Attempted Airline Terrorism Story From Time

Interesting (and disconcerting) cover story from the latest issue of Time Magazine.



Titled "What We Can Learn from Flight 253", it examines the attempted detonation of a bomb on a Northwest Airlines flight into Detroit on Christmas Day. As the piece by Michael Duffy and Mark Thompson reveals, would be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came very close to his goal of blowing up the plane... which raises a host of questions about both how that occured and also what our response was.

Abdulmutallab used a similar explosive to what hopeful shoebomber Richard Reid used, only rather than in his shoe, it was sewed into his underwear. While it's true that there are some next-generation airport screening devices that would have detected the bomb-making gear, the standard metal detectors at most US airports wouldn't have spotted it. Additionally, Abdulmutallab was on a US terrorist watchlist (but, only the first level which doesn't mean much).

Profiling is another way that authorities can try to help prevent terrorism, and in their book "Superfreakonomics", (which I reviewed here) Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner tell an anecdote about how effective it can be. However, profiling as well as full-body scanning machines at airports raise legitimate privacy concerns and can't be counted on to prevent bad things from ever occurring.

On the same subject of preventative measures, there's the concern of simply taking after the fact actions that don't help going forward. From his book "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable", Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote about this idea... with a potential example being everyone taking their shoes off going through airport security.

Another thing to keep in mind is the recent example of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. As Nancy Gibbs detailed in her Time cover story (which I wrote about here), terrorism doesn't necessarily have to be sponsored, paid for and planned by a terrorist organization, but rather can be the act of a person or persons wanting to commit a terrorist act.

-----

All this considered, and as Duffy and Thompson argue in their cover story, you can't guarantee as a government that terrorism will always be prevented, so as prevention is practiced, you also have to look at response.

To this end, the Duffy and Thompson piece quoted Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano playing down the attempt by saying "once the incident occurred, the system worked" and spoke not of terrorism, but "man caused disasters." Also, "The Lesson: Passengers Are Not Helpless" by Amanda Ripley in this same issue of Time addresses both passenger response on Flight 253 and then how the FBI treated people after the attempted bombing was thwarted by the same passengers.

Just annoying stuff from Napalitano and the FBI...

The whole things is a big nut and tough to easily solve, but after reading the pieces both both Ripley and Duffy/Thompson (as well as past stuff), I think our government can do a better job of it's preventative measures, but perhaps even more importantly... of communicating with us as adults who understand we live in a dangerous world in which bad things can happen.

"Superfreakonomics" by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner - Book Review

Recently finished "Superfreakonomics" by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner and found it to be a fast read... with some very interesting stuff.



As the follow up to the 2005 book "Freakonomics", "Superfreakonomics" contained more viewpoints from the economist authors. Basic premise of each is the usage of raw data and actual experience to investigate various and sundry aspects of the world. That's not a very clear explanation, but frankly, it's tough to describe well what Levitt and Dubner write about.

The authors themselves describe "Freakonomics" as only having a unified theme if you consider the idea that "people respond to incentives" as qualifying as a unified theme. If that's not weighty enough as a common denominator, then the original book simply needs to be enjoyed based on it's stories... of how people name their kids, how drug dealers run businesses, and how abortion impacts crime rates.

"Superfreakonics" carries this same data and experience based investigation forward to topics in the first few chapters like walking drunk, how high end prostitutes prosper and why suicide bombers should life insurance. I found these discussions somewhat interesting, but enjoyed more the second half of the book.

This fascinating portion of the book began with chapter 4 and three different topics covered...

- How over a century ago, the simple fix of washing hands saved the lives of countless new mothers and babies... a full decade prior to germ theory being accepted.
- The relative safety benefits (there, but not to the degree one would think) of kids using car seats as opposed to regular belts in the back seat.
- Concept of using what amounts to basically floating inner tubes in targeted areas of the ocean to prevent hurricanes from forming.

Chapter 5 followed up on this idea of preventing hurricanes to look at another "natural phenomenon"... global warming. Levitt and Dubner discuss in depth the company Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue, WA... led by ex-Microsoft genius type Nathan Myhrvold. The company works on a lot of cutting edge science and this particular discussion (along with the hurricane / inner tube idea also from them) is around the idea of "geoengineering" or having an actual man-made alteration to the environment.

It's best to just read the section to fully understand it (or, somewhat fully), but the concept in relation to global warming from Intellectual Ventures is that we don't know for sure that global warming will doom the planet, but if that's where it's headed, we need to do more than conserve and use less energy to reverse course. Specific geoengineering based solutions from Intellectual Ventures range from producing additional clouds over the ocean to pumping sulfer dioxide into the stratosphere.

If "Freakonomics" is about how people respond to incentives, I'd say the most interesting portions of "Superfreakonomics" are based in two things... the same response to incentives and the idea of simple solutions.

One of the fundamental reasons Myhrvold and company feel conservation wouldn't do a lot is around incentivized behavior. If either a person or country converses or cuts back, it will help all, but not necessarily help them. In terms of simple solutions, both this idea of geoengineering and washing of hands is simple (geoengineering may not seem simple, but as Myhrvold describes it, it's could be relatively low cost)... and yet would require shifts in attitudes and behavior to be fully adopted.

Whether someone agrees with Levitt, Dubner, Myhrvold and Intellectual Ventures or not... it's interesting stuff to think about.

All in all, that's how I felt about "Superfreakonomics"... had some not so great, but some really interesting things (and was a fast read).