A recent article, posted by Bruce Schneier and brought to my attention by a friend, highlights how individual police officer intelligence seems to have dangerously declined.
Bruce has been writing about the current security situation for a while, demonstrating how the public should not be depended upon to discern the difference between a tourist and a terrorist, for example. He rightly stated that it should remain the role of the police and anti-terrorist officers to decide if an individual is behaving suspiciously or dangerously. Well, it seems that Bruce may need to revise his statement…
The Cambridge News article illustrates the blurring line between misplaced public paranoia and fear and the police’s increased jobsworth attitude and lack of common sense.
It makes an important point that’s relevant to any industry. In IT, for example, consider the new security framework in Vista. By requesting the user to continuously confirm that they want to allow software to run with admin rights, they become accustomed to just clicking the ‘Yes’ button without considering the repercussions; they stop thinking about what that really means. By employing paranoia instead of a measured aproach we risk missing out the step that forces us to think about what we’re doing, making it even easier for a ‘real’ risk to slip through unnoticed.
By avoiding common sense and simply labelling everything”wrong” that don’t fit a too-strict set of rules, the police risk diluting the very purpose of what they are doing and not seeing the suicide bomber for all the WMDs.
- The War on Terror: the Board Game is available at Firebox.com.
- Bruce Schneier is an internationally renowned security technologist and author who writes at Schneier.com.
- Ashley Argile is an old friend, ex-housemate and software developer.
