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Bruce Schneier calls this the "war on the unexpected". If you take average people, who aren't experts at security / investigating / etc, and you tell these peop

Bruce Schneier calls this the "war on the unexpected". If you take average people, who aren't experts at security / investigating / etc, and you tell these people "if you see something, say something", then you're going to get a ridiculous amount of false positives. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_the.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_th... Everything "unusual" becomes suspicious. See a guy taking photos at an airport? Must be a terrorist! Can't be a photographer and aviation enthusiast, no! As Bruce says, the CYA angle is also horrific. Landlord sees something, thinks it might be nothing, but just in case, tells the local cops. Cops figure it might be nothing, but just in case, calls the FBI. Branch office figure it might be nothing, but just in case, gets regional / national HQ involved. Somewhere in the chain someone inadvertently gets word to the other 3-letter agencies, and the effect is magnified. ... and every time it's escalated, people figure "well, the people below me wouldn't have escalated unless they had reason to" ... while at the same time thinking, "well, I'm not sure, but I'm also not going to be the scapegoat if I fail to neutralize a potential attack and something does happen." Everyone in the chain has plenty to lose and little to gain for not escalating to the next level -- nobody wants to be the guy who missed an opportunity to stop / neutralize a threat, especially in the unlikely-but-possible scenario that an attack does occur. Regarding "if you see something, say something", Rick Moranis had an intelligent take on that at the beginning of his guest column in the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16moranis.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/opinion/16moranis.html?_r=...

chimeracoder 12y ago
This is exactly the problem, as I have myself experienced firsthand. The 'problem' is that all of us - everyone - has a number of ways in which their life is 'unusual'. Aberrant (deviating from the norm) is not inherently suspicious, because everyone is aberrant in some aspects of their life. Nobody is truly 'normal'. In fact, if you thoroughly investigated someone and found nothing that was 'abnormal'[0] in some way, that would be suspicious! Most people's individual personalities and quirks aren't suspicious if you look at the whole picture, but when someone's entire job is to find evidence of 'abnormal' or 'suspicious' things about someone it means that they can construct a suspicious narrative about anyone, as long as they have the motivation or interest to[1]. In other words, it simply becomes a game of finding evidence that confirms one's own (or an organization's own) cognitive or systemic biases. [0] More than 1 or 2 standard deviations away from the mean, etc. [1] CYA is a common 'motivation' in this sense.
- BrandonMarc 12y ago
  In fact, if you thoroughly investigated someone and found nothing that was 'abnormal' in some way, that would be suspicious! I've heard spies are sometimes caught this way. Their life-profile is so deliberately normal that, having no quirks, they actually do stand out as such.
arh68 12y ago
Yeah, it's really odd to spend effort maintaining haystacks, trying to keep their needle:straw ratio high, trying to grow and filter the haystack, et cetera, then pump giant aqueducts and funnels (pass it up!) of absolute crap intelligence into it. There needs to be a word for losing knowledge: instead of extracting knowledge from streams of input, you're smearing it all around, obfuscating the useful bits.
shostack 12y ago
No kidding... Was sitting on the runway and the cockpit door was open. Saw a really cool view out the window with the pilots and such, so I grabbed my DSLR and snapped a shot (I'm a photo geek). Stewardess gave me issues about it and started telling me she didn't think it was allowed (it is to my knowledge), but I held my ground and it was fine. I'm probably on some list now just for wanting a cool shot.

chimeracoder 12y ago

This is exactly the problem, as I have myself experienced firsthand. The 'problem' is that all of us - everyone - has a number of ways in which their life is 'unusual'. Aberrant (deviating from the norm) is not inherently suspicious, because everyone is aberrant in some aspects of their life. Nobody is truly 'normal'. In fact, if you thoroughly investigated someone and found nothing that was 'abnormal'[0] in some way, that would be suspicious! Most people's individual personalities and quirks aren't suspicious if you look at the whole picture, but when someone's entire job is to find evidence of 'abnormal' or 'suspicious' things about someone it means that they can construct a suspicious narrative about anyone, as long as they have the motivation or interest to[1]. In other words, it simply becomes a game of finding evidence that confirms one's own (or an organization's own) cognitive or systemic biases. [0] More than 1 or 2 standard deviations away from the mean, etc. [1] CYA is a common 'motivation' in this sense.

BrandonMarc 12y ago
In fact, if you thoroughly investigated someone and found nothing that was 'abnormal' in some way, that would be suspicious! I've heard spies are sometimes caught this way. Their life-profile is so deliberately normal that, having no quirks, they actually do stand out as such.

arh68 12y ago

Yeah, it's really odd to spend effort maintaining haystacks, trying to keep their needle:straw ratio high, trying to grow and filter the haystack, et cetera, then pump giant aqueducts and funnels (pass it up!) of absolute crap intelligence into it. There needs to be a word for losing knowledge: instead of extracting knowledge from streams of input, you're smearing it all around, obfuscating the useful bits.

shostack 12y ago

No kidding... Was sitting on the runway and the cockpit door was open. Saw a really cool view out the window with the pilots and such, so I grabbed my DSLR and snapped a shot (I'm a photo geek). Stewardess gave me issues about it and started telling me she didn't think it was allowed (it is to my knowledge), but I held my ground and it was fine. I'm probably on some list now just for wanting a cool shot.