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The security professions need to learn a lesson which doctors have understood for some time now: treating everyone for a rare threat does more harm than good.
by ajb 14y ago
The security professions need to learn a lesson which doctors have understood for some time now: treating everyone for a rare threat does more harm than good.
Suppose there is a drug which prevents heart attacks, but due to side effects, rare reactions, or just plain error, causes damage to a small proportion of people. If you have a 50% chance of a heart attack, taking it would be a good bet. But giving the same drug to everyone would be a medical disaster.
Any treatment you give to a broad population had better be extraordinarily safe. The rarer the threat you are trying to address, the more easily you can do more harm than good.
Terrorism is rare.
- sausagefeet 14y agoI think there is a flip side of it too: Fliers need to make it clear that they are OK with the fact that if they want to be treated better, security will not catch all security risks.
- ajb 14y agoYes and no. Think of it this way: if you have a graph of security against cost, there is a line which represents possible tradeoffs of best security for a given cost. You are saying, we need to think about where we want to be on the line. I don't think we are even on the line.
- shod 14y agoThat's true when the risks outweigh the benefits, but it's not always true otherwise: we vaccinate everyone against smallpox to -keep- it rare! Unfortunately, the cost of removing this sort of security theater as a deterrent is invisible and hypothetical, whereas the benefits are obvious.
- nacker 14y ago"The security professions need to learn a lesson which doctors have understood for some time now: treating everyone for a rare threat does more harm than good." Nanny states need to learn this principle too: "First do no harm".