Feel safer now?

AFTER September 11th 2001, most countries beefed up security at airports and other vulnerable places. Tough-looking immigration officials no doubt made passengers feel safer, offsetting the irritation of longer queues. Yet doing something because it makes people feel good is not adequate justification. Is money devoted to counter-terrorism well spent?

What claims to be the first serious study of its costs and benefits, by economists at the Universities of Texas at Dallas and Alabama*, says no. It was commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus, a think-tank that aims to scrutinise public spending on the world's woes and to ask “should we be starting from here?”

The authors of the study calculate that worldwide spending on homeland security has risen since 2001 by between $65 billion (if security is narrowly defined) and over $200 billion a year (if one includes the Iraq and Afghan wars). But in either case the benefits are far smaller.

Terrorism, the authors say, has a comparatively small impact on economic activity, reducing GDP in affected countries by perhaps $17 billion in 2005. So although the number of terrorist attacks has fallen, and fewer people have been injured, the imputed economic benefits are limited—just a tenth of the costs.

That does not necessarily mean the extra spending was wasted. The number of attacks might have been even higher. In 2007 Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown, said his country had disrupted 15 al-Qaeda plots since 2001. Yet so big is counter-terrorism spending and so limited is terrorism's economic impact that, even if 30 attacks like the London bombings of July 2005 were prevented each year, the benefits would still be lower than the costs. The authors conclude that spending is high because it is an insurance policy against a truly devastating operation such as a dirty bomb; and because, since terrorism is global, if one country improves security, so must others.

Terrorists react to incentives. If you tighten airport security, they hit trains. If you improve security at embassies, they kidnap businessmen. If you disrupt routine operations, they try deadlier ones. The authors reckon that, though the number of attacks and injuries has fallen since 2001, deaths have risen. Anti-terrorist spending displaces, as well as reduces, terrorism.

To get a sense of what might work better, the authors ask what would happen if spending were raised by 25%. Not much, they think: spending is inefficient now and would remain so. To see what might happen if there were more vigorous military action, they extrapolate from 2002-03, when America's belligerent response to September 11th was beginning. There were fewer terrorist attacks, they say, but the balance of costs and benefits is still poor—between five and eight cents of benefit for every dollar spent. But international co-operation to disrupt terrorist finances would be cost-effective, they think, producing $5-15 of benefits for each $1.

Given the uncertainties of the calculations, such figures can hardly be a blueprint for radically reordering spending priorities. But they are a reminder that throwing money at terrorism works no better than throwing money at anything else, and that some kinds of anti-terrorist spending are more efficient than others.

* “Transnational Terrorism”, by Todd Sandler, Daniel Arce and Walter Enders. www.copenhagenconsensus.com

The Patriot Act and other such legislation was full of all sorts of new and untested ideas for how to improve security, so after actually using them, of course we need to discard those that are expensive and do nothing, while keeping those that are cost effective and work.

It has also highlighted some very painful truths. Probably the most important of which is that “racial profiling works”.

And while this truth is agonizing for many, it is still a truth, and if we ignore it because of its past use and potential for abuse, the question has to be asked.

“Is it more important that we not offend people or that we save possibly thousands of American lives?”

We cannot let offense dictate our security. If you are a Muslim, carry or exhibit in any way things that imply such an association, appear, dress, travel, associate or behave in an unusual manner, you are a suspect. A blond haired, blue eyed, Anglo Saxon grandmother in a wheelchair is *not*, and no effort should be made to consider that she might be a jihadist terrorist. Just to be “fair”. “Fairness” has NOTHING to do with security.

Now, that being said, it is ALSO very important to separate “real” security from a “philosophy” of security.

That is, for well over 2,000 years, there have been those who are paranoid, voyeuristic, control freaks. The police state created by the first Chinese Emperor had many of the same elements as did that of East Germany. And yes, there are those in the United States who would *prefer* if we lived that way.

Using the doctrines of “security” and “safety”, they hope to achieve maximum control over the lives of citizens. They insist that they must do this, or chaos and anarchy will reign.

In truth, their obsession with control is a combination of foolish ideas. First is that by doing so, their job will become “easier”. But it also shows their inefficiency and incapability. Because focusing on the minutiae of people’s lives means that they are ignoring the big things that are the very purpose of government.

In America, the very definition of the control freak is the desire to have a national identity card. This was a major selling point of the Social Security system, and they knew full well it was a de facto national ID system, even though it clearly said it wasn’t.

But the *failure* of the Social Security ID card system was fair warning of what will happen to *any* such ID card system, no matter how high tech.

This is important, because the high technology and high security of such cards are new selling points, hoping to overrule the common sense of those who know it won’t work.

A national ID card will not make our lives safer or more secure. Nor will it make the job of the enormous new bureaucracy any easier. It will not be more secure than current State driver’s licenses, as it will probably be issued by State DMVs, by the same people who screw that up today.

But what about the other high tech gizmos? The new, terribly expensive, high tech passport is already a bust, as its RFID chip can be read and copied, or disabled. Any government that wished to fake such a passport would be easily able to do so, as will most criminal organizations.

Other systems, from placing innumerable security cameras everywhere, with unwatched monitors; to face recognition software with a 30% margin for error, are all just expensive and ineffective toys.

Right now, for safe airline travel, just three things would eliminate any terrorist attempting to fly. Profiling and asking people if they have had control of their suitcases. And firing any airport employee who fails a background check.

These three things would be as or more effective than all the other nonsense done at airports. Ironically, they won’t stop the biggest threat to airline passengers: drunks and insane people.

But airline passengers are getting pretty good at taking care of such nuisances themselves.

All the other stuff could be forgotten, with no loss in airplane travel security. All the rest is eyewash, and the “philosophy” of greater security.

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