The Psychology of Security

Posted by Jeff on September 9, 2010 · View Comments

“Security is both a feeling and a reality. And they’re not the same.”

“The reality of security is mathematical, based on the probability of different risks and the effectiveness of different countermeasures. We can calculate how secure your home is from burglary, based on such factors as the crime rate in the neighborhood you live in and your door-locking habits.”

“But security is also a feeling, based not on probabilities and mathematical calculations, but on your psychological reactions to both risks and countermeasures. You might feel terribly afraid of terrorism, or you might feel like it’s not something worth worrying about. You might feel safer when you see people taking their shoes off at airport metal detectors, or you might not.”

You can read the full article here.

You may also want to read this article: What America Has Lost: It’s clear we overreacted to 9/11.

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Filed under Politics, Society · Tagged with politics, Society

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http://18channels.blogspot.com Katy R.

Personally, after 9/11, when they started having armed guards (as in, BIG DUDES WITH AUTOMATIC WEAPONS OUT IN THE OPEN) posted in the BART (subway) stations that I rode in every morning, I did not feel more secure. They just stood there. They were a visible band-aid, and no kind of real solution. If some kook had wanted to make something bad happen, they easily could have. In the meantime, the rest of us rode the subway everyday under the intimidation of weapons being posted in our faces.

And what about politics…the PATRIOT Act made it so that the FBI can go into a public library, demand information about patrons, and not only is the librarian required to just give the info over, but that librarian would go to prison if they either refuse to comply, or even utter that the information was requested. Librarians are wicked smaht so many libraries keep very sparse records now on their patrons, so they don’t have to be put in that awkward position of going to prison to protect the “private information” of patrons…

But these are just two examples of measures taken in the name of “security” that don’t reassure me at all. In fact they make me feel extremely unsafe.

Oh wait…I just figured it out…there’s nothing wrong with any of this, I must be a Communist, that must be why I’m thinking such radical things about our rights to “freedom”.
Jeff

I’m in complete agreement with you. Bruce Schneier, who wrote the essay I link to, calls that display of weaponry (along with the airport security nonsense) as examples of “security theater.”
http://18channels.blogspot.com Katy R.

“security theater”=brilliant