The unintended consequences of security theatre

I learned about the term “security theatre” a few weeks ago from the Economist. The magazine was discussing the Paris attacks, and the familiar dilemma between security and civil liberty. They made an attempt to work out what types of security actually worked, in that they ensnared perpetrators or at least acted as an effective deterrent.

Even though the term was new to me, the concept wasn’t. I first became aware of it when I lived in Belfast in the 1980’s during the Troubles. Quite often, I would fly from Belfast to London, either for business or to connect with family. The only public access road to Belfast International Airport had a massive police checkpoint, which each car was required to pass through slowly and some were pulled in for questioning.

A became annoyed because I was pulled in quite often. As soon as the British soldiers heard my English accent they relaxed, but it was still inconvenient. Over time I realised why I was getting pulled in. My job was visiting Shell petrol stations, and I had one, outside Derry, that was so close to the border that I had to go through the UK customs and security point to get to it. After a while I worked out that I was always pulled in at the airport if I had visited that station the previous day.

This taught me many lessons, apart from the obvious ones to change my visit schedule to avoid delays. Mostly, the checkpoint was for show. If I took the ferry to Scotland there was no security, indeed once I didn’t even have my ticket checked. So security theatre follows the power and the money, while terrorists probably travel in other ways, and even if they did want to blow up a plane, presumably they could also work out not to use a vehicle that had crossed the border recently. The whole thing was a bit of a show to make us feel safe and to show the police were at least active and concerned: the real work of deterrence happened well out of my sight.

Since those days, security and security theatre have become a massive industry, as anyone who uses any airport can testify. Once someone hid explosives in a shoe, so we all have to take off our shoes. Once they tried liquids, so we have the ritual of the plastic bags. Presumably the bombers of the Russian airliner at Sharm el Sheikh knew these tests were coming so used something more subtle, such as infiltrating the staff. Meanwhile, all this routine security costs us hours and hours. Further, an American study showed that sixty seven out of seventy people in a test managed to get guns through security without being stopped, so dull is the work of the agents trying to locate such things hour upon hour.

This week I have seen a different example of security theatre that has awakened me to another positive purpose of such things. A month ago I saw the house directly opposite house burned to the ground. It transpires that this was arson, and that five other houses in close proximity have also been attacked. This week a permanent police van has appeared at the end of the road and the police presence has become very apparent.

My first thought was that this was another example of rather pointless security theatre that would only inconvenience us. Is the arsonist likely to try to burn a house down right outside such a van?

But then I thought further. It transpires that all the burned down houses had Jewish owners, and local gossip suggests that the attacks might have an anti Semitic motive. This is entirely plausible, though it could also be quite wrong, since the arsonist has attacked only building sites and the vast majority of those around here are Jewish owned. But the gossip made me see a good reason for the police presence. What if there was not one? It is very likely that self-appointed vigilantes would be manning our neighbourhood by now, and in some ways I could see how that could be almost justifiable. The police presence makes us feel just a bit safer, and also deters alternative action that could have worse consequences.

Going back to the Economist, the article made a strong case that predictable and extensive checking was pretty ineffective. Those people arguing for fences and border controls and even more security do not have good solutions. Indeed, it can all be a bit self-serving; the whole security industry is huge nowadays, and they seem to get a lot of what they want. Official security institutions seem to come under very little scrutiny as well, getting away with poor articles about ISIS that defy all logic and only really serve themselves.

What does work is intelligence, though even that can hardly hope to eliminate all crimes. Intelligence eschews standard checks but focuses on the possible criminal. The trouble with this approach is that it challenges our ideas of privacy, and Edward Snowden was quite right to highlight its illegal and troubling aspects. Still, for me, as long as agencies are honest about what they do, I’d rather sacrifice some privacy for effective security, especially if in return I would be allowed to go through airports without all the pointless time-wasting measures.

So security theatre has some advantages. It makes us feel a bit safer, and deters hateful alternative measures. It also has some costs, in terms of our privacy but also our time in complying with rather pointless measures.

But I have noticed a rather more serious disadvantage to security theatre. What happens when people believe in it?

In the USA, the two most common reactions to the Paris atrocities were both strange. Firstly, anyone planning on visiting Europe was advised sternly against it, as the place was plainly not safe – even though many more people die violently in any week in the USA than in Europe. But the second reaction was incredulity that this attack could have succeeded so soon after Charlie Hebdo. Americans thought that the crackdown after the former attacks should have rendered the city safe from further assaults.

This shows how security theatre, aided by politicians over-selling their own security measures, can mislead. True, Europe has less of a surveillance culture than the US, but surely it is more realistic to believe that nowhere is safe? Anyone who wants to can find some deadly means of killing, even one so basic as hurling rocks onto a crowded motorway from above.

Yet Americans believe that security can make them safe, despite all the mass killings that go on week after week. This explains the extreme reactions to the subsequent San Bernadino killings, first of anger that the perpetrators could not have been somehow identified beforehand, and then with the outrageous racist proposals afterwards. If security theatre has failed, first blame those responsible for security, then beef up security to new levels.

This thinking is not just naïve and ugly, it is dangerous. Security becomes the solution for all problems, even though it will never work. The thinking means that any solutions tackling root causes never even get discussed. No one ever stops to think of why someone might become radicalised, how a message of ISIS might appeal to some, and what might help to reduce this appeal.

Security theatre has its uses. But the unintended consequences run much more deeply than the inconvenience of extra hours at airports. Security theatre is most dangerous when it leads people to believe that more security is always the best response.