Terrorism and Our Responses
Shortly after the Northwest Airlines Flight 253 incident, Bruce Schneier provided links to a number of articles that published interviews, quotes or essays from him. As expected, Schneier calmly reiterates his old advice that is as valid now as it was pre-9/11.
The one not to miss: Is aviation security mostly for show?
The best defenses against terrorism are largely invisible: investigation, intelligence, and emergency response. But even these are less effective at keeping us safe than our social and political policies, both at home and abroad. […]
Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country’s way of life; it’s only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, […] the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we’re doing the terrorists’ job for them. […]
We’d do much better by leveraging the inherent strengths of our modern democracies and the natural advantages we have over the terrorists: our adaptability and survivability, our international network of laws and law enforcement, and the freedoms and liberties that make our society so enviable.
In an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg Schneier was asked if we are “moving toward the Israelification” of airport security. Unsure what Israelification referred to, a quick search led to an excellent article discussing how airport security works in Israel:
Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don’t take s— from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, ‘We’re not going to do this. You’re going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport.
That, in a nutshell is “Israelification” — a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death.
Interestingly, a large proportion of Israel’s airport security is rooted in behavioural profiling: the meta-data.