{"id":415,"date":"2004-04-09T05:41:42","date_gmt":"2004-04-09T05:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:33","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:33","slug":"daily_kos_again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=415","title":{"rendered":"Daily Kos – Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just when I was hoping to forget about constructively criticizing Kos and struggle with how to constructively criticize LGF, Stirling Newberry, over at Daily<\/u> Kos lays a huge egg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here’s what he says, in criticizing Rice’s testimony today:<\/p>\n

The picture that emerges is that Rice believed that dealing with terrorist threats was a matter that little people on the ground who were “alert” would catch the people responsible, freeing the people at the top to talk about the “structural” changes to America.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, in fact, that’s how it’s supposed to work. The people on top think up strategy and policy and the folks on the street carry it out.<\/p>\n

And, in fact, how it did work. In fact, it has<\/b> worked without<\/b> the benefit of policy direction or grand strategy.One Border Patrolwoman stopped the Millennium Plot to blow up LAX<\/a>:<\/p>\n

At Victoria, U.S. immigration pre-clearance agents were mildly suspicious of Ressam. They made him open his trunk, but saw nothing. He presented his fake Canadian passport, and the computer check turned up no previous convictions or warrants in the name of Benni Noris. Ressam drove his rental car, with its concealed bomb, onto the ferry heading for Washington state. Upon his arrival at Port Angeles, a U.S. customs agent became suspicious of his hesitant answers to her questions, and she asked for identification. Agents began searching the car. As they discovered the explosive materials — which they at first took to be drugs — in the trunk of the car, Ressam tried to run away. He was caught and arrested.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Flight 93 did not hit the Capitol because the passengers – the ‘little people’ Kos dismisses – stopped it.<\/p>\n

In his interview in the Atlantic<\/a>, Security expert Bruce Schneier points out that<\/p>\n

“The trick to remember is that technology can’t save you,\u201d Schneier says. \u201cwe know this in our own lives. We realize there\u2019s no magic anti-burglary dust that we can sprinkle on our cars to prevent them from being stolen. We know that car alarms don’t provide much protection. The Club at best makes burglars steal the car next to you. For real safety we park on nice streets where people notice if somebody smashes the window. Or we park in garages, where somebody watches the car. In both cases people are the essential security element. You always build the system around people.<\/b>\u201d<\/p>\n

(emphasis added)<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are a lot of things to criticize the Bush Administration for. There are a lot of things to criticize Condi Rice for. <\/p>\n

But Kos has picked the wrong horse here.<\/p>\n

The reality is that we would all be better served by pushing down the role of securing our country against terrorism to the ‘little people’, rather than to large, rigid, unresponsive policy-driven organizations. <\/p>\n

Go read the Atlantic article<\/a> for more on why, or better still go read Schneier’s book, ‘Beyond Fear<\/a>‘.<\/p>\n

Back to Kos, I think, simply that the root issue remains that Bush et al decided to respond to the sponsors of the terrorist acts, rather than the individual actors. That’s a legitimate policy distinction, and one where, as I’ve said in the past, I fall on the side of the White House.<\/p>\n

But to somehow assume that the President and National Security staff will personally foil every plot (although the image of Condi Rice dressed up as Wonder Woman might be pleasing to some) – or even manage the response to every plot is ludicrous. <\/p>\n

It’s up to us; not as vigilantes or even armed defenders, but just alert neighbors. And baggage handlers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One approach to the War on Terrorism is to built giant formally structured security systems, backed by massive, centralized technology, and as the complex, \u2018wicked\u2019 world keeps asking questions the system can\u2019t ask, add pages and pages to the three-ring binders of regulations and policies the minimum-wage front-line employees must follow. You can hire and retain them based on their ability to follow the rules, even when it means taking the wire clippers away from a uniformed Special Forces soldier\u2014who has his mouth wired shut because he\u2019s wounded, and needs the cutters to cut the wires in the event he has to throw up. Or who want to take away the Congressional Medal of Honor from an 80-year old man flying to give a speech at the Air Force Academy.<\/p>\n

It will involve a massive investment in machines that will be rushed into production and still be obsolete long before we have finished paying for them.<\/p>\n

I obviously don\u2019t think much of this model in this application. I think it is based on old, Taylorian models in which you attempt to break the process into a finite series of discrete steps, and train the human portions of the system in performing these exact steps as precisely and efficiently as possible. It also removes the necessity for any kind of judgment or expertise on the part of the employee.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update:<\/b> Praktike busts me for not reading the byline, and thinks I’m completely wrong<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just when I was hoping to forget about constructively criticizing Kos and struggle with how to constructively criticize LGF, Stirling Newberry, over at Daily Kos lays a huge egg. Here’s what he says, in criticizing Rice’s testimony today: The picture that emerges is that Rice believed that dealing with terrorist threats was a matter that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}