Security – Page 37 – a sibilant intake of breath

Some security related reading

Here are a few interesting and long security related documents which have recently become available. They are all in PDF format:

American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945-1989: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
A History of U.S. Communications Security (Volumes I and II); the David G. Boak Lectures
“A Look at Terrorist Behavior: How They Prepare, Where They Strike,” by Brent Smith, National Institute of Justice Journal, No. 260, 2008.
“How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida,” by Seth G. Jones and Martin C. Libicki, RAND Corporation, 2008.

I will post something more original as soon as possible.

Expectations of the Obama administration could hardly be higher: both in terms of domestic promises (fixing health care, etc) and international ones (fixing climate change, etc). Successfully addressing a good number of the pressing issues facing the United States would make for a very successful presidency. That being said, it may be overly optimistic to hope for progress on all fronts. There is only a limited amount of time even the most energetic and capable administration has, and there is always the need to negotiate with other actors, most importantly the US Congress. In the end, it is better to make strong and durable progress on a smaller subset of issues than to make a weak and easily reversible advance on many more.

It seems to me that one area where Obama should consider limiting his engagement is the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The region is undeniably in crisis, and there is most definitely both severe human suffering and considerable injustice ongoing. That being said, it is not clear that Obama could contribute usefully to reducing either, and it is clear that attempts to do so are time consuming and costly, in terms of political capital and energy. In order to get a sense of that, one need only look at the amount of effort some past presidents have put into the region (Clinton and Carter, for instance) and the very limited long-term results from them doing so.

If anything, the current situation in Israel and Palestine is even more fractured, unstable, and volatile than has been the norm in recent decades. In addition, the political leadership of the Palestinians is fractured in two, with Hamas openly advocating a second Holocaust. Given the absence of a situation conducive to negotiations, the prospects to do anything more than somewhat reduce the level of violence are very limited. With that in mind, perhaps the best course for Obama to take would be to send a respected special envoy to the region to try and contribute positively, while devoting his own time and attention elsewhere. Certainly, it makes sense to reiterate the most important points for an eventual resolution (a two state solution, demolishment of many settlements, an end to violence, etc), but pushing to achieve these things within the next four years seems far more likely to be a distraction than a path to accomplishment.

To those who will disagree, I ask what specifically Obama should do to produce outcomes that are better than those that would be achieved through the approach above.

“Chuckie” Taylor and torture prosecutions

An American court has convicted the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor for committing torture, sentencing him to 97 years in prison. “Chuckie” Taylor led a paramilitary unit during the time when his father was in power. His father is currently on trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague. If there is any fairness in the world, “Chuckie” should eventually have some senior Bush administration officials for cellmates

The illegality of torture under international law is unambiguous. It doesn’t depend on which statutes a particular state has ratified; further, there are no exemptions granted for heads of state, senior officials, or people acting in a professional capacity. It certainly is not a legal defence to claim that the torture was necessary for purposes of national security or preventing terrorism.

The environmental and ‘anti-war’ movements

Historically, there seem to be a fair number of areas of overlap between various aspects of the environmental movement and various aspects of the ‘anti-war’ movement. It seems important, from the outset, to stress that neither is really a unified force. There are a few people who still aspire to the complete abolition of war, while most others have the ambition of either stopping specific wars or curtailing some of the worst aspects of war in general (war crimes, nuclear weapons, etc). On the environmental side, there is arguably even more diversity. People differ on areas of concern (does animal welfare matter?), on the scale of action (local? national? global?), and on appropriate solutions. Overlapping with both camps are some groups (such as Marxists) who feel that changing some underlying aspect of society will address most or all of the problems of war and environmental destruction more or less automatically.

There are a few reasons for which the anti-war movement is a natural fit for the environmental movement. For one thing, they tend to galvanize the same type of people: predominantly students and older people of an anti-establishment bent. More concretely, there is also strong evidence that war causes environmental destruction and that some types of environmental degradation can encourage wars.

That being said, there are also reasons for which the environmental movement might be wise to distance itself from anti-war campaigners. For one thing, there is the danger of getting drawn into debates that are largely irrelevant from an environmental perspective: dealing with climate change is hard enough without needing to factor in the rights and wrongs of the Gaza Strip or Kashmir. For another, a lot of the anti-war movement functions in an extremely confrontational way. Of course, the same is legitimately said about elements of the environmental movement. While such agitation might be necessary to get things started and keep people honest, it tends to become counterproductive once you reach the point of implementing any specific policy.

Finally, there is a bit of a dated quality to the anti-war movement. It feels bound up with Woodrow Wilson, on one side, and the LSD of the 1960s on the other. Certainly, the idea that war can be eliminated as a phenomenon (or even as a tool of policy for rich democratic states) is no longer considered plausible by many people. Similarly, the idea that all wars are fundamentally unjust is hard to maintain given evidence of recent occurrences that (a) could have been stopped through the just application of force and (b) were themselves significantly worse than an armed confrontation would have been. What seems sensible in a post-Holocaust, post-Rwandan genocide world is the advancement of a ‘just war’ agenda, focused on using law and evolving norms of behaviour to avoid unjust wars as well as unjust behaviour in a wartime environment. In practical terms, this involves mechanisms like the arrest and trial of war criminals, interventions to stop genocide, and agreements to eliminate certain weapons and tactics.

A ‘just war’ movement would certainly find areas for profitable collaboration with environmental groups. Many kinds of weapons are of both ecological and humanitarian concern, for instance. What is necessary is a higher degree of nuance and consideration than exist on the activist side of both movements. Hopefully, more mature and sophisticated arguments and tactics will be able to generate progress in reducing the harm from both armed conflict and environmental degradation.

Are embassies still necessary?

This Vanity Fair article discusses the evolution of American embassies from open glassy structures intended to be a concrete reflection of American values into fortresses that almost completely isolate those inside from the country hosting them. This is certainly true of the new embassy in Baghdad. It has its own electricity and water supply and it is sharply isolated from even the ‘Green Zone,’ which is itself a fortress for foreign occupiers. The article goes on to ask whether embassies are even really necessary, in this age of mass communications:

Faced with the failure of an obsolete idea—the necessity of traditional embassies and all the elaboration they entail—we have not stood back to remember their purpose, but have plunged ahead with closely focused concentration to build them bigger and stronger. One day soon they may reach a state of perfection: impregnable and pointless.

There is certainly something to the argument. If the people working there are completely out of contact with the local population, they may as well be located in their home state. Due to security concerns, day to day matters like visas and assistance for tourists are increasingly handled at locations aside from embassies. Perhaps all ambassadors need these days is some secure office space, a home in a well defended gated community, and the ability to rent facilities where large social functions could take place. Eliminating embassy compounds would remove a tempting target for terrorists, and allow a lot less diplomatic and local staff to be retained.

In the end, the two key questions seem to be:

Do embassies still do anything that couldn’t be accomplished by fewer people in less specialized secure facilities?
Do any of those enduring purposes justify the risk and expense now associated with embassy construction and operation?

It seems to me that the answers may be ‘not much’ and ‘often, no.’ The most important remaining role for many embassies may be in espionage: snatching up nearby radio transmissions and providing some land that operates under the legal regime of the ambassador’s home state.

Torture, psychology, and the law

For the darkest day of the year, a couple of torture-related items seem appropriate. Firstly, there is this New York Times piece, which argues that senior officials from the Bush administration should be charged with war crimes, for authorizing and enabling torture. The editorial argues that there is no chance that prosecutions will be sought under an Obama administration, but that he ought to clarify the obligation of the United States and its agents to uphold the Geneva Conventions, as well as reverse executive orders that “eroded civil liberties and the rule of law.”

The prospect of high-level American decision-makers being put on trial for authorizing torture is so unlikely that it is a bit difficult to even form an opinion about it. At the same time, it is likely that nobody thirty years ago would have anticipated the trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), or International Criminal Court (ICC). There is no clear reason for which high political office should be any impediment to being tried for war crimes, but it is very unclear how any such prosecutions would fare in the United States. It would certainly be seen as a ‘political’ act, and any connections with international law would likely be the targets for special criticism and scorn from some quarters.

The other story worth mentioning is an experiment conducted by Dr Jerry Burger, of Santa Clara University. It was a less intense re-creation of Milgram’s famous experiment on obedience to authority. Like Milgram, Burger found that a startling proportion of the population is willing to torture a fellow human being as part of a scientific experiment. This is when the only pressure placed upon the subject of the experiment is the authority of the actor pretending to conduct it. That naturally makes one nervous about what people would be willing to do when they felt an urgent and important issue justified it, as well as when far stronger sanctions could be brought against them if they did not proceed.

Power, oversight, and photography

As this disturbing alleged situation demonstrates, you may be ordered at some point to delete photographic or videographic evidence of an event without appropriate justification.

While there may be situations in which security concerns are justifiably paramount, there are also many situations in which those who have authority simply wish to avoid facing any accountability for their actions. Given the conflict of interest involved for those law enforcement officers on the scene, it seems prudent to retain any photographic or videographic evidence you have produced, even if you are asked by them to delete it.

After all, any impartial evidence that exists can only help in any subsequent official proceedings. The absence of such evidence is likely to strengthen the bias of impartial adjudicators towards those with authority, as opposed to those who simply happened to be witnesses.

Prior relevant posts:

[18 December 2008] Zoom has posted an update about this matter.

Ranking energy technologies, from wind turbines to corn ethanol

Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, headed up a study to quantitatively evaluate different electricity generation options, taking into consideration their impacts on climate, health, energy security, water supply, land use, wildlife, and more:

The raw energy sources that Jacobson found to be the most promising are, in order, wind, concentrated solar (the use of mirrors to heat a fluid), geothermal, tidal, solar photovoltaics (rooftop solar panels), wave and hydroelectric. He recommends against nuclear, coal with carbon capture and sequestration, corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol, which is made of prairie grass. In fact, he found cellulosic ethanol was worse than corn ethanol because it results in more air pollution, requires more land to produce and causes more damage to wildlife.

It is naturally very difficult to assess the validity of any particular research methodology, given uncertainties about matters like the future development of technologies, the evolution of the global economy, the availability of fossil fuels, and so on. Nonetheless, it is good to see serious work being done on comparing the overall appropriateness of different energy technologies. Given the unwillingness of many states to impose serious carbon pricing solutions, and the tendency of governments to ‘pick winners’ when it comes to technologies being subsidized, the more high quality data available, the better.

While I haven’t looked over the study in detail, it does seem like the strongest objections raised against nuclear (which is ranked very badly) aren’t really about the environment or economics. The risk Jacobson highlights most is that of nuclear proliferation, and the dangers associated with making fissile material more widely available. Proponents of a nuclear renaissance probably won’t be keen to see discussion of “the emissions from the burning of cities resulting from nuclear weapons explosions potentially resulting from nuclear energy expansion.”

The entire study was published in Energy & Environmental Science, and can be accessed online.

A global response to the threat of asteroids

Climate change is not the only threat to humanity that the United Nations has been called upon to deal with. Another risk that bears consideration is that of the inevitable collisions that will occur between our planet and other big rocks in space. A group called The Association of Space Explorers has raised the issue recently, arguing that the near pass of Asteroid 99942 Apophis in 2036 should prompt some coordinated global thinking on appropriate responses to possible impacts. Their report refers the the Tunguska event of 1908, a three to five megatonne explosion which started fires large enough to engulf New York City. Apophis has a 1-in-45,000 chance of striking the Earth, but would generate a 500 megatonne blast if it did so. On an astronomical timeline, it is inevitable that an object of this magnitude will eventually strike the Earth.

The group has released a fifty page report entitled Asteroid Threats: A Call for Global Response (PDF). It covers both some technological options for deflecting incoming asteroids and decision-making processes through which such plans could be put into action. It makes a strong case that the probability of successful deflection is much higher if action is taken early. An extension of that is the need to take decisions before it is certain a collision will occur: a situation that significantly increases the probability that such a decision will need to be made within the foreseeable future.

Metal detectors and carry-on restrictions for Greyhound travel

The policy of restrictive carry-on rules appears to be spreading from planes to Greyhound buses. Apparently, as of December 15th, passengers boarding them in Ottawa will be forced to put everything aside from “medication, baby formula and small handbags” in checked baggage. No matter that those rattling baggage holds are hostile territory for cameras, computers, and other delicate items. Likewise, no matter that the logic of security on intercity buses differs substantially from the logic for aircraft, as I have written about previously. The system has already been introduced in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg.

To summarize my earlier post:

With a plane under their control, hijackers can fly to distant states that might assist them. The only way to stop them is to shoot down the plane, killing everyone on board. Buses are comparatively easy to stop.
[S]omeone in control of an ordinary plane can kill a lot of people. They can certainly kill everyone on board. They can also kill many people on the ground. Similar risks do not exist in relation to buses.
[I]t isn’t clear that this strategy won’t simply displace any violence that was to occur to a different venue. If I want to harm a particular person, I can do so in a place other than a Greyhound bus. The same is true if I just want to hurt people at random.
If you are really determined to hurt people on a bus, you can get on at a rural stop, rather than a bus station with metal detectors

It seems that the best low-cost and relatively low-carbon form of intercity travel is about to be needlessly constrained. It remains to be seen whether Greyhound proves enduringly committed to the new procedures once customers start appreciating just how inconvenient and unnecessary they are.

Category: Security