A Must-Read: Security Screening and Probability
 

A must-read by Ron Ross, posting today on The American Spectator Online:
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/1...ng-and-probabi

An excerpt: "The public's strong reaction to the latest TSA policies goes beyond scanners and body searches. Nobody appreciates being inconvenienced or feeling violated. What makes it especially infuriating is feeling that it is not necessary or useful and that there are more effective alternatives staring us right in the face."

One problem that's been widely reported is that the population as a whole has no sense of probability. People are much more scared of flying than driving, for example. People worry about very low-probability events and ignore high-probability events. To the extent that TSA policies reflect what "the public" wants, this lack of taking probabilities into account shouldn't be a surprise.

The author was talking about the probabilities of a 90-year-old grandmother or a toddler being a terrorist. He was speaking about the wastefulness of political correctness carried to the extreme. He was saying, basically, let's take the blindfold off here and focus finite resources where it has the greatest probability of producing results (uncovering a true wannabe terrorist, instead of humiliating the entire flying population).

In general, the last 30-50 years has been about the removal of all risk, not the understanding of risk management, acceptance, and mitigation. People are going to lose, people are going to get hurt, people are going to get injured, and people are going to die. And that's not just with flying, that's with life. How do we manage our lives knowing that, and how do we live our lives as we manage that.

Exactly. The same people who want "anything for security" are probably texting while driving right this very minute. :rolleyes: