Toothpase and Canaries

I have just recently returned from a terrific canoe trip in the middle of the mountains in BC’s Wells Gray Provincial Park. The scenery was wonderful, the weather was, on balance, very nice, and my computer, email inbox, and television were blissfully hundreds of kilometres away in Ottawa. When I arrived at a hotel in Blue River after regretfully leaving the lake behind, it didn’t take long before I had purchased the newspapers, opened my email, and turned on the television, where the first words I heard were from a CNN correspondent describing the characteristics of the ‘New, New Normal’ of aviation security. So much for hoping that my vacation would coincide with one of those rare pauses in the politics of terror and security.

WestJet helpfully filled me in on the immediate ramifications of the international panic that has followed the arrest of 24 (24 – 1, +1, for those keeping track) alleged homegrown terrorists in Britain (with more arrests in Pakistan). In my Inbox was the following email:

Dear WestJet Guest,

On Thursday, August 10, 2006, Transport Canada
announced increased security at all Canadian airports following a major
counter-terrorism operation in the United Kingdom.

As a result of
this situation, Transport Canada has implemented restrictions for carry-on
baggage. Until further notice, no liquids, gels or creams will be allowed on
board any aircraft, either on your person or in carry-on baggage. Liquids or
gels in containers of any size include: all beverages, shampoo, suntan lotion,
creams, toothpaste, hair gel, and other items of similar consistency. These
items can be placed in checked baggage but will be at the guest's own risk. Any
of the above mentioned items will be confiscated at pre-board security
screening. Guests may bring aboard baby formula, breast milk, if a baby or small
child is travelling. Prescription medicine with a name that matches the guest's
ticket, insulin and essential other non-prescription medicines are allowed. At
time of check-in, WestJet customer service agents will give guests the option to
remove any restricted items from their carry-on baggage and place them in their
checked baggage. These restrictions currently apply to all flights including
transborder into the U.S., domestic and international. Due to possible delays at
security screening, guests are advised to check in a minimum of two hours prior
to departure.

As it turns out, the alleged plot to blow up airliners on trans-Atlantic UK-US flights was to involve the use of liquid explosives, possibly nitroglycerin, nitromethane, or triacetone triperoxide. These explosives and / or combustibles were to be disguised as innocuous items of carry-on, such as soft drinks, in much the same way that can of shaving cream was supposed to help smuggle dinosaur embryos out of Jurassic Park (note that in our current state of hyper-reality, the lines between truth and imagery or simulation have blurred to such an extent that such comparisons are worryingly available and tempting to use – at least we were able to see images of the fake can in the movie). Accordingly, it was with a sense of detached absurdity that, this past Sunday, I went through the new ritual of sorting my luggage into solids, liquids, and gels, and ensuring that the latter two categories, along with my pocket knife and scissors, were dutifully checked for reasons of national security. As far as post-September 11 encroachments go, checking toothpaste and deodorant are relatively minor. Most of the major upsets in civil liberties, rights, and freedoms that have been experienced in the alleged pursuit of security over the last five years have been applied quite selectively, affecting certain groups, individuals, and locations; this most recent policy shift is receiving more attention because it represents one of those occasions where ‘we the people’ are collectively being asked to give up some very tangible examples of our enjoyed freedoms (however small) for the sake of national security. So far, it seems as though the public is generally willing to go along with the new policies, although I suspect things will be different if and when the rumored ban on carry-on electronics comes into effect.

So what’s the big deal? Why should we be concerned about the directive to purge our handbags of shampoo and soft drinks before boarding an airplane? As usual, it’s not the direct effects of the policy shift that should give us pause for alarm, but their location within a broader and ongoing trend in decision-making. This is very important to bear in mind, lest our arguments appear to be the lamentations of those who cannot bear to be separated from our hair gel while airborne.

As with any change in security policy or rhetoric billed as a response to a mobilizing event (or non-event, or potential event), efforts to unpack the implications of the ‘New, New Normal’ must be attentive to both the sequence of events and the larger socio-political context at play. Looking a short time back to the responses to the arrest of 17 alleged homegrown terrorists in Toronto is instructive, as it represents another situation where there connections between event (or non-event, or potential event), security response, politics, and public safety are indirect and somewhat fuzzy.

When the ‘Toronto 17’ were arrested, I was fascinated by the response from American authorities and politicians. As with the recent alleged aviation terror plot, the Toronto arrests were the culmination of a lengthy and extensive investigation, spanning countries, agencies, and jurisdictions. As with the recent alleged plot, the Toronto plot has been described as the work of homegrown, radicalized individuals. As with the recent plot, the Toronto case supposedly entered the arrest phase when authorities received intelligence indicating that the plan was nearing its operational stage – but before any operation was actually undertaken. And as with the recent plot, the nature of the alleged threat was well known to decision-makers, long in advance of the decision to disrupt the plan. Of course, there are major differences in the specific nature of the purported plots, in their scope, and in the key players, but the similarities are important to note, particularly as regards the ‘reaction and response’ phase.

In both cases, changes in policy – and calls for additional changes in policy – emerged after the disruption of the plot by authorities. After the June 2 arrests in Toronto, American border security was beefed up, and very political demands for sweeping expansions in security powers and changes in immigration policy were made by politicians on both sides of the 49th parallel. This is interesting, given that a) both American and Canadian authorities were aware of the investigation long before the arrests, and b) the threat posed by the alleged plot was, by virtue of the arrests, neutralized prior to the changes in policy (or requested changes in policy). If we understand the goal of security policies as the enhancement of public safety in the face of threats, then the expedient time to strengthen security would have been before the arrests, when the alleged plot was still ‘in play,’ and not afterwards. After all, the key decision-makers must have been well-informed about the ongoing investigation, as increased national and international intelligence-sharing is a cornerstone of both Canadian and American post-September 11 national security policies (and we have reason to believe that this exchange of information is actively taking place – the Arar Commission transcripts are illustrative of this) . It’s preposterous to assume that the American political reaction to the ‘Toronto 17’ arrests was the result of their post-June 2 surprise over the existence of the alleged plot. With a few exceptions (September 11, 2001 probably among them), intelligence and security authorities and the public do not operate along the same timelines, and what is new to us is not new to the key actors in politics and intelligence – in fact, it’s there job to know things we don’t, and to act on this knowledge before it reaches the public sphere. It sounds so obvious, but it bears keeping in mind every time we watch security agencies, politicians, the public, and the media reacting to events at the same time.

Fast forward to last Thursday, when transportation officials, airports, and security agencies rushed to react to the arrests in Britain. Again, the major ‘response’ to the disruption of the plot – the change in aviation rules and regulations – was implemented after it could have any impact on the organization or execution of the conspiracy in question. As was the case with the Toronto arrests, British (and Pakistani, and we can assume American and probably Canadian) authorities knew about the nature of the plot well in advance of its public unveiling, and as was the case with the Toronto investigation, they chose to withhold the implementation of preventative measures until post-facto, when the apparent danger had passed. The ban on liquids, therefore, is more a response to the publication of the apprehended British plot than it is a response to the plot itself. After the operation was thwarted, measures to prevent it were implemented, in airports around the world. Connecting the dots between event, reaction, security policy, and public safety is no easy task in this case.

An optimist would give the authorities the benefit of the doubt here. It could be argued that to take specific precautionary measures in advance of the arrests would have tipped off the alleged plotters, who could then have elected to change their tactics or simply go to ground. It could also be argued that the post facto response to the arrests is designed to prevent copycat or similar acts from taking place in the future, and that it is therefore a reasonable exercise in prevention. We could go so far as to suggest that the irritating nature of the precautionary measures taken was such that authorities felt it necessary for the nature of the threat to be illustrated before they could convince the public to cooperate.

When it comes to national security, however, I’m not an optimist (history, I would argue, instructs us not to be), and when it comes to matters of social control where liberties – anyone’s, no matter how small – are at stake, I don’t think it’s appropriate to give governments the benefit of the doubt. In fact, one of the key reasons we have civil liberties enshrined in constitutions and Charters in the first place is in response to the dangers associated with allowing states to exercise too much unchecked control over public life.

I don’t think that the new substance bans are simply the result of well-intentioned responses to a new and troubling face of terrorism; I don’t think that, in our contemporary ‘pre-emptive’ context, authorities need tangible examples of threats in order to enact policies in response to their hypothetical existence (case in point: terror alert levels); and I don’t think that the British arrests – or the global response to them – exist in a vacuum disassociated from global politics (particularly criticism within Britain – and in the United States - about increasingly intrusive security powers, the war in Iraq, and the public opinion minefield that is the Israel-Palestine-Lebanon situation).

But if the increased airport security is not the result of a cause-effect relationship between a foiled terror plot and government responses to the threat it posed, what is it?

Let me suggest an alternative interpretation that takes into account the chain of events and the broader socio-political context, and tries to get beyond the micro-level issue of toothpaste in carry-on baggage.

I propose that the new bans are the result of three inter-related factors: 1) an ongoing and pervasive tendency to embrace risk-based responses informed by probability neglect; 2) a similarly pervasive tendency to respond with technical solutions to what are manifestly social problems; and 3) a widespread (if not universal) willingness for states, authorities, politicians, and commentators to capitalize on the politics of fear. I’ll unpack each of these points in further detail:

1) an ongoing and pervasive tendency to embrace risk-based responses informed by probability neglect.

The new restrictions are preventative measures, designed to make it impossible for terrorists to board aircraft with disguised liquid or gel-based explosives. They were never designed to have any bearing on the alleged British plot (coming after the arrests), but they appear to be geared towards the prevention of similar activities in the future. In their sweeping and universal nature, they seem to embody the precautionary principle, which is usually interpreted by authorities to mean ‘better safe than sorry.’ Better to have all liquids banned than to risk having just one improvised liquid explosive incident. Quite apart from their political aspect (discussed below), I believe that the new restrictions reflect a widespread (and perhaps well-intentioned) trend to address unknown and often immeasurable risks by treating them as ‘knowns’ to be avoided. Cass Sunstein discusses this phenomenon in his book Laws of Fear. One of the problems with the precautionary principle is that it often relies upon emotional states (fear) and assessments of threats based on the availability of a worst-case-scenario (the prospect of a trans-Atlantic liquid bombing), which, in the absence of real data about the risks, produces probability neglect. Sunstein proposes that people fall victim to probability neglect if and to the extent that the intensity of their reaction does not greatly vary even with large differences in the likelihood of harm. The probability of an improvised liquid or gel-based explosive being smuggled on board an aircraft – particularly after the alleged plot to do just that has been foiled – is so low that sweeping precautionary measures are unlikely to ever have any bearing on a terrorist incident. The nature of the new regulations illustrate the abandonment of probability-informed response in this case, as they favour a universal ‘fix’ in the absence of data about specific variations in risk. This sort of ‘better safe than sorry’ approach is often embraced by a fearful public (unable to independently calculate risks), and it is actively championed by security authorities who feel pressure to ‘do something’ but are unable to act with any degree of informed precision. Sunstein points out that precautionary measures taken under the influence of probability neglect are not only unlikely to produce demonstrable benefits, but possibly sources of risk in their own right – he cites the appropriate example of sweeping and intrusive airport security measures resulting in more people choosing to drive, which is a much more dangerous form of transportation.

It’s important to note that both politicians and terrorists are effectively able to manipulate probability neglect in the public. From the political standpoint (more on this below), it pays to encourage the public to focus on the worst-case / crisis scenario, and to paint the picture of a pervasive and ever-changing terrorist threat that is both everywhere and nowhere. If a large part of your political platform relies on an omnibus national security agenda, the last thing you want the public to do is to treat terrorism as a concerning but rare and improbable phenomenon. From the perspective of terrorists, probability neglect in the public allows one action in one location to affect a massive audience by emphasizing the sheer randomness of the violence at play – the message is that ‘it could have been you,’ and, in the absence of data on which to assess the probability of this statement being accurate, many people exercise or support precautionary measures.

While taking informed precautions is, in many situations, a good thing, when pervasive probability neglect is in play, we are left with a decision-making process that embraces overreaction in the absence of evidence or verifiability, which I would suggest is a bad situation to be in when civil liberties and individual freedoms are at stake.

2) a similarly pervasive tendency to respond with technical solutions to what are manifestly social problems

Following from the first point, it’s important to acknowledge the close relationship between risk-based policymaking and technical responses in present-day society. Security has always been – to a certain extent - industrialized, and entire sectors of entrepreneuring specialists have made it their business to develop technologies in response to the latest risks. Airport baggage scanners, metal detectors, chemical trace identifiers, alarm systems, identity checks, biometric analysis, and a host of other gadgets and gizmos have been created (or re-tasked) to deal with emerging security issues. We can add to this list the less overtly technological aspects of technologies, as manifested by the various procedures designed to produce or maintain security, control, and order (as per Heidegger’s understanding of technology). The point is that we have generally elected to treat terrorism as a problem or hazard that can be mitigated with the appropriate application of technology, an approach that both pre-supposes the existence of terrorist plots and fails to really address their source(s).

By banning liquids and gels from carry-on baggage – and by implementing new techniques to screen for such substances – an additional layer of technological protection has been added to our anti-terrorism arsenal. As new plots emerge, similar technical solutions will no doubt be implemented (and embraced by the public), further strengthening our protections and ensuring that our authorities are always one step ahead of terrorists. After all, George W. Bush keeps telling us that “The enemy has got an advantage when it comes to attacking our homeland. They've got to be right one time, and we've got to be right a hundred percent of the time to protect the American people”, which suggests that ‘winning’ this particular conflict is a matter of out-imagining and pre-empting terrorists at the mitigation level. Makes sense, right?

Well, not really. It only makes sense if you put on blinders and treat terrorism as a technical problem, rather than a social and political problem which it obviously is (and always has been). This is not to say that all technical solutions are flawed – indeed, many are reasonable and appropriate. But terrorism can never be successfully responded to through technological measures (as with crime, as with other social problems), and attempting to deal with it in this manner only amounts to a proliferation of stop-gap solutions. Given the human capacity for innovation and the low-resource nature of asymmetrical warfare, it’s only a matter of time before a new terrorist plot reveals a new source of vulnerability, demanding a new series of responses and restrictions. And so on, and so on, ad infinitum, until the wholesale relinquishment of freedom becomes a prerequisite for travel. If terrorism and security are conceived of as two aspects of a technological ‘arms race,’ then the trajectory is set (there’s a reason they call it a ‘race’), and politicians will always be able to justify OUR escalations as necessary responses to THEIR threats.

William Saleton, writing for Slate, provides a cogent discussion of this problem in his article ‘The Liquid World’.

It’s high time that we stopped treating terrorism as something other than a serious social problem. If our response to the security challenges posed by political violence is to progressively prohibit the sorts of objects that can be used to disguise bombs, the result will only be increased insecurity and decreased freedom. Technical measures can be welcome additions to real, effective, political solutions, but they can’t be a substitute for them. For five years now (and before that too, of course), the proponents of conservative security agendas have scoffed at calls to address the ‘root causes’ of hatred and fundamentalism, to the extent that even mentioning the term ‘root cause’ (which itself has become diluted) brings about charges of ‘legitimization’ and capitulation. For five years, the status quo has been to treat terrorism as an inevitability or constant threat, like inclement weather, and to respond to it by alternatively shooting at the clouds or endeavouring to build the better umbrella. And now we have reached the point where our elected officials, busily pursuing their ‘war on terror,’ have decided to protect us by taking away our toothpaste, lest it be concealing some sort of ‘Mission Impossible-esque’ explosive. The whole thing would be comical if it weren’t so serious. Terrorism, we must remind our authorities, is not like the weather; it is not a constant ‘reality’ of any ‘new normal’ (at least, it doesn’t have to be); it is not a technological challenge to be surmounted with gadgets or restrictive policies; and it is absolutely not happening in a vacuum disassociated from our foreign policies. To the extent that we ignore the social and political wellsprings from which terrorism emerges, we resign ourselves to its continued presence, and to the erosion of our societies that is taking place in response to it.

3) a widespread (if not universal) willingness for states, authorities, politicians, and commentators to capitalize on the politics of fear

Perhaps banning liquids and gels on airplanes will have a preventive or deterrent effect on a terrorist plot someday. I’m not sure, and we really won’t ever be in a position to ascertain whether or not this is the case. But that’s only one aspect of the policy anyways. The other aspect, the one that we can readily observe, is the increase in the public awareness of terrorism-related threats that accompanies such a straightforward (and yet sweeping) response. Now, every time anyone prepares to take a flight, while they are sorting through their baggage, checking suspect substances, or reading new regulatory signage, they will be acutely aware that the threat of terrorism is as acute (maybe more acute!) than ever, and that even unassuming objects (we could substitute ‘people’ here) can be sources of deadly peril. If you’re a politician trying to advance an agenda that gives primary importance to national security (probably at the expense of other important things), this sort of active reminder of risk is very important – crucial, even – because you can only pursue an agenda grounded in protecting the vulnerable public if you take steps to scare the living hell out of them first. In the post-September 11 context, terrorism is always on the public radar to a certain extent, but when there’s a lull between events, or when certain security-related policies or foreign adventures become the subject of too much public debate and scrutiny, it sometimes becomes necessary to offer up new reminders and new nightmares, in order to keep the politics of fear moving in the right direction.

After any terrorist event, whether it be a successful operation, a thwarted operation, a major trial, or a good hypothesis about a potential operation, a policy window opens, and it becomes possible to interact politically with an anxious public. Changes in policy - particularly ones involving alterations to previously cherished rights or procedures – that would otherwise be difficult to effect become acceptable to a public anxious to see that ‘something is being done.’ Since September 11, this policy window has become an important feature in national and international politics, and progressively more restrictive national security powers and practices have emerged in Western states as politicians stack response on response, all the while emphasizing the immediacy and severity of the terrorist threat. It’s not a matter of conspiracy theory – it’s simply a reality of contemporary governance. Most political parties in most Western states agree on the essential talking points of the ‘war on terror,’ and today’s political battles are less about differences in interpretation of the essential sources of insecurity than they are about whose vision of the nightmare-response equation is superior. With tremendous expansions in the resources allocated to national security activities still underway, engaging in the politics of fear is a successful gambit for both politicians and stakeholders in the security sector.

In the case of the alleged UK plot (which is being described by many as ‘the worst terrorist plot since 9/11’, despite the fact that it never progressed beyond the planning stage), the arrests took place at a key time for both the British and American administrations. Both governments have been pushing for additional and controversial expansions in powers of policing, surveillance, intelligence-gathering; both governments have been receiving extensive criticism for the situation in Iraq, and for their role in the nascent civil war unfolding there; and both governments have been dealing with less-than-enthusiastic national and global opinion in relation to their stance on the hugely unpopular Israeli campaign in Lebanon and Palestine. In each of these situations, the key issues are very much nuanced, and the public in both countries is becoming resistant to the ‘black and white’ rhetoric that is favoured by the administrations. Recent controversies regarding botched terror investigations by British police, wiretap scandals in the United States, and the concerns surrounding biometric security technologies have intruded upon the status quo of ‘war on terror’ rhetoric. The foiling of an airline terror plot involving the UK and Britain can and has been used by claims-makers in both countries (and elsewhere, including Canada) to return the dominant narrative to a “Terrorists want to kill us and we need to respond to them” setting. Of course, it’s entirely possible that the plot was genuine – we won’t know until the accused have their day(s) in court. If the plot was genuine, then we are fortunate that it was foiled. The response to the unveiling of the operation does not require that the reality of the threat be proven in a court of law, though. Simply breaking the story to the media (who are all to ready to play their part in the propaganda process) is sufficient to ensure that the policy floodgates open, and the new regulations regarding liquids and gels are the result. These regulations are post-facto, and for that reason only loosely related with the alleged plot (which they were never designed to prevent), but they will for the foreseeable future serve as a means to conjure the spectre of terrorism in airports around the world.

Even if what we are witnessing is the result of a timely exercise in ‘fearpolitik’ and the unchecked expansion of risk-based technical responses to social problems, it’s hard to get worked up about something as apparently trivial as a ban on liquids and gels on aircraft carry-on. One would be forgiven for asking “What’s the big deal?”

It’s precisely this triviality that should give us pause for concern, in my opinion, because it effectively illustrates a more important and worrying trend in public thought regarding the relationship between security and freedom. The seemingly innocuous new regulations are a litmus test of sorts, and by examining the public reaction to them we can learn a great deal about the status of civil liberties. What I have seen over the last week is evidence of an apparent abandonment of the willingness to – on the basis of principle alone – defend against encroachments upon social freedoms described as necessary measures for the protection of national security. An alleged terrorist plot was foiled in the United Kingdom, and before the nature of the charges – let alone the outcome of any trial or the presentation of any evidence – was made public, the people of many democratic countries had decided to accept additional restrictions on their freedoms simply because the authorities deemed it necessary. When the policy floodgates opened, when public fear and the atmosphere of urgency were at their peak, we readily gave up something concrete in return for something intangible – and I submit that we did so largely because the real inconvenience associated with the new bans is relatively minor. In other words, we as a society (I include the people of the UK, Canada, the US, and other states here) demonstrated to the authorities that we are no longer in the business of fighting against encroachments on freedoms simply because they are encroachments on freedoms. I find this deeply troubling, because it seems to indicate a lack of understanding (or complacency) when it comes to the principles that underlie contemporary security politics. It sends the message that it is acceptable to subject individual freedoms to the death of a thousand cuts, so long as each cut is not deep enough to be unreasonable on its own. And it suggests that such ‘minor’ encroachments need not be justified to the public with evidence so long as they can be justified with rhetoric and imagery. These are the wrong messages to be sending governments that are, as we speak, pursuing policies that involve biometrics, CCTV, RFID, and expanded electronic surveillance. A society aware of the importance of defending civil liberties and individual rights on the basis of principle would have quickly made officials aware that this is about more than the ability to walk onto a plane with a can of soda – it’s about the right not to have one’s freedoms (however small) encroached upon as the result of arbitrary decisions of the state.


In closing, I think that our failure to appreciate the nature of the problem we’re facing (a politicized response to a social problem that relies on probability neglect and technical ‘fixes’ while continually encroaching upon individual and group freedoms – and advancing us towards further military adventures) is approaching the crisis point. The deadpan absurdity of the new set of airline regulations should serve as an illustration of the deep flaws in our approach to national (in)security, and the perilous position in which we have placed our liberties (however small).

I submit that we ought to treat the banning of liquids on aircraft as something of a dead canary in the mineshaft of contemporary security; in and of itself, it’s just a small bird, but its passing suggests something far more ominous ahead.