly a "solid lead on someone that killed thousands of people and has sworn to do it again".

 

I'm not saying we should have anarchy. I'm not saying that murder should go unpunished. I'm just saying that we should prioritize, and that terror prevention is receiving too much attention.

 

On what are these assertions based? It seems to be the "prevention" angle is more to stop those who have already committed terrorist acts from continuing to do so. Not just individuals but organizations. Sure, we do send some money on generalized prevention such as increased security checks but I don't think we are running around the world trying to read people's minds to determine if they may ever consider committing a terrorist act.

 

You may be right about Gitmo and I've never been a proponent of that whole deal, but it is only one aspect of the war on terror. If anyone was just in the wrong place at the wrong time then yes "sometimes" that has been the case. As for no "solid leads" we are still pursuing members of known terrorist organizations that have committed and are committed to continuing terrorist attacks.

 

 

I think the whole "war on terror" can be summed up by the reality that technology now allows loose organizations to launch attacks with resulting death tolls only previously conceivable by other nation states, and as they have no nation of clear origin it makes the deterrent of retribution highly ineffective. We are simply in the process of refining the best way to deal with this new threat and naturally we are making some mistakes along the way as it's a process of trial and error, but the threat is genuine and will only continue to grow over time. I don't agree with all the tactics we've explored, but I certainly don't want to start trying out strategies only after it's gotten too large to ignore.

[Sayonara]

CP, the issue under discussion in this thread keeps changing. I asked you some direct questions about this earlier which you failed to reply to. Please clarify your position, because at the moment it seems to be "criticise mismanagement of counter-terrorism budgets". I can see why you would want to discuss this (especially from a US standpoint) and I think it is definitely a topic worthy of exploration but it differs drastically from your OP. It is exceedingly difficult to maintain a rational and meaningful discussion with you when you keep changing tack.

[John Cuthber]

I have to say that, personally, I'm not so much concerned with the level of spending as such; I'm concerned that they are spending it on the wrong things.

The clearest example is the UK government trying to bring in ID cards "to reduce the terrorist threat" which is nonsense. All the terrorists that usually get a mention (9/11 and 7/7) had perfectly valid ID