[IP] more on TSA Says It Can Decide Who Can Learn

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com>
Date: October 24, 2004 12:28:24 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Cc: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>
Subject: Re: [IP] TSA Says It Can Decide Who Can Learn

For publication

> From: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>

> It doesn't threaten *you* -- probably.  By the time they come for your
> school and your students and your subject, nobody will remember who
> Rev. Martin Niemoller was.

Or what the Maginot Line was.  The Maginot Line was, in itself,
successful.  It kept the German from crossing at the same place.
However, since it didn't make the German attack through the Ardennes
Forest more expensive, its end result was nil.  It was, in its day,
the same security theatre that we're seeing acted out in the USA
today.

Should we seek to secure airplane flight?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  The
more interesting question, to me, is "Why are people satisfied by
security theatre?"  Every security professional either laughs or cries
when they go through airport security.  It seems to me that, if
experts are being ignored, then the incentives must be set up wrong.
If a private company had to stand by its promise "We'll get you there
safely", then perhaps they actually would.

I think that the whole terrorism thing has been greatly overblown.
Why are we scared by a few thousand terrorist deaths when Americans
kill 50,000 of our own citizens every year, year after year, in
automobile accidents?  When we kill 24,000 people per year using guns?
When 36,000 people are killed by influenza?  I know that nobody will
listen to me, but I think we ought to regard terrorism as yet another
inescapable hazard of life, like tornados and hurricanes, deal with
the risk in proportion, and stop talking about "winning the war on
terror".  We lost the war on poverty (many people are still poor), and
the war on drugs (many people are still using, buying, and selling
drugs).  What reasonable person expects us to win the war on terror?

"It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear" -- Freeman
Dyson.  He's been mugged, so he ought to know.

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