[IP] NYTimes.com Article: In an Age of Terror, Safety Is Relative

[David Farber]

In an Age of Terror, Safety Is Relative

June 27, 2004
 By GREGG EASTERBROOK





WASHINGTON - On the subway a few weeks after the Madrid
bombings, I noticed a parcel under a seat. I asked other
passengers, but no one claimed the object. I looked inside
the parcel and saw some papers and an elaborately wrapped
object the size of a grapefruit. The train pulled into
Metro Center, the main station of the Washington subway. I
contemplated that I might be about to pick up a bomb, but
then I'd already been stupid enough to look inside, so I
carried out the package, put it on a bench and told the
station manager. Officers appeared quickly, though trains
continued running and people kept milling past.

When I first saw the package, should I have used the
emergency intercom to alert the motorman? Should he have
stopped the train and evacuated everyone? When I alerted
the manager, should she have closed the station, bringing
the entire system to a halt? Had it turned out to be a
bomb, pundits second-guessing the disaster that followed
might have said the station manager and I were fools for
not pushing the panic button. But what if a trainload of
frantic people had been evacuated into a dark tunnel with a
high-voltage rail, all because of an elaborately wrapped
grapefruit?

This is an example of the practical limits to security in
the post-9/11 world. With the introduction of sophisticated
airport inspections, bomb-screening of checked bags,
security stops at building entrances, better passport
controls, "smart borders" with improved computers and
identity scanners, and hundreds of radiation and bioweapon
detectors installed in urban areas, security has
significantly improved in just three years. This summer,
residents of New York and Boston are seeing lots of extra
patrols, bomb-sniffing dogs and police drills, in
preparation for the political conventions.

But some of what's being done is primarily psychological:
to make people feel more safe, regardless of whether they
really are. And though the government must try any
reasonable idea to counter terrorism, in the next round of
security improvements to come there will be serious limits
to practicality and affordability.

Consider train safety. Recently the Transportation Security
Administration tested screening of Amtrak passengers at the
New Carrollton, Md., stop. Riders walked one by one through
a device that sniffs the air for molecules associated with
explosives. Probably anyone carrying a bomb would have been
detected. But Amtrak has about 500 stations, half unstaffed
whistle-stops. To add bomb-sniffers, plus personnel, to
every station would be a significant expense.

The New Carrollton stop is a quiet suburban station
handling roughly 1,000 passengers a day. The Washington
subway system carries half a million passengers a day. Many
enter at downtown stations that are mob scenes; to make
everyone walk through sniffer machines would be incredibly
cumbersome. The New York subway system carries 3.8 million
passengers a day, boarding at 468 stations. Screening all
those riders would be a logistical nightmare, even if cost
were no object. Many New York stations would need extensive
re-engineering, and the lines would stretch up the stairs.

And cost is an object. An estimated $11 billion has been
spent to improve American airline security since Sept. 11,
2001. The airlines board about 1.5 million passengers a
day. With the New York subway system alone carrying more
than twice that, screening might cost about twice as much
as has been spent on airline security.

Maybe there's a way to avoid subway passenger screening.
Starting in July, Boston transit police will hand-search
the packages of travelers on the storied T subway system.
Riders will continue to board unscreened. Officers, some
with explosives-sniffing dogs, will wander through cars and
demand that passengers open packages, briefcases or
backpacks. Already there is an excruciating legal dispute
about whether the officers should be scanning for those who
fit terrorist profiles, or making random searches: that is,
ordering grandma to show what's in her purse while ignoring
the Middle Eastern-looking young man with the backpack.

Set aside the legalities and concentrate on the practical.
The Boston system has 247 transit officers, only a fraction
of whom will be on trains at any particular time. What are
the odds officers will stumble onto the one person, among
hundreds of thousands, who is carrying something dangerous?


People will feel safer knowing that officers are there, and
making people feel safer may be the next best thing to
actual safety. In the months after 9/11, National Guard
units in battle fatigues patrolled airports: those
camouflage outfits would hardly have helped Guard members
blend in against a backdrop of vacationers and Chick-Fil-A
stands. Officers with assault rifles now walk Times Square,
though the chances an assault rifle will be needed are
slim.

Amtrak now demands that ticket buyers show a driver's
license or similar identification. Maybe this will catch a
lone deranged person, but the 9/11 attackers made sure
their paperwork was in order. Many office buildings now
require visitors to show a driver's license, which a
low-wage desk worker glances at perfunctorily. During the
Democratic National Convention in July, the police will
close much of the highway system of downtown Boston.

How much has been spent on real action? Steven M. Kosiak,
an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments, a Washington research group, estimates that
since Sept. 11, 2001, about $26 billion has been invested
in improving the security of critical infrastructure in the
United States. Domestic security over all (personnel and
preparedness as well as infrastructure) is a $41.3 billion
line in the current federal budget, and President Bush has
requested $47.4 billion in fiscal 2005, a request that
includes allotments like $3.6 billion to stockpile vaccines
and antidotes. Domestic antiterrorism spending is now at
nearly 10 times the level of President Bill Clinton's final
budget for it. Nonetheless, last year a Council on Foreign
Relations report said domestic security was drastically
underfinanced.

Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential
nominee, says he wants still higher spending. He advocates
100,000 more firefighters, 5,000 new police officers
trained specifically for antiterrorism, special funds for
states and cities whenever an orange-level security alert
is issued and other new investments.

But money for more security must be weighed against other
priorities. The Council on Foreign Relations study, for
example, noted, "Only 10 percent of fire departments in the
United States have the personnel and equipment to respond
to a building collapse." Yet should most fire departments
have millions of dollars' worth of equipment to handle a
building collapse, when the chances of this happening in
any one place, even any one big city, are tiny?

Further improvements in security may prove impractical, or
threats to liberty. Should bus passengers be screened?
Israel, that most security-conscious of nations, has found
bus attacks nearly impossible to stop. Should all cars be
inspected before entering parking garages? The first World
Trade Center attack involved a van bomb in the parking
garage. (Cars entering the parking lots at many federal
buildings are now inspected; this is not done at most
commercial lots under private skyscrapers.) Should everyone
carry an identity card with "biometric" data coded into it?
The economic considerations are just as daunting. Mr.
Kosiak estimates $407 billion has been spent in the wake of
9/11, a figure that includes military operations in
Afghanistan and Iraq. If the estimate is correct, then more
than 1 percent of the gross domestic product since 9/11 has
gone to security improvements and to the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. National prosperity has declined slightly as a
result.

Extra security layers also burden the economy. Roadblocks
slow the movement of goods; complex inspections of
shipments add to processing costs; restricting entry to the
United States of the 99.9999 percent of foreign citizens
who mean no harm is bad for tourism, for movement of
intellectual capital and other aspects of the economy. One
reason America has prospered is that it invested heavily in
removing friction from the economy by making trade, travel
and transactions as convenient as possible. Since 9/11,
"we've been putting the friction back in," Brian Michael
Jenkins of the RAND Corporation has noted.

Consider movement of shipping. Some 20,000 shipping
containers a day arrive at United States ports, with
perhaps 1 percent inspected. An estimated 250 million
shipping containers are in motion around the world. The
Central Intelligence Agency is believed to have concluded
that a crude atomic bomb or other terror weapon is far more
likely to arrive in the United States via shipping
container than on a missile from a rogue state.

But 20,000 shipping containers per day cannot be fully
inspected without significantly slowing the economy. The
Department of Homeland Security has a program to place
American inspectors overseas at ports like Rotterdam and
Singapore. But there's a practical limit to how secure
shipping can be, just as there are practical limits to many
ideas to improve security.

In a world of six billion souls, all it takes is one person
a day willing to commit suicide to cause harm and sustain
the sense of civilization in jeopardy. Governments will
keep trying to improve public safety, but no matter how
much is spent, there may be a limit to buying security
against that one person.

Gregg Easterbrook, a senior editor at The New Republic and
a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, is the
author of "The Progress Paradox."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/weekinreview/27east.html?
ex=1089331778&ei=1&en=3586873e3bb49d79


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