(Upbeat music)
- (Michael) Hey Wisecrack, Michael here...still...in the same room, in the same house I haven’t
really left since March, and I’m recording another video all alone in front of the same
g*ddamn bookshelf--!
- (Michael) Sorry about that folks.
Now, I’m very eager to grab a drink with friends without the specter of death haunting
me. And I’m sure you are too.
As citizens crave basic social interaction--and the economy craves our spending--technologies
and policies designed to prevent the spread of coronavirus are popping up everywhere.
From boring but well-established, proven methods like hand-washing, social distancing, and
wearing a mask over your mouth AND NOSE, to newer approaches like smartphone-based GPS
tracing and thermal imaging cameras repurposed to check for fevers, governments and businesses
are ready to try anything that will get our terrified asses off the couch and into the
nation’s cubicles and inexplicably-sticky diner booths.
Now, while we are one-hundred-percent ready to luxuriate in the Taco Bell dine-in experience,
we wouldn’t be Wisecrack if we didn’t ask the tough questions, like: to what extent
are newer policies surrounding COVID-19 keeping us safe from infection? And, still harder
to think about: are they even supposed to?
Welcome this Wisecrack edition on Security Theater.
To be clear, we’re not here to peddle conspiracy theories. Masks and social distancing work
to dramatically reduce the spread of COVID-19. Cover your nose kids!
But as we’re about to find out, whether you’re trying to manage viruses or terrorism,
there’s more to the seemingly basic concept of “security” than you might expect.
If you’re in a state that has tried reopening restaurants and bars, or even if you’ve
hopped on a plane, you might have encountered new procedures meant to make us feel safe.
These range from restaurants and bars operating at diminished capacity to states like New
York only allowing outdoor dining to businesses touting extra cleaning procedures to buildings
and some airports testing out using thermal scanners to identify people running potentially
covid-induced fevers.
But not all strategies are equal. Some are questionably effective at best and potentially
harmful at worst. As Evan Selinger and Brenda Leong put it in a recent article, “installing
thermal scanning as part of a ‘back to work’ process might create a false sense of security
that convinces some to prematurely return to their jobs and emboldens others to relax
more effective strategies, such as social distancing and responsible contact tracing
efforts.” A quick definition: contact tracing is the practice of tracking down people who
were exposed to another sick person, in order to proactively treat or isolate them and contain
the spread of the disease.
Selinger and Leong claim that thermal scanning and other fancy-looking quick-fixes are not
true security. Rather, they’re what privacy expert Bruce Schneier has famously called
“security theater,” or “security measures that make people feel more secure without
doing anything to actually improve their security.” Think, for instance, of the little yard signs
that security companies plant in front lawns to let passers-by know that the designated
house is protected by an alarm. Now, seeing that placard as you come home everyday may
help you sleep better at night--which is arguably a good thing in and of itself. But it’s
important to remember that the sign itself cannot actually detect or prevent a break-in,
or slow it down once it has started. When an angry Balrog comes to steal your Playstation,
that little piece of metal on a stick is not going to pull a Gandalf so you and your uninsured
gadgets can escape out the back door.
- (Gandalf) You! Shall not! Pass!
- (Michael) Maybe the sign deters people, or maybe it just advertises to thieves that
they need to be extra careful when robbing you.
As convenient as technologies like remote temperature-taking and real-time, phone-enabled
contact tracing would be, Selinger and Leong point out that, so far, they just don’t
cut the proverbial mustard.
Silicon Valley loves to tote glitzy-new GPS-backed ways to track the spread of disease. But as
reported in WIRED, many health officials don’t consider contact tracing programs that use
smartphone location data to be as effective as traditional human-based contact tracing
programs
Then there’s temperature checks and thermal imaging. Airlines pushed in May for temperature
checks at airports. Dr. Martin Cetron, the CDC’s director of global mitigation and
quarantine, called the idea a “poorly designed control and detection strategy,” and an
earlier screening by the CDC of over 30,000 passengers did not catch a single COVID-19
case, even though some of the same passengers later tested positive for the virus.
And per the Washington Post, thermal imaging cameras have not demonstrated the ability
to detect internal body temperature with the accuracy of more basic thermometers.
In other words, organizations around the country are spending a lot of money to install technologies
that apparently do not work for their stated purposes of protecting people from infection.
But why?
While in casual conversation we might understand the word “security” to mean “the process
of keeping people safe,” Schneier contends in his book Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly
About Security in an Uncertain World that it’s not nearly that straightforward. According
to him, what we call “security” is actually a complex interplay between the differing
agendas of the various individuals and organizations invested in a given situation--what he calls
the players. A given security policy emerges out of the negotiations between these players--influenced
by the relative levels of power between them--resulting in a program that serves the interests of
the most powerful players first and foremost, and may (or may not) actually increase safety
for end users, as an almost secondary goal.
As an example, Schneier cites the fact that, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, tweezers
and nail files were banned on planes, while some actually combustible materials like lighters
were allowed through. This, according to Schneier, was a result of the relative influence of
the tobacco lobby on the government’s decision-making process--one player pressuring another. Big
Tweezer, unfortunately, didn’t have the clout to stay off the TSA’s shit list.
“Security theater” happens when the more powerful players involved are focused on their
own self-interest, to the detriment of the holistic security of the system they participate
in. From these circumstances, policies can emerge that create the appearance of doing
something, without actually making people safer. Still, players can find such systems
very attractive.” Schneier claims “Offering security theater can improve market share
just as much as offering actual security, and it is significantly cheaper to provide.”
He also notes that “Most people are comforted by action, whether good or bad.”
The most infamous example of such a system is, again, the post-9/11 airport security
system. In the wake of the attacks, the most powerful players involved had an overriding
political and economic agenda to get people flying again, as soon as possible, which meant
they had to make the average citizen feel safe enough to do so. The resulting airport
security theater satisfied the government’s need to implement a public-facing response
to TERROR, as well as the airlines’ need for your sweaty pocket cash. In other words,
said system provides the biggest players with what they want--while not necessarily making
flying significantly safer.
To put it bluntly, from this point of view, the federal government employs many thousands
of TSA agents and purchases an equal number of hideous blue-shirt-and-black-pants combos-to
make the average citizen feel safe enough to fly... even though the process of taking
off your shoes, downing your entire water bottle in one ill-considered swig, and having
a tired middle-aged man examine your junk via a body scanner probably doesn’t make
you that much safer. Consider, for instance, the fact that in one nationwide test of the
system conducted by Homeland Security in 2015, undercover agents were able to smuggle mock
explosives and weapons through security checkpoints a whopping 95 percent of the time. And you
thought your last annual review went bad.
Unfortunately, many of the criticisms applied to our handling of airport security can be
applied to some, though not all, of our society’s current attempts to address the problem of
coronavirus.
Building off of Schneier’s framework, law professor and privacy expert Peter Swire has
gone so far as to claim that we may be facing a kind of “public health theater” on par
with the security theater installed in the wake of 9/11. Citing the temptation for government
agencies to resort to unreliable phone location tracking as the lazy man’s approach to contact
tracing, Swire claims that “government officials have great incentives to show the public they
are doing something, anything, to address the crisis.” However, Swire goes on to note
that “[...] absent an empirical showing of accuracy and actionability that does not
exist to date, calls for such location tracking quite possibly are security theater rather
than actual security.”
This description ties in neatly with Schneier’s framework. In our current moment, the “players”
involved in formulating our collective “policy” for handling coronavirus include governments
at the national, state, and local levels, and businesses ranging in size from giant
corporations to your local pizza joint. These players, who have varying levels of power,
bring to the table many different agendas: in the case of governments, to be seen taking
action, effective or not, and to safeguard a struggling economy; and in the case of businesses,
to attract enough customers to turn a profit, or at least keep operations going.
Perhaps there is no better example of health security theater than the quickly-maligned
re-opening plans of AMC theaters for July. As the LA Times noted, the challenge is not
just re-opening, it’s “getting [people] comfortable enough to show up." So, the company
sought to assuage fears by reducing capacity, and spending millions of dollars on sanitation
equipment. While all of those things can reduce the spread of the virus, the policy that is
most effective at keeping people safe wasn’t on the docket: wearing masks. While the company
would require employees to wear them, they would not universally require patrons to.
That was deemed “political,” which is a nice way of saying “not good for business”
although the company reversed course after backlash and stated they would require masks.
If I could make a somewhat unscientific analogy, the sanitation equipment is like that dude
at a frat party who wanted to ride a razor scooter off a roof telling you - “Chill
bro, I’ll wear a helmet.” And here, our imaginary bro reveals a basic danger of security
theater - half measures that make you feel safer about doing something incredibly dumb.
Importantly, we’re not here to malign safety measures like wearing helmets or doing temperature
checks - these things are fine so long as they don’t give people a false sense of
security as they careen headfirst into a traumatic brain injury. Or so long as they don’t pull
money and other resources from more impactful safety measures. After all, you don’t want
to spend all your money on seatbelts for a car known to burst into flames.
Now AMC’s scrapped mask policy is not unique - as restaurants and bars tout menu-cleaning
and waiters clad in PPE, many are not requiring patrons to wear masks as they amble past other
diners.
To be fair, some businesses are just trying to do the right thing: keeping their employees
and customers safe while trying to limit lay-offs.. But, as Schneier observed in the wake of 9/11,
self-interest is a powerful force, even in the midst of a national emergency.
If the best science says that the best way to stay safe is to stay home and, to avoid
The Cheesecake Factory, quite literally, like the plague, it is in the restaurant-players’
best interest to ignore that data as much as possible, and instead implement relatively
less costly security theater measures that give people enough confidence to drown their
sorrows in Avocado Eggrolls.
Jokes aside, the recent tragic spikes in infection rates in Arizona, Texas, Florida, and California
demonstrate how security theater can create a gap between the perception of safety and
an unsafe reality. At its best, security theater can be a useful part of a functioning society,
deterring lesser threats while providing us some day-to-day peace of mind. At its worst,
though, as a by-product of big players’ desire for a swift return to “normalcy”,
it can encourage average people to lower their defenses before it’s really safe to do so--with
devastating consequences.
But what do you think, Wisecrack? Are some of the safety measures we see just for show?
Or is everyone just scrambling to do the right thing. Let us know in the comments, and be
sure to subscribe and ring that bell. Big thanks to our patrons for supporting our podcasts
and the channel, and as always, thanks for watching. Later!