Friday, June 1, 2007

Rational security

There's a column on Wired that makes an excellent point about security. There are things we know work, which prevent dangers we know exist. Like seatbelts, bike helmets, avoiding eye contact with dogs, and smoke detectors.

Then there's taking off your shoes at the airport. One guy had a shoe bomb, and the attack didn't work. It's ridiculous that the TSA reacts to every new threat by preventing the attacks of the past, instead of investing in good intelligence and surveillance that will prevent the attacks of the future.

Like this blogger points out, we do things that make us feel safe, but actually are totally predictable by bad guys. We need to figure out how bad guys act, understand how they think, and then act in ways that will predictably block their actions.

Not make my mom dump out her water bottle twice before boarding a plane. (The Chinese just have a guy who smells your water to make sure it's water.)

1 comment:

Erin said...

The Japanese had me toss it out. Leaving China, the people just shook their heads at us in the US-bound flight line and said, "You Americans know what to do" and pointed at the bin.