Mistakes in London

Unpleasant news from London: leaked documents and CCTV footage contradict all of the major claims the London police made to justify their July 22 shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. The New York Times and BBC offer coverage. Among key points:

• de Menezes was wearing a denim jacket, not the alleged unusually bulky overcoat.
• de Menezes walked casually through the station, stopping to pick up a newspaper, and ran only when he saw the next train arriving -- rather typical behavior in any subway.
• de Menezes was physically restrained by an officer before being shot.

Also of interest is this Boston Globe article about profiling not by police but by regular citizens on the bus.

Chertoff's Trick Question

In an interview in today's USA Today, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff defends TSA's information-collection plans with a remarkable false dilemma:

"Would you rather give up your address and date of birth to a secure database and not be pulled aside and questioned," he said, "or would you rather not give it up and have an increased likelihood that you're going to be called out of line and someone's going to do a secondary search of your bag and they're going to ask you a lot of personal questions in the full view of everybody else?"

Neat trick! Set two aspects of our right to privacy against each other so it sounds like we really only have a right to one or the other! You can keep your personal identifiying information to yourself or you can avoid a warrantless search of your bag. I thought we were entitled to both! More sinisterly, it sounds like Chertoff is saying we can either give up our privacy rights the easy way or the hard way. Rather like the police banging on the door and saying "Let us in or we break it down!" Or perhaps the better analogy is from Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, in which the protagonist Rubashov is given a choice by his Soviet interrogators: either he can confess, cooperate in a public show trial, and be executed, or he can maintain his innocence and be shot summarily as an administrative case without any further ado. Some choice.

Thinking like a terrorist

While I have no experience with trying to blow up mass transit or other civilian targets, a little thought experiment helps illustrate the dangers of the shoot-to-kill policy that police seem ready to adopt against suspected suicide bombers. Imagine you are a committed terrorist, dedicated to the proposition of strapping explosives to yourself and creating maximum mayhem by your glorious martyrdom in some major infidel metropolis. You're not going to grab the nearest stick of dynamite and race nervously down to the bus depot. You're going to prepare for you mission. You're going to check out your targets ahead of time, determine the routines and tactics of security forces and regular passersby in the area, and figure out the best way to sneak your package in. You're going to pay particular attention to the behavior that draws police attention and train yourself not to exhibit that behavior. If you know the police are inclined to stop and frisk (or just up and shoot) young men wearing heavy coats in warm weather, you'll find a way to hide your explosives without wearing a heavy coat, or you'll just wait for cooler weather. If you know police are keeping an eye out for lumpy backpacks with wires sticking out, you'll craft a bomb that fits more neatly into your luggage. You'll be careful not to get chemical burns or stains on your clothes and hands. You'll know where you are going and what time you need to be there so you don't get stuck pacing suspiciously in front of your target waiting for the optimal detonation time. And when a policeman does appear in the area, you won't break out in a sweat; you'll simply smile confidently and keep your finger on the cell-phone trigger, revelling in the knowledge that you will take not only civilian lives but the life of one of the instruments of the infidel State's authority.

Consider that if this casual observer is smart enough to figure out this much about avoiding police suspicion, so is the much more motivated terrorist. Arguably, the only people who will exhibit nervousness and other "suspicious behavior" in front of police will be the following groups:

1. Sloppy terrorists, who deserve to be shot, but who in their sloppiness are rather likely likely to be caught by sharp police work well before they get to the point of walking downtown with an assembled explosive device;
2. Innocent bystanders whose suspicious behavior is wholly unrelated to terrorism or the presence of the police;
3. Innocent bystanders who read the news, know that police are on a hair trigger, and who, on the approach of armed officers, become understandably nervous, knowing that their lives are at risk.
   

Considering these possibilities, it would seem the shoot-to-kill policy could have greater potential to kill civilians than suicide bombers. (The policy's score so far in England: innocent civilians -- 1, suicide bombers -- 0.)

How not to get shot in the head

I hate it when my fears are confirmed. Last week I wrote about the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting in London. Today Sari Horwitz of the Washington Post reports that the International Association of Police Chiefs is affirming shoot-to-kill policies for dealing with suspected suicide bombers. Evidently that State is getting ready to justify taking a citizen's life without due process, without even probable cause, but simply in the interest of stopping someone who "fits a certain behavioral profile." According to the IAPC, you can be shot in the head if you exhibit "multiple anomalies":

• wearing a heavy coat in warm weather
• carrying a briefcase, duffel bag or backpack with protrusions or visible wires [watch where you put your I-Pod]
• displaying nervousness
  
• avoiding eye contact [evidently we are always supposed to look cops straight in the eye]
  
• sweating excessively [work out at the gym and cool down completely before stepping outside]
• bearing chemical burns on one's clothing or stains on one's hands
• mumbling prayers [perhaps you are safe if you shout your prayers? or should you simply keep the Holy Ghost at bay in public places all together?]
• pacing back and forth in front of a venue [don't wait for anyone in a public place]

I thought that maybe the United States would take a more Constitutional approach to dealing with suspects in public places than the British police, that maybe we would show a little more restraint and respect for the concept of "innocent until proven guilty." But the Post article offers this grim quote from Miami Police Chief John F. Timoney:

I can guarantee you that if we have, God forbid, a suicide bomber in a big city in the United States, 'shoot to kill' will be the inevitable policy.... It's not a policy we choose lightly, but it's the only policy.

The only policy? I will grant the Scylla-and-Charybdis dilemma police face in dealing with suspected suicide bombers:

"The police standard operating procedure of addressing a suspect and telling them to drop their weapon and put their hands up or freeze is not going to work with a suicide bomber," said Bruce Hoffman, author of "Inside Terrorism" and a terrorist expert at the Rand Corp. "You're signing your own death warrant if you do that."

...but the dilemma is still a di-lemma -- i.e., the police have two choices. Police, like all humans, will always make errors; they must choose which sort of errors they will more likely make. Again, the question boils down to whether police should err on the side of liberty or security.

Let's put the moral dilemma this way: Imagine you are a police officer. Which moral responsibility would you rather bear:

1. Indirect responsibility for the property damage, injury, and/or death caused by a suicide bomber whom you fail to subdue; or
2. Direct responsibility for the death of an innocent person whom you mistake for a suicide bomber and shoot dead?

Better yet, put faces on that dilemma: To which parents/spouses/children would you rather have to explain your actions: those of the suicide bomber's victims, or those of the innocent victim of your shoot-to-kill policy?

By the way, for those of you looking for other historical examples to enliven the debate, Page 2 of the Post article does mention Amadou Diallo ("41 Times").

Pinpricks

From Charley Reese, "Nobody Attacks Civilization," on Antiwar.com:

Terrorist tactics work because we live in a wired world. Ten or 12 people can set off a few bombs in London, and the world turns its electronic eyes on the story and chats, discusses and shows video clips until some other event distracts it. The media attention and the inflated rhetoric of politicians magnify the terrorist act far beyond its actual import.

These attacks – pinpricks, really, in terms of any damage they do to national power – cannot be completely stopped. A few malcontents inspired by someone's rhetoric can get together and set off a bomb or two or shoot some people. Terrorists should be considered criminals, and their acts as ordinary crimes. Physically dealing with terrorists is properly ordinary police work. There is no war involved.

...remember that terrorist attacks are primarily media events. You still have more to fear from the flu or accidents than you do from terrorists.

Perspective: Osama vs. Ford, GM, Toyota, et al.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration cheerfully reports that highway fatalities dropped to a 30-year record low last year. In 2004, only 42,636 people died on America's highways. Alcohol played a role in 16,694 of those deaths. Motor vehicles killed 4641 pedestrians.

Let's see, Osama's boys killed 3000 people on September 11, 2001. In response, we went to war with two countries, passed the Patriot Act, and spent ourselves another trillion dollars in the hole (and counting). Yet every month we kill each other faster with our ever-larger motor vehicles without any great hue and cry raised to shut down the highways or at least make everyone ride bicycles. Irresponsible drinking outdoes 9/11 by more than a factor of 5 every year, yet the government doesn't ban alcohol ads or order cruise missile strikes on Milwaukee and St. Louis. My fellow pedestrians face a greater risk of death under the wheels of careless roadhogs than we do from al-Qaeda, but I'll bet the transportation bill just passed by Congress has little funding for increased sidewalk safety.

No, I'm not arguing that we should ban automobiles or even alcohol. But it seems odd that we accept the highway death toll as an unavoidable fact of life in our motorized society, acceptable losses, while a tiny fraction of that death and destruction caused by terrorism warrants military mobilization and revocation of various civil rights.

What am I afraid of?

This blog is supposed to be a declaration against fear, an exhortation to all citizens to stop being such fraidy-cats and accept the burdens of freedom. Yet I speak regularly of my own fear of government. I guess I'm not saying we should fear nothing (I've always thought those "No Fear" logoes on t-shirts and other junk are silly). Fear is a healthy response to bad things, but only as long as we maintain control of that fear, and only as long as that fear arises in proper proportion to the various dangers that surround us.

So what's out there to inspire fear?

Terrorists? Yes, there are bad dudes* who want to break things and kill people. Thanks to the wonders of science, psychopaths of all inclinations have access to weapons of increasing capacity for destruction.

But what about governments? Bad dudes don't always hide in caves in Afghanistan (or apartments in Miami, London, Madrid, etc.) scheming to get hold of TNT, C-4, anthrax, and plutonium. Some bad dudes, generally those with better people skills, realize they can wreak even greater destruction and enjoy more perks by obtaining public office. A bad president or prime minister can oppress innocents through war, judicial action, taxation, etc.

So why have I chosen to criticize the fear of terrorism while promulgating my fear of governments?

I certainly recognize valid reasons for fearing terrorists. Terrorists can destroy cities and kill millions, at least in theory. The assassin of Archduke Ferdinand was able to spark World War I. On September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden's minions managed to kill 3000 and put a big dent in the American economy (short-term dip in consumer confidence, long-term fiscal reallocation to massive defense and Homeland Security spending).

But in a hundred years, Osama will likely be no more prominent in the history books than the anarchist bomb-throwers of the late 19th and early 20th century. Osama is a featherweight compared to the real demons of history: Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot -- all leaders of governments whose power was not properly checked. Corrupt governments have killed more people, destroyed more wealth, imprisoned and oppressed more innocents than Osama ever will. And in America, Osama can't destroy the Constitution; only our cowardly Congress can pass and extend the "Patriot" Act.

I would thus argue that, dangerous as Osama and other terrorists may be, we have much more at stake in ensuring that our government (along with our citizenry) does not abandon the principles of liberty that make America the greatest achievement of Western civilization. Instead of calling 9-1-1 every time a shady character takes a picture of the Empire State Building, the common citizen does better to direct his vigilance toward voting and otherwise participating in politics to make sure his elected representatives preserve the Constitutional system of checks and balances.

Am I afraid of some psychopath detonating a nuclear bomb in Times Square? Absolutely. Am I afraid of the government revoking the Bill of Rights? Absolutely. The juicy question is, which am I more afraid of? Which are you more afraid of?

Or, at risk of creating a false dilemma, phrase it this way: if you could stop the complete destruction of New York City** by revoking the Bill of Rights, would you do it?

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*Dudettes -- er, women -- don't seem nearly as inclined as men to break things and kill people. Hmmm....
**Replies from Red Sox fans will be viewed as biased. ;-)