Never forget: January 31st, 2007

[cos]

One year ago today, at about this time, Boston was in a panic:

For those of you not familiar with Aqua Teen Hunger Force , the Mooninites are a race of video-game aliens who attempt, albeit inefectually, to wreak mayhem on the world. (They are completely awesome, though, because Schooly D does their theme song.) The joke is that the Mooninites always fail to do any real harm.

Except, that is, in Boston.

In the wake of the attack of the Mooninites, I wrote What Does Random Panic Protect Us From?

We're not facing a serious threat.
We have a process, which I call "Random Panic", that doesn't protect us from it anyway.
The protection is actually a bigger problem than the supposed threat.

... please read the whole post. Please pass it on.

Comments

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

There's one flaw in your argument, or rather one of your arguments, but it's not the most central argument, which I agree with. I've studied martial arts for a number of years now, and one thing that always drives me nutty in discussions of martial arts is when someone asks for advice on a martial arts style for "self-defense". My answer is always: defense against what? What kind of attacks are you being subjected to on a regular basis? And the answer is always, uh well I'm not actually being attacked, but y'know, sometimes I have to go into some scary parts of town (insert racist/classist subtext about what makes a part of town "scary"), or what if I'm in a bar and some asshole starts hassling my girlfriend, or what if I'm walking down the street and some crack-crazed urban scum decide to take my wallet, and I need to PROTECT MYSELF rowr! Pointing out the cartoon nature of these "threats" never works, unfortunately. Once every blue moon, someone somewhere gets attacked by the stereotypical crack-crazed urban scum, and that's enough to constitute a "threat" in the minds of those who would rather fight cartoon threats than real ones. IOW, it's not a policy thing, it's not a Homeland Security thing, and it's definitely not a Boston thing. It's a human thing and it happens on an individual level.

(the flaw, btw, is that people ride subways and sit on benches in Harvard Square, but they don't normally climb up underneath bridges. In our society, an unattended object in a place that people frequent has a common-sense explanation: that someone was there and left it there by accident (or will be coming back for it). You really can't explain an object under a bridge as the result of such a commonplace action.)

[cos]

That's not a flaw. I thought I addressed that directly: Yes, these objects were *weird* (their placement is one of the things that made them weird), but that in and of itself actually made them *less* likely to be dangerous. Someone actually wanting to plant a bomb to blow people up would make an effort to make the bomb blend in and not appear weird. So their placement, along with their appearance, both made them less likely to be bombs and made them more likely to trigger an alert.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

I understand your point, but I'm not sure I agree with your reasoning. As you pointed out, we're not operating under the Israeli logic of, "Bombs are likely to come in an ordinary package, therefore all ordinary packages are suspect" -- and, as you've also pointed out, we demonstrably don't need to be. Does it therefore follow that something that's not in an ordinary package should be assumed to be innocuous? I'm not so sure about that. I think it depends somewhat on where you find it. If someone had spotted a Mooninite on the wall of a synagogue, would it be sensible to assume that it was innocuous?

[cos]

It's just as sensible as assuming that any ordinary object is innocuous. As both you and I pointed out, chances are extremely high that it *is* innocuous, in both cases. But if an object is weird, that strongly indicates that whoever put it there wanted it to be discovered; a terrorist bomber would use something not likely to be discovered until it blows up, if his/her aim is to actually have it blow up. If we actually had a threat of bombs, we'd be better off looking for "ordinary" objects, as the Israelis do. Looking for the weird ones is just a distraction (and a distraction terrorists could use to their advantage given that they know how we mis-react, BTW). Since we don't actually have a threat of bombs, we're best off acting under the assumption that all objects are innocuous, and keeping that in mind when investigating anything: that is, don't sound the alarm, close roads, etc. until you find some actual evidence.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Eh. You keep avoiding the matter of where the objects were placed. I guess you don't think that should have any bearing on the reaction. I disagree with that. People don't accidentally leave things on the underside of bridges -- if you saw something attached to the underside of a bridge, what would your first thought be about who put it there, and why? Would you really think, "Oh, some stickeritti 'artist' decided to climb up there and place his 'art'"?

[cos]

Oh, it was clearly not "accidental". Nowhere in the assertion that it was probably safe, is any indication that it was accidental, or that only accidental things are safe. Deliberate things are usually safe, and accidental things are sometimes dangerous.

No, I most certainly would not assume something that looked like it was trying to draw attention like that was dangerous, no matter where I saw it placed. And that's what Boston did: they assumed it was dangerous, without any evidence.

You are providing a good illustration of why this mindset is so ingrained. You're right, there's something basically human about it. However, government is a structure that should be able to get around this kind of flaw with the right processes, procedures, checks, and balances.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

No, I most certainly would not assume something that looked like it was trying to draw attention like that was dangerous, no matter where I saw it placed.

Right, so to you, where it's placed is irrelevant, and the reaction to an odd-looking object hanging out the window of some kollege kid's apartment in Allston merits the same reaction as an odd-looking object attached to the underside of a bridge. I don't agree with that. I think that's a very naive view.

And that's what Boston did: they assumed it was dangerous, without any evidence.

You're talking about yourself.