[Infowarrior] - The terrifying cost of feeling safer
Richard Forno
rforno at infowarrior.org
Fri Sep 12 12:23:24 UTC 2008
(c/o Schneierblog - a bit dated of an article but quite
relevant.......rf)
The terrifying cost of feeling safer
* Ross Gittins
* August 26, 2008
http://business.smh.com.au/business/the-terrifying-cost-of-feeling-safer-20080826-435l.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2
We hear a lot less these days about the risk of a terrorist attack in
Australia. The last excitement was over some highly suspicious Indian
doctor on the Gold Coast, and that didn't end well for our fearless
guardians.
So does that mean we've calmed down and life at the bottom of the
world has returned its former untroubled state?
'Fraid not. Judging by the polls it means our idea of life has been
changed to incorporate the ever-present risk of terrorist attack.
Last week the Australian Strategic Policy Institute issued a special
report on public opinion towards defence, security and terrorism,
written by Ian McAllister, a professor of political science at the
Australian National University, and based on that university's most
recent Australian Election Study.
This nationwide opinion survey found almost two-thirds of people
agreeing that acts of terrorism will be part of life in future. Only
14 per cent disagreed. This was similar to the response to the same
question in American polls.
It's now clear that when people think about defence and national
security, the main thing they have in mind is the risk of terrorism,
not the risk of invasion by another country.
Half of all voters fear being the victim of terrorism and about two-
thirds believe there will be a major terrorist attack on Australia in
the future and are concerned about it. Again, these are similar to
opinions in the US.
So great is our concern that most people are willing to see the fight
against terrorism involve the curtailment of civil rights. Well over
half of voters agree that freedom of speech shouldn't extend to groups
that are sympathetic to terrorists. And almost two-thirds agree that
police should be allowed to search the houses of people who might be
sympathetic to terrorists without a court order.
In this we're much more accommodating than the Americans. In the Land
of the Free, it seems, people are a lot less willing to give up their
freedoms.
Since 2001, more than 40 pieces of legislation have been passed by
Federal Parliament increasing the powers of domestic security and law-
enforcement agencies to conduct counter-terrorism operations and
restricting the legal rights of terrorism suspects. To that you can
add huge increases in the budgets of those agencies.
And yet the study reveals that almost 40 per cent of voters believe
the Government should be doing more to prevent terrorism, whereas only
10 per cent believe it's done too much.
There's just one small problem with all this. Australians, like people
in most countries, have a hugely exaggerated impression of the
likelihood of terrorist attacks. Actually, make that two small
problems. The other is we have an exaggerated impression of
governments' ability to prevent attacks.
It's a well-known finding of psychology that humans tend to
overestimate the probability of rare events, while underestimating the
probability of more common events. That's partly because rare events
may be more dramatic and tend to stick in our minds, whereas more
frequent events tend to fade into the background.
It's hard to forget the events of September 11, 2001, in which 3000
people were killed, and the Bali bombings of October 2002, in which
more than 200 people were killed, including 88 Australians. But for a
significant terrorist act on Australian soil you have to go back more
than 30 years to the Hilton Hotel bombing in 1977, in which just three
people died.
None of those events gives us a realistic idea of the probability of
an attack. Transnational terrorism across the world leads to an
average of 420 deaths a year. With a global population of 6.6 billion,
that's not a big risk.
The chance of being killed in a road accident is very much higher.
Australia's annual road toll is four times that figure for the whole
globe. And in the US, 10 times as many people are killed on the roads
each year as the number killed in the unprecedented and unrepeated
events of September 11.
Even the chance of contracting HIV/AIDS would be much higher. But
modern politicians are much more in the business of pandering to the
public's misperceptions - and exploiting them for their own ends -
than they are of setting us straight on the facts of life.
In a study of terrorism prepared for the Copenhagen Consensus project
by Professor Todd Sandler, of the University of Texas, and two other
economists, they conclude that "guarding against terrorism can use
large resources for little reduction in risk".
What's more, defensive measures against terrorism "may simply change
the focus of attacks (for example from hijacking to kidnaps) and even
increase attacks by creating new grievances".
Sandler and his colleagues conducted an analysis of the costs and
benefits of five different approaches to combating terrorism. I must
warn you that, because of the dearth of information, this study is
even more reliant on assumptions than usual. Even so, in three cases
the cost of the action so far exceeds the benefits that doubts about
the reliability of the estimates recede.
Because the loss of life is so low, they measure the benefits of
successful counter-terrorism measures in terms of loss of gross
domestic product avoided. Trouble is, terrorism does little to disrupt
economic growth, as even September 11 demonstrated.
Using the case of the US, Sandler estimates that simply continuing the
present measures involves costs exceeding benefits by a factor of at
least 10. Adopting additional defensive measures (such as stepping up
security at valuable targets) would, at best, entail costs 3.5 times
the benefits. Taking more pro-active measures (such as invading
Afghanistan) would have costs at least eight times the benefits.
According to Sandler, only greater international co-operation, or
adopting more sensitive foreign policies to project a more positive
image abroad, could produce benefits greater than their (minimal) costs.
What's that? You don't care what it costs because no one can put a
value on saving a human life? Heard of opportunity cost? Taxpayers'
money we waste on excessive counter-terrorism measures is money we
can't spend reducing the gap between white and indigenous health - or,
if that doesn't appeal, on buying Olympic medals.
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