Comments on: An update for a ubiquitious ad campaign http://secondavenuesagas.com/2008/09/11/an-update-for-a-ubiquitious-ad-campaign/ A New York City Subway Blog Fri, 25 May 2012 08:53:29 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Second Ave. Sagas | A New York City Subway Blog » Blog Archive » An old announcement, not really out of date http://secondavenuesagas.com/2008/09/11/an-update-for-a-ubiquitious-ad-campaign/#comment-49157 Second Ave. Sagas | A New York City Subway Blog » Blog Archive » An old announcement, not really out of date Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:30:38 +0000 http://secondavenuesagas.com/?p=1311#comment-49157 [...] 2nd Ave. Subway History « An update for a ubiquitious ad campaign [...] [...] 2nd Ave. Subway History « An update for a ubiquitious ad campaign [...]

]]> By: Doc Barnett http://secondavenuesagas.com/2008/09/11/an-update-for-a-ubiquitious-ad-campaign/#comment-49127 Doc Barnett Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:34:36 +0000 http://secondavenuesagas.com/?p=1311#comment-49127 While advertising the campaign's 1,944 false positives might make people feel better, or at least that "something is being done", it's a failure rate, not a success rate (which is zero). Asking people to be suspicious of everything and everyone in a PSA has not stopped any attackers, and it can not stop a perfectly normal looking person from wearing a bomb-laden backpack onto a train. (Nor can the random subway searches that—as they must do—allow people to opt out by leaving the station.) What has unravelled several plots is regular police work, and the fact that airline passengers are not going to sit idly by as someone sets his shoe on fire (they did not need a poster to tell them to do something). The MTA's duty in fighting terrorism is to improve emergency response. Investing in that infrastructure not only reduces the harm of an attack (thereby reducing the impetus to commit it), it also reduces damage from a hurricane, earthquake, or colossal accident. And thinking along different lines, it wouldn't hurt to lower the density of rush hour trains to make worst case scenarios less bad—but the MTA is heading in the opposite direction, by removing seats on some trains. Not that it's their fault; our city and federal governments throw money at them only to be spent on certain kinds of disasters and only in particularly showy ways (the benefits of which are the subject of little analysis). This is all Schneier doctrine, of course. (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/how_well_see_so.html) While advertising the campaign’s 1,944 false positives might make people feel better, or at least that “something is being done”, it’s a failure rate, not a success rate (which is zero). Asking people to be suspicious of everything and everyone in a PSA has not stopped any attackers, and it can not stop a perfectly normal looking person from wearing a bomb-laden backpack onto a train. (Nor can the random subway searches that—as they must do—allow people to opt out by leaving the station.) What has unravelled several plots is regular police work, and the fact that airline passengers are not going to sit idly by as someone sets his shoe on fire (they did not need a poster to tell them to do something).

The MTA’s duty in fighting terrorism is to improve emergency response. Investing in that infrastructure not only reduces the harm of an attack (thereby reducing the impetus to commit it), it also reduces damage from a hurricane, earthquake, or colossal accident. And thinking along different lines, it wouldn’t hurt to lower the density of rush hour trains to make worst case scenarios less bad—but the MTA is heading in the opposite direction, by removing seats on some trains. Not that it’s their fault; our city and federal governments throw money at them only to be spent on certain kinds of disasters and only in particularly showy ways (the benefits of which are the subject of little analysis).

This is all Schneier doctrine, of course. (http://www.schneier.com/blog/a.....ee_so.html)

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