On the Soapbox

As reported by C|Net, the New York Times, and the BBC, the new flight restrictions in the UK extend beyond just a ban on liquids, but a ban on just about any sort of carry-on item, including cell phones, laptops, and even newspapers. The NYT article mentions people who were forced to discard cell phones and iPods because there was no time before the flight departure to check in those items. Thankfully, the US has so far been more sensible about this and has limited the restrictions to just liquids.

There are several problems with the UK's approach. First, not everything should be checked in. Sensitive electronic equipment and fragile objects are not things that should be checked in. This also includes valuables, which up to this point, airlines have recommended carrying on due to the risk of damage or loss of checked items. And in today's digital age where laptops can often carry sensitive information (like those government laptops with sensitive data that were lost, or in my case, where my laptop contains an archive of a decade of personal correspondence), there are things that people will simply not feel comfortable letting out of sight.

Second, there is a problem of diminishing returns to security. There are only so many resources that society can afford to spend on security, and because of diminishing returns, every extra resource spent in this whack-a-mole game of turning airplanes into flying prisons will yield fewer gains. There are countless better ways to spend those resources, from securing borders to developing programs to identify and address the social causes of militant religious extremism. One has to wonder just how much security is added by prohibiting books on a plane. (See this March column by security expert Bruce Schneider in Wired for more about the problem of diminishing returns in airport screening.)

Third, while the marginal benefits of this extra security is decreasing, the marginal cost is increasing, and not just in the form of the direct cost of implementing the extra security, but also in the cost of lost time (especially now that time spent on a long-haul flight is totally wasted as the UK bans things as mundane as reading material), lost convenience, and discarded, lost, or damaged items.

And finally--and most importantly--we seem to lose sight of the goal of terrorism. Their goal is not to blow up planes or to kill people; to think that is to mistake a means for an end. Their goal is to convince us to give in to their demands and desires, and blowing up planes is just one way to cause the fear and disruption necessary for their goals. They hope that we would grow so sick and tired of them that we would give in, much like how Israel grew so weary of Hezbollah's attacks that they withdrew from Lebanon back in 2000. Thus, their goal is to cause the most amount of fear and disruption, and not necessarily to blow up the most number of people (though that helps). With that in mind, we have to ask, are the actions that we are doing do "protect" ourselves helping to stem fear and disruption or helping to spread it? To be sure, there is a certain amount of security that is necessary to make their activities more difficult, and up to a certain point, more security is a good thing. But beyond that point, the marginal benefits are so low and the marginal costs are so high that the extra security actually helps their cause more than it hurts it. Perhaps a good analogy would be the human immune system. We must have an adequate immune system (which people with AIDS lack) in order to survive, but an overzealous immune system can sometimes be just as damaging (such as in the case of multiple sclerosis, arthritis, diabetes, allergies, etc.). If a terrorist attack was the bite from an insect such as a mosquito, then a security overreaction would be the itchy bump that forms, and just as in the case of a mosquito bite, it is entirely possible that we could inflict upon ourselves more suffering than the terrorists could ever dream of inflicting by themselves. Looking at the way that the UK has reacted recently, one might even say that just by being caught, the terrorists were successful in their goal of terrorizing.

Up until the recent foiled attacks, I think that we have had a good balance of security. I am encouraged by the fact that the US has not resorted to the sort of Draconian measures adopted by the UK and that DHS Secretary Chertoff has promised to do away with the extra measures regarding liquids once the TSA has had a chance to find a better solution. I hope that this is all true and that we would soon return to the sort of balance that we had before. If not, then perhaps we should adopt a tiered security system where there are flights with this extra prison-camp security and flights with normal security. Then, people who believe that the benefit outweighs the cost (after all, this cost-benefit analysis is quite subjective, as it depends on how risk-adverse each person is, how much each person values convenience and personal freedom, how long the flight is, etc.) could ride on the "safer" flights and people who are willing to accept the consequences of increased risk could fly on reduced-security flights (and on routes without enough traffic to warrant separate flights, they could just default to extra security to be on the safe side). This would at least allow people to individually decide for themselves their cost-benefit equation instead of some whimsical government agency. I have a feeling that if people were given the option to choose, there would be a surprisingly large number of people who would choose less security. After all, even with terrorists, flying is still much safer than driving.