[Infowarrior] - The terrifying cost of feeling safer

[Richard Forno]

(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.