I am traveling via AMTRAK to Boston today [Actually yesterday: I did not get a network connection until this morning]. Given the hassles of airline travel I have grown to prefer it. Additionally there is the accessibility of an AC outlet for my laptop and enough space in front of me to actually use it.
When I picked up my ticket though, I noticed a display running through a whole long list of new rules and regulations. It seems the powers that be are not satisfied with wrecking the flight travel experience: they want to ruin train travel as well.
The people who think up these rules are really more in tune with the needs of a totalitarian regime than a society of sovereign individuals. One has to ask what problem are they really solving? As I had a forty five minutes wait whilst waiting for my gate announcement to go up on the schedule board., I did some mental arithmetic
What if we took train security back to what it was when America was still a free country, perhaps back in the fifties before the do-gooders gained any real power? What would be the likely result?
Assume we get a few Jihadi’s loose in the US and they manage to blow up three trains a year. Given the numbers from the UK and other places in Europe, these sorts of things usually kill 100 or fewer people. That translates to a 300 in 300,000,000 chance per US citizen per year: a 1 in a million chance. Given modern medicine and a bit of rounding up to 100 years lifespan, that would be 1 in ten thousand per person total or .01% chance of that being the mode of your death, rather than cancer or heart disease.
One has to ask whether this kind of risk level is worth what we are giving up for it. What do we get in return? We get treated like criminals, assumed guilty, herded through transport facilities like cattle into pens, with our civil liberties violated right and left. I would much rather they took all the security folk from here and shipped them over *THERE*.
As a thought experiment, imagine an insanely aggressive strain of Africanized bees shows up in your town. How will you deal with it? Will you run all over the town killing bees in ones and two’s? Will you try to make every place in town bee-proof and pass regulations requiring people seal their homes and businesses?
I know what I would do. I would track down the nest and wipe them out at source.
What we have here is an agency problem, so to speak. The problem is not “what do we get in return”. Rather, the moment a train blows up, the question is “why wasn’t this stopped”, accompanied by demands for heads.
Now put yourself in the position of the people making these decisions, and you see very well why these officials make a very rational choice – the answer to your question of “what problem are they actually solving” is “how not to get fired if terrorists blow up a train”. Which in turn is based on the general publics preferences.
apex
Quite. It is also important to compare the risks of dying in a terrorist attack on transportation with the other risks we accept and live with when we travel. Travelling by train is very safe, but the risk of dying in a rail accident is greater than that of dying due to a terrorist attack. If instead of getting a train we simply get in a car and drive down the highway, the risk of dying in a car accident is much greater than anything we have discussed so far. We accept these usually without thinking about them, generally. Giving up our liberty for the much smaller risks of terrorism is a bargain not wort making.
Yet it sems we have made this bargain already.
Wrong comparison. A lot, a big lot, is done to diminish the small chance of accidents. A lot of money is spent, many regulations. The accidents that occur is what’s left after the investment.
Same with the terrorist threat. You do what you can to reduce a risk that’s already very small. People think it’s worth losing some “liberty” for it. After all, nobody’s hurt by searches, just inconvenienced a little.
A terrorist would have to be pretty stupid to blow up a train in America when it’s trivially easy to derail one and impossible to prevent.
A terrorist would have to be pretty stupid to blow up a train in America when it’s trivially easy to derail one and impossible to prevent.
Well, there’s a lot of evidence for the proposition that terrorists, by and large, are quite stupid. They also go after spectacular events rather than easy ones.
Dale, your numbers are off. It’s not a 300 in 300,000,000. It’s 300 in the much smaller number (a tiny percentage I’d guess) who regularly ride trains.
And terrorists tend to blow up crowded commuter trains, where airline-level security is not practical, rather than inter-city ones.
All that increased security on a limited selection of targets will achieve is divert terrorist attacks to other softer targets.
Wow!
Just for starters you make a ridiculous assumption that without security precautions, terrorists would blow up an aribitrarily chosen number of 3 trains per year.
Secondly, the population at risk is not 300 mil, it is the number of people who ride the trains, i.e. a small fraction of that.
Besides, who the hell are you to say that since the odds are acceptable to you, then everyone else in a public conveyance, repeat public conveyance,
should reasonably assume the same risk ? No thanks.
Most thinking adults realize that in return for the benefits of living in society, you volunarily sacrifice an acceptable measure of your personal liberties. If the sacrifice is too great and you are excessively inconvenienced, I can think of a few places you could live where there are no security measures whatsoever to limit your personal liberties.
In fact I will do you a favor. Read the book “Ordinary Wolves” and it will describe how you can live a life in which there are no societal imposed restrictions at all. Only those imposed by nature and your own limitations. Undertake to live as described, and you will have perfect liberty–to live or die–without interference. Good luck.
You’re right that security regulations on air and train travel are more because people have demanded them, and indeed have criticised their government harshly for not imposing them, than because they’ll do much good; and the government know it. On the whole, I think the government would prefer not to have to do it – it’s a waste of resources and money they could use elsewhere – but even they understand the political realities.
On the whole, concepts like an “acceptable” death rate tend to upset people. It may have a certain utilitarian logic, but it is not human nature to think that way in peacetime. Certainly, I know that a few lefties got punched out from saying much the same thing about 9/11, and I’d advise you be very cautious about who you made the point in front of. Only the very self-assured political ideologue would blithely mention ignoring “acceptable losses” as a solution, and then wonder why people accused them of having lost touch with their humanity. The military and various government security analysts do think like that, because it’s their job, but they are most careful to keep it out of the public eye.
You’re example of the Africanized bees is an interesting one – but have you thought it through? You can’t track down the nest and wipe it out, because there are hundreds – thousands of nests. They have spread in a wave spanning the country. By the time you realise they’re there and what they are, they’ve already colonised your town, and will be already spreading further.
And the myths about “killer bees” are exaggerated in at least one respect – in practice they don’t attack humans if people keep out of their territory. It’s not just “convert or die”, you also have the opportunity to submit. There will be accidents and incidents, of course, but appeasement will surely kill fewer in the short term than all-out war. OK, so you have to give up large parts of your town to their control, you’re no longer free to walk where you want or do as you wish, but that’s a small price to pay, isn’t it? You’re living in daily fear of an agonizing death if you take mistaken step, but the risk is low enough to tolerate, isn’t it? Trying to exterminate them will be costly, dangerous, and quite possibly impossible, as there is an inexhaustible supply. Reaching an accomodation and living with them is what people do.
No, the reaction will not be as you suppose, to hunt the nest down, but will be to issue instructions not to offend them and to work round them, while trying to make people less scared by imposing searches and barriers in a futile attempt to keep them out. There are lots of places that are already occupied by Africanized bees, and people survive… mostly. Nearly all of them, anyway. Acceptable losses, right?
Are they having a big problem in the USA with people taking over trains, taking them off the usual tracks, and ramming them into buildings at 500 mph?
Pretty interesting trains AMTRAK has there!
If not then a train is merely a crowded place and warrents the same security precautions as shopping centers.
An environmentally sounder solution to the killer-bee problem would be to release honey-loving bears into the area around your town. Soon, no more bees, and less people- a win all round!
I don’t think Dale is disputing that. The question is what’s “an acceptable measure.” Being harrassed to no good purpose is not “an acceptable measure.” The original post very much frames this as a cost-benefit question – which is exactly what it is. NO ONE suggested replacing security checks on trains with complete anarchy.
I agree with your assessment of the risks of terrorism versus our reaction to it. Terrorism is just not that big a deal. Our efforts would be much better spent trying to limit terrorist networks, and decrease support for them in the population they hide in.
One difference between terrorists and killer bees is that if you kill killer bees it doesn’t persuade other regular bees to convert to killer beeism. Which is arguably one effect of the more indiscriminate methods of killing terrorists.
To my mind, the most annoying thing with all the searches and safety regulations is not that they are instituted in the first instance but rather that they would not prevent that low probability and high visibility event at all. Most of what goes for security screening at airports is so poorly considered and executed with such incompetence that it is not about security but merely the appearance of it.
2001 to present, we’ve had 3000 die from terrorism in this country. That’s 500/year.
Contrast that with 40,000/year in traffic deaths, half of them alcohol or drugs as contributing factors.
I suggest Alco-Sensor interlocks in all cars, without exception, and random DUI stops without legal justification (and I don’t mean checkpoints subject to judicial oversight either. The threat is too severe to allow the courts to interfere!) After all, nobody is really all THAT inconvenienced by having to perform roadsides!
(Why yes, yes, I am being facetious. Why do you ask?)
The analogy of the bees is not a good one, I think, because the bees are useful as they produce honey. There is also a good solution to African Bees but it is a cure that is worse than the problem.
The african bee produces more honey than the european bee, which is why Brazilian reasearchers were investigating them when they escaped and spread northwards. They are more aggressive than the European bee and easily take over hives and drive the European bee out. Since they produce more honey it is just nuisance value, on balance, and people learn to live with them and respect bees. I grew up in South Africa and my many encounters with bees was a part of life there. No more dangerous than the snakes (I encoutered black mambas) spiders and scorpions. You live with them and take adequate precautions.
However in the southwestern cape in South Africa there exists a bee which is impervious to encrouchment by the african bee. The Cape bee. Its docile but their defence mechanism against the african bee works very well and they tend to become dominant in areas where they clash with african bees. However they produce no honey.
So if the Americas want to get rid of the killer african bee, they can simply introduce the cape bee. Problem solved, but they will get no honey.
Back to terrorists?. Since they produce no honey, yes lets wipe them out where they breed.
There is a difference between drawing up safety/security laws for trains & planes over safety laws for cars: In cars, a single person takes his own life into his own hands, and has a fair amount of control over how he gets to his destination. In mass-transit, the responsibility lies in the hands of the transit operators (pilots, engineers, etc.) and planners.
When I drive, I don’t pick up hitchhikers. I don’t carry unfamiliar packages, and use common sense in carrying interesting chemicals, like cleaning solutions, photographic development chemicals, and the like. I check the bottoms of my shoes before I step inside, for stuff I don’t want messing up the interior of my car or gumming up the pedals/steering. These are reasonable precautions, no?
If I surrender control of my life to some twit at the front of a big, heavy locomotive and his pals in a control room somewhere nearby, I want them to have as much due diligence in checking who’s riding with me as I would when I’m driving myself.
As to your argument about “only one in a million”, and that being a reasonable cost for liberty: one otherwise avoidable death is too many. You are free to ride shank’s nag, if you feel your freedom is impinged too greatly by security precautions designed to protect the rest of us from malicious mischief.
leucanthemum b,
Do you go to stores? Shopping malls? Theatres? Farmer’s markets?
Do you eat? What do you eat? Where did it come from? How did it get to you? Did you test it? How do you know it is any safer for you than getting on a train?
Bruce Hoult got it right. “… then a train is merely a crowded place and warrents the same security precautions as shopping centers.”
And I add, that security is the choice of the railroad, etc, not of the politicians promising safety and building the illusion that it exists. This is an appropriate place for risk/benefit analysis and the companies not the politicians can make those judgements best.
“Any coward can tolerate tyranny. It takes a brave man to live in a free society.”
—Bill Hagness, Deputy Chief, Wisconsin Capitol Police, during a meeting on security for the Wisonsin State Fair, 2002
We need more people who think like Mr. Hagness.
Show me the society where I’m allowed not to sacrifice those liberties and I’ll let you get away with the word voluntarily. What actually happens is that a majority of your fellow citizens are willing to give up a liberty (or fail to even realize what they are losing) and the constitutional protections — if any — are inadequate to prevent them from forcing you to do so, too.
I’m ranting here a little, though, since most of the security measures in use on Amtrak trains probably don’t fall into that category. But some security measures, such as tracking private vehicles, do.
I agree completely with those statements. However, I also understand that such decisions are inevitable, that somebody has to make them, and that the failure to explain those two things to the people who don’t have to make such decisions allows the fantasy to continue.
I suspect the real solution to this is educational.
People are very bad (by and large) with statistics and especially risk analysis.
Consider MMR. Parents went bonkers over a vanishingly small chance of Crohn’s / autism but ignored the real dangers of measles, mumps and rubella…
And yes, I’m aware that the initial study on the dangers of MMR was about as scientific as looking at goat entrails. My point is that, even if what it claimed was true…
Then there’s nuclear power. Don’t even get me started on that one.
So, if I were designing a maths & science syllabus for a school I’d draw heavily from Darrell Huff’s excelent little book “how to lie with statistics”. I’d also put in tons of stuff on probability. Derren Brown’s “Tricks of the Mind” has some excellent examples of common statistical misconceptions. And we can make probability fun because afterall it’s gambling.
But there’s more… I’m a great believer that science education is very important. Because people are scared of things they don’t understand. Most people drive. Quite a few of those are scared of flying. Is that because driving is something they understand whereas they don’t really “get” basic aerodynamics? It’s certainly not a rational fear based upon a sober reflection on statistics. I don’t like heights. I can get quesy on a ladder (so there goes my inviolvement in the manned British Space Program) but I’m happy as a sandboy at 33,000ft in a plane.
I suspect that’s because I could bore you all senseless by going on about Ludwig Pradtl and boundary layers, flow seperation, wave drag, Mach numbers, compression lift and the Navier-Stokes equation.
Still, I’m not sure because… Well, as I said most people understand driving but in what sense do they understand it? Last I looked a thorough understanding of the thermodynamics of internal combustion and the Otto cycle was not a part of the UK driving theory test. Perhaps driving is just more common-place. Or perhaps it’s just the oft quoted witticism that practically everyone considers themselves an above-average driver.
Global Terrorism or Muslim Fundamentalism are not the core problem, it is not the reason why democratic rights and freedoms are being sacrificed all over the world.
The growth of terrorist attacks is the effect and the aftermath of authoritarian/totalitarian minded individuals and/or groups of such like people having made their way into positions of political power and trying to use their political power now to attain their narrow interest groups goals.
This has become a global phenomenon since the end of the Cold War. Western Democracies have proven to be just as susceptible to modern totalitarianism and corruption as former Communist or Third World nations.
The world’s Super Rich families on both sides of the Atlantic and the world over are trying to secure their positions. With the fall of the Berlin Wall the most vicious demons were set free.
Perhaps, it is too late to be surprised at what is going on. But it is high time to brace up for even worse things to come and be prepared to resign yourself to the realities of the world’s New Order as they are forming in front of our faces.
Which is not quite true – but the vast majority does – and that is a version of the same phenomenon. Bruce Schneier has a great essay on the psychology of risk here.
I like AMTRAK.
Was it one of the double-deck cruisers with the huge recliners and the cafe on the bottom level?
You’ve managed to both understate and overstate the case in the same paragraph! The tendency toward totalitarianism has been a global phenomenon since well before the Cold War started, never mind since it ended. And, while most western democracies have certainly been guilty of some of it (treatment of aboriginals, for example), any argument that attempts to put them in the same league as, say, Mao, Pol Pot, or Stalin is seriously overwrought.