The Psychology of Security and Real ID

Bruce Schneier's keynote this morning at Computers, Freedom, and Privacy was on The Psychology of Security, and one of the topics he discussed was which risks people tend to exaggerate and which they tend to downplay. People exaggerate risks that are spectacular, rare, personified, beyond their control, talked about, morally offensive, without redeeming value, and unfamiliar. He also talked about how the fear that these things trigger kick in at the instinctual and reflexive level, and while it's possible to override them at a more analytical level, it's a lot of effort.

One of the things I flashed on was the Real ID Town Hall webcast. Gina Scott described this well in her GovTech article:

Unfortunately, many people were put on the defensive at the meeting when, in the opening remarks, a picture of the Florida driver's license of one of the 9-11 highjackers was put on the overhead screen. The apparent attempt to show the ease in which such terrorists were able to attain state-issued identification drew the proverbial line in the sand for the state DMVs. For the regular citizens, many saw the use of the highjacker's card as a threat. One citizen commented that the use of the photo was offensive, especially "in a time when we are going through a period of distrust in this country."

Intentionally or not, showing the hijacker's ID card triggers all of these factors that lead people to overestimate risks: it personifies the risk; relates it to a rare, spectactular, much-talked-about event; etc. etc.

In the Q&A after the talk, I asked what approaches we should use to counter this -- basically to get people into a framework where they're getting beyond their instinctual fears to think through the security tradeoffs at a public policy level in a way that better reflects the real risks. "It's hard," he replied. "Fear is so visceral, so powerful." I suggested that one of the things we should look at is countering with more positive emotions (Stephen Duncombe's Dream: Reinventing Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy makes a similar suggestion in a more general context). He agreed that this was worth looking at, as well as various framing approaches ... and I agreed that it's really difficult -- especially when the mass media's coverage tends to reinforce the fear.

Schneier's essay on the subject covers the same ground as his talk, in somewhat more detail, looking at research from behavioral economics, pscyhology of risk, neuroscience. Strongly recommended.

jon

Tell the media to cover the Real ID rebellion

"There is a nationwide revolt against the REAL ID Act, but you wouldn't know it from watching the national news. Political journalists are often too obsessed with parties and personalities and the "sport" of electoral politics to cover real issues of real concern to real Americans."

So says DownsizeDC, and I couldn't agree more. They're not just complaining, though: they're starting up an email campaign with a page that lets you send a message to Neil Cavuto on FoxNews, Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, and Wolf Blitzter on CNN. Good thinking! I just tried it out (I'll include my letter in a response) and it seems to work just fine.

On Homeland Stupidity, Michael Hampton quotes Jim Babka of Downsize DC on why this is so important:

Congress may not always care what citizens think, until they’re forced to, but Congress always cares what the media thinks.... We need to get the media to cover the nationwide revolt against the REAL ID Act.

Action in the blogosphere!

Sparked by today's Town Hall Meeting and webcast, we're starting to see a little more discussion of Real ID in the blogosphere. Ryan Singel's story on Wired's Threat level blog has some useful information on the webcast:

The interactive webcast will only happen for users running Windows with ActiveX, Java and JavaScript enabled. Firefox is not supported. Mac users will be able to watch, but not interact or view online documents.

John07801's diary on DailyKos has some pointers to the local coverage in Davis, and Adam Shostack on Emergent Chaos notes that DHS is sending an "Assistant Secretary, Office of Policy Development" rather than somebody higher-powered ... well, okay, actually he calls the DHS representative a "flunky". Catherine of Siena comments on Threshing Grain that she's trying to get WorldNetDaily to cover the story, and Liam Ferris has a great title for his post: Homeland Security feigns interest, so tell them what you think.

Just a blip, or the start of a trend? We shall see ...

jon