Friday, June 25, 2010

How security people can get ordinary citizens onside

If people who want to implement questionable-looking and inconvenient security measures want to get the citizenry onside, they need to give us success stories. Give us examples of tangible results produced by previous security actions - ideally security actions taken by the same parties that seemed equally unreasonable going in.

"We took these measures and nothing happened" isn't good enough. (And if you think it's good enough, I have a tiger-proof hat I'd like to sell you.) We need examples of specific and tangible threats that were actually prevented because of specific measures that were taken.

"But we can't disclose this information for security reasons." I do see where you're coming from on that. I myself have a job where I spend my day immersed in information I'm not permitted to disclose. But the fact is, there have been enough abuses of trust in recent memory that we can no longer trust you blindly. As Jean-Paul Sartre once said, "La confiance se gagne en gouttes, et se perd en litres." Trust is won in drops and lost in litres. Give us success stories and get us onside, or stay behind a wall of silence and continue going about your work as an object of thankless suspicion.

1 comment:

laura k said...

Very nice post.

I am catching up on my Imp Strump reading. Two of your posts - about the supposedly empty downtown and health care cards as ID - I replied to on my own blog. I think you saw those.