Dangerous Security, a Pastor’s Perspective

The following is written by my pastor, Tim Bayly of ClearNote Church in Bloomington, IN, on his blog.

Happened across a website of a security expert (Bruce Schneier) about a week ago, and I’ve been reading it ever since. Yesterday I discovered that he’s written about airport security. He got into a very long argument with Sam Harris, who claimed that we should be doing racial profiling at airports, since we basically know what group the next terrorist will come from. Schneier says that to do proper profiling requires behavioral profiling, not racial profiling, and that it’s too expensive. Doing racial profiling would actually result in less security, since it would introduce needless complexity as well as giving the terrorists a predictable system that could be gamed.

A short history of airport security: We screen for guns and bombs, so the terrorists use box cutters. We confiscate box cutters and corkscrews, so they put explosives in their sneakers. We screen footwear, so they try to use liquids. We confiscate liquids, so they put PETN bombs in their underwear. We roll out full-body scanners, even though they wouldn’t have caught the Underwear Bomber, so they put a bomb in a printer cartridge. We ban printer cartridges over 16 ounces — the level of magical thinking here is amazing — and they’re going to do something else.
This is a stupid game, and we should stop playing it.

(another excerpt from Schneier)

We should treat terrorists like common criminals and give them all the benefits of true and open justice — not merely because it demonstrates our indomitability, but because it makes us all safer. Once a society starts circumventing its own laws, the risks to its future stability are much greater than terrorism…

Today, we can project indomitability by rolling back all the fear-based post-9/11 security measures. Our leaders have lost credibility; getting it back requires a decrease in hyperbole. Ditch the invasive mass surveillance systems and new police state-like powers. Return airport security to pre-9/11 levels. Remove swagger from our foreign policies. Show the world that our legal system is up to the challenge of terrorism. Stop telling people to report all suspicious activity; it does little but make us suspicious of each other, increasing both fear and helplessness.

…fear is politically expedient, but bad for true security.

Read more: http://baylyblog.com/blog/2012/08/dangerous-security

You can hear sermons from Tim and other pastors at ClearNote here.