Co-blogger Orin Kerr points out that some people claim that governments fail to take proper airport security precautions before an attack happens, while others worry that they will overreact once an attack does occur. Unfortunately, these two problems are not mutually exclusive. It could well be that governments both fail to take proper precautions before an attack occurs and respond with unnecessary “security theater” measures afterward.
I. Perverse Political Incentives Before and After Terrorist Attacks.
Before an attack occurs, or when a long period of time has passed between attacks, politicians have little incentive to enact good security measures. They have limited time and political capital, and the incentive is to spend it on measures that are popular with the general public or that benefit powerful interest groups. Neither the public nor interest groups are likely to push hard for effective security measures when there is no immediate fear of attack.
To be sure, incumbent politicians might be blamed if a successful attack occurs. However, large successful attacks are fairly rare, and there is a good chance that none will occur during any given politician’s term even if security policies are far from optimal. Moreover, when an attack does occur, many voters will assume that it was unpredictable and forego imposing electoral sanctions on the incumbents. For example, neither party suffered electoral damage after the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. This helps explain why, prior to 9/11, neither Democrats nor Republicans made a high priority of eliminating even our worst security policies, such as the “intelligence wall” which was later heavily criticized by the 9/11 Commission and others.
After an attack, politicians have strong incentives to enact measures that make the public believe they are “doing something” to prevent a recurrence. Unfortunately, “security theater” policies often accomplish this political objective better than less visible measures that are likely to be more effective in actually preventing attacks. As security expert Bruce Schneier puts it:
Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn’t make any sense. But unfortunately for politicians, the security measures that work are largely invisible. Such measures include enhancing the intelligence-gathering abilities of the secret services, hiring cultural experts and Arabic translators, building bridges with Islamic communities both nationally and internationally, funding police capabilities — both investigative arms to prevent terrorist attacks, and emergency communications systems for after attacks occur — and arresting terrorist plotters without media fanfare. They do not include expansive new police or spying laws, or security theater measures that directly target the most recent tactic or target.
A closely related problem is that, in the immediate aftermath of an attack, governments have strong incentives to target the specific methods used in that attack, even though this “fighting the last war” strategy probably won’t foil terrorists who are smart enough to use new tactics the next time.
II. The Role of Political Ignorance.
Of course both pathologies would be greatly reduced if voters were knowledgeable about security issues. In that happy scenario, they would press politicians to enact effective preventive measures before an attack, and would not put up with “security theater” if a successful attack does occur. Such well-informed voters would also understand that it is impossible to reduce terrorist attacks to zero at an acceptable cost, and that we should not enact costly measures whose main effect is simply to divert terrorists to other, more vulnerable targets. Armed with this knowledge, the voters could punish politicians who neglected security before an attack. They could do the same to those who enact “security theater” policies afterwards.
Unfortunately, most voters are “rationally ignorant” about politics, and know very little about airport security policy (as is also true of most other policy areas). They also have strong incentives to do a poor job of evaluating the very limited information about politics they do know. Airport security is particularly difficult for ignorant voters to assess because it is complex, and many of the most effective measures are invisible to the public. Moreover, it’s hard for the public to measure success, since there is no way for voters to know whether a long period without an attack was the result of security measures, luck, offensive victories against the terrorists or other factors. Public ignorance is likely to be an especially serious problem in dealing with policies that are complex and difficult to understand.
For these reasons, politicians have strong incentives to neglect effective security measures before an attack occurs, and to overreact with dubious “security theater” policies afterwards. That does not mean that they will never take any effective measures at all. Once a major attack does occur, politicians have at least some incentive to enact effective policies in addition to “security theater,” because they will likely suffer greater political blame if another successful attack happens soon after. But public ignorance does help explain why there tends to be an undersupply of good security policies before attacks and an oversupply of security theater afterwards.
Chris Travers says:
That’s a good point. I would further note that only high-profile attacks count.
In 1994, for example, a FedEx employee sought to hijack FedEx flight 705 and fly it into the FedEs headquarters. Due to the truly courageous efforts of the crew the attacker was overcome and the plane landed, severely damaged but safe. The flight crew sustained sufficient injuries that none of them ever flew again. The perpetrator, Auburn Calloway, is currently serving two concurrent life sentences without parole.
I would note that the flight crew in FedEx pushed the airframe wellbeyond its limits. It set the fastest speed for an MD11, and the flight involved barrel rolls, inverted flight, and other extreme maneuvers.
The reason for the attack? Calloway had lied on his resume and knew he was about to get fired for it. He figured that if he could frame it as an accident, his family could collect on life insurance worth $2.5M.
It wasn’t widely publicized, so nobody, except the terrorists who would later orchestrate a similar plan, gave the concept of using aircraft as guided missiles any further thought until seven years later, on 9/11. It is also noteworthy because it is the only terrorist attack to occur on a US commercial airplane after Pan-Am 101 and before 9/11. Being a matter of cargo shipping, I am not convinced that passenger screening would have helped.
December 29, 2009, 7:37 pmJohn Doe says:
I don’t think that you are addressing the difference between executive branch and legislative branch responses. You are right that prior to a major attack, elected politicians have little incentive to enact preventive measures. But many if not most preventive measures are undertaken by the executive branch, and I think that they take significant and ongoing steps to do so regardless of whether there is a major event and regardless of whether their efforts are publicized. The government airport security efforts may be misguided, but it is not because of politicians’ lack of motivation — those motivations are not the major source of security efforts.
December 29, 2009, 7:55 pmreadery says:
Professor Somin,
The earth has not yet been invaded by giant spiders from outer space. Now is the time to prepare. Given competing priorities, what percentage of the earth’s resources would you think is reasonable to invest to forestall such an attack? Are we being ignorant for not now making every effort to prevent such an attack while we still have time?
One thing I don’t understand about your argument is that it seems to make a claim that the true likelihood and frequency of obscure future events is knowable in advance — that we (or at least you, we being ignorant) can actually know in advance whether giant spiders will invade the earth, or whether someone will fly a giant aircraft into a major building before it happens. And not only that, but we can know what will happen in the future with such accuracy that we can confidently claim that those who guess differently from us are wrong. Ignorant, no less.
Or at least, that we can confidently claim to know what will happen after it has already happened.
As Shakespeare said, I too can summon spirits from the misty deep, and so can any man. But will they come when you call?
Would you venture to predict the future? What event that has not yet happened do you think we ought to devote a lot of resources towards preventing but are neglecting? If you have the ability to be a Friday quarterback, your Monday commentary about what seems to you to have been obviously foreseeable Sunday will get a lot more respect.
December 29, 2009, 7:59 pmShelbyC says:
I, like many people, do a fair amount a predicting the future in my job, estimating how long things will take, whether doing x or y differently will make things go faster or slower. I’m pretty good at it because I have invested alot of time learning how to predict the things I am responsible for predicting, and developing the underlying skill sets so I know how to make things happen faster.
I have invested this time because I am professionally responsible for doing these things, and how well I do them has a large effect on my livelihood.
But I am also responsible for selecting the politicians who are going to figure out how to protect our airports, and figure out the best flood control system for the Mississippi basin, and how to best provide us with healthcare. But I have spent very little time learning about these things, because how well I know them has very little effect on me.
December 29, 2009, 8:19 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Threat Assessment, Ideology, and Airport Security — A Response to Ilya says:
[...] Archives « Public Ignorance and the Political Economy of Airport Security: Why Governments Don’t Take Enough … [...]
December 29, 2009, 8:29 pmSW says:
I think, the important point that is missing in this analysis is the economic constraint. The economic constraint is also why, I think, the security theater problem is overblown. Everyone has an interest in an economically viable air system. We have, after all, invested huge amounts of public and private money in it and we rely on it so greatly that its shut down, alone, can cause a recession. Thus, regulation is not about to kill the golden goose, on one hand, nor will the regulator allow it to be killed (by terrorists or otherwise) on the other.
This knowledge, of what the trade will bear (in regulation, safety, service etc.) is in the diffuse hands of economic actors, who, if nothing else are experts in their own interests.
December 29, 2009, 8:41 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I’m reminded of the mayor in “Jaws” telling the police chief, “You say ‘shark’ and we have a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.”
Chris, I remember Auburn Calloway. He attacked the pilot with a hammer, didn’t he? But would you really call that a terrorist attack?
December 29, 2009, 8:52 pmSW says:
And they did!
December 29, 2009, 9:00 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
But not because the police chief said “Shark!”
December 29, 2009, 9:03 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Actually, it was short-sighted of the mayor to pretend that there was not a problem. The town would have lost money, yes, and that would have been bad, but what happened was worse.
Here is the story in 30 sec if anyone needs it.
December 29, 2009, 9:05 pmBlue says:
That’s not true, actually. I was on a team dealing with EPA reporting requirements regarding chemical plant releases back in the late 1990s. The required scenario for us was the immediate release of a entire, very large pressurized vessel of chlorine gas, followed by the potential damage the plume would cause. (The initial requirement of this national program–no joke–was developing a public website where you would put your zip code in and the website would show you a precise map of all the dangerous chemicals in the area and the “kill zones” that would be generated upon a release.) The chemical industry was eventually able to convince even the insane environmentalists at the EPA that this was a Very Bad Idea.
The scenario used for our case–a 737 flying directly into the tanks.
December 29, 2009, 9:13 pmSW says:
True Laura but luckily the mayor wasn’t the only actor, there were also the people that stayed out of the water, the chief that protected his family and town, and the townspeople that paid for the shark killer, the expert, and the boat. Everyone acting in their own interest, as they perceived it.
December 29, 2009, 9:21 pmChris Travers says:
Well, I disagree with you on a couple of points here.
First, good security people should be thinking about ways to circumvent security. These need to be corrected and/or publicly disclosed. Believe me, I have worked with excellent software security testers in the past and very often they notice something small and immediately figure out how to break into secure functionality of the software.
Secondly, in 1994, in Memphis, TN, a disgruntled former military pilot tried to fly an MD-11, fully loaded with fuel for a cross-country flight into the FedEx headquarters (I guess he doesn’t count because he wasn’t Muslim). He was stopped by truly heroic actions of the flight crew. If that didn’t alert folks to the possibility of a similar coordinated attack by terrorists, I don’t know what would.
December 29, 2009, 9:22 pmChris Travers says:
His goal was to crash the plane into the FedEx headquarters, and hopefully sink the company that was about to fire him. Sounds like terrorism to me…..
December 29, 2009, 9:25 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
No, Chris, because terrorism has to have some component of sending a message. He wanted his act to appear to be an accident, didn’t he? There was no political motive at all? Not terrorism any more than any mass murder is.
December 29, 2009, 9:35 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Do Politicians Have Good Incentives to Promote Airport Security? says:
[...] a response to my post arguing that politicians have strong incentives to not enact good security measures before terr…, Orin argues that politicians actually do have good incentives: In my experience, politicians have [...]
December 29, 2009, 10:08 pmyankee says:
It’s actually worse than that. Bush benefited directly from 9/11 in several ways. First, his approval rating immediately skyrocketed from 55% before the attack to 90% immediately after. It took two years for his job approval to return to pre-9/11 levels. Second, Congress rapidly passed multiple pieces of legislation dramatically increasing his powers (the Patriot Act and the extremely broad Authorization for Use of Military Force). Third, it gave him leeway to pursue “security” policies, most notably the Iraq war, that would have been unthinkable before 9/11. Fourth, it raised the salience of national security, an issue on which Republicans have traditionally been stronger, in the 2004 elections. This created some pretty perverse incentives.
President Gore would have had the same incentive problems, except the fourth. It’s not clear if Obama does, though. Terrorist attacks are now “foreseeable” in the mind of the public, so Obama might take the blame for failure to prevent an attack.
December 29, 2009, 10:11 pmKen Mitchell says:
Does nobody read history any longer? The threat of a suicide pilot crashing into a target has been well documented since 1944; the Japanese called it “Kamikaze”, the “divine wind”. Tom Clancy used it as a plot device in his 1994 thriller “Debt of Honor”. The threat that terrorists would use commercial aircraft as kamikaze was real and widely predicted – by everybody except the people responsible for preventing it. Note, for example, the fact that the FAA had long banned airline flight crews from being armed, which was probably the only thing that might have prevented the 9/11 attack.
Readery: The most important existential threat to Humanity is an asteroid impact. But rather than immediately commencing a crash program to build nuclear-tipped asteroid interceptors, scientists are working on a sky survey designed to detect any threatening asteroid sufficiently early so that we don’t NEED an emergency program to deal with the threat. Since our capability to deal with the crisis will be far greater in the future than it is now (consider how much more advanced your iPhone is than the computers that powered the Apollo LEM) this makes perfect sense to me.
Similarly, destroying our economy NOW in a probably-futile attempt to mitigate a degree or two of warming that MAY OR MAY NOT BE REAL, it makes more sense to develop better measurement tools to determine, first, if there IS a problem, and second, what the best solution will be. Because going back to the stone age is not conducive to long term human survival.
December 29, 2009, 10:47 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Public Ignorance and the Political Economy of Airport Security: Why Governments Don’t Take Enough Precautions Before Attacks and Engage in “Security Theater” Afterwards -- Topsy.com says:
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December 29, 2009, 11:58 pmJust So(min) War « The Lure says:
[...] a brief recapitulation of the contretemps. First, Ilya Somin claimed that politicians can up their chances of re-election by promoting ineffectual airport security [...]
December 30, 2009, 4:44 amChris Travers says:
I wonder if it had any connection to the attempt to crash Fed Ex 705 into that company’s headquarters in that same year.
December 30, 2009, 6:33 pmChris Travers says:
I disagree. I think one element he was trying to do was to send a message to CONSUMERS that FedEx should not be used. If we can speak of corporate espionage, why not corporate terrorism?
December 30, 2009, 6:35 pmChris Travers says:
I am hoping Illya will read this and so will offer another tradeoff area which has not gotten much press.
Anyone who does any real research at all knows that radioactive isotopes are found in the most common type of smoke detector on the market. Well-funded terrorists could go around for a period of time purchasing, say, 10 smoke detectors per store per terrorist. On a good day, scouting out 10 stores, one terrorist could obtain 100 smoke detectors, or 500 per week. Over a year, one could obtain over 25000 smoke detectors, which might yield as much as 5 grams of radioactive material.
One obvious solution would be to put controls on smoke detector purchases which are similar to those we have on pseudoephedrine. But if you make it a hassle to buy smoke detectors, folks won’t replace their smoke detectors when they actually are broken and people will die. I would expect the deaths due to such controls to be well above the deaths due to a dirty bomb attack over a reasonable period of time.
So, even just looking at cost in civilian lives to doing nothing compared to cost in civilian lives to doing something, it seems hard to make the case to heavily control the smoke detector market.
December 31, 2009, 3:36 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » More Tradeoffs in Airport Security says:
[...] in Congress and the administration are putting much pressure on the agency to do so. I suspect that perverse political incentives are at least a part of the reason for these [...]
January 3, 2010, 1:40 amA economia política da (falta de) segurança nos aeroportos « De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum says:
[...] claudio under Uncategorized Leave a Comment Algumas reflexões sobre o caso norte-americano aqui. [...]
January 3, 2010, 6:16 amTruePath says:
Worse, in the case of airport security even those voters who devot substantial time and resources to informing themselves about the issue still may be unable to come to the correct conclusions.
After all the government can reasonably insist they have extra information they can’t share with the public that justifies their actions. Similarly they can simply suggest that some vague “chatter” has been heard to increase the percieved risk that their policies then apparently defend against.
January 3, 2010, 12:54 pm