Difference between revisions of "Soft Targets:Contexts and Costs"

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Section 4: Contexts and Costs

In previous sections, we have described the nature of the target and the extent of the threat. Focusing in this fashion permits us to ground our analysis in concrete examples. However, without a consideration of broader contexts, this analysis would run the danger of suggesting countermeasures that make sense from the narrow perspective of protecting schools, but would be unproductive or overly costly for society as a whole. In this section, we consider this broader context and develop some criteria to be used when evaluating countermeasures.

We can divide security countermeasures into three categories: those that deter (or prevent) attacks before they occur, those that help detect attacks earlier or with greater precision, and those that improve the target's response and recovery. Taken in isolation, all three of these sound equally worthwhile, but caveats emerge when one examines they operate in a broader context. We examine each of these in turn.

Deterrence

In Section 3, we considered foreign, domestic student, and domestic non-student adversaries. A key question that arises when considering whether a proposed measure increases aggregate security is: for each class of attacker, will this measure reduce the probability that this adversary will perform an attack, or will this measure merely transfer the probable attack to another target? This question, in turn requires the answer to the following associated questions:

• Why would the attacker attack the school?
• Can this motivation be satisfied by attacking a non-school target?
• Is at least one alternative target feasible for a motivated adversary to attack?
• Is it preferable to divert attacks to those alternative targets? (This might be true, for example, if those targets are less important than schools, or have better response capabilities.)

As noted in Section 3, potential adversaries are too numerous to consider exhaustively. However, considering a few representative classes may yield some useful intuitions. Therefore, we briefly consider the above questions for the following: mentally unbalanced students (e.g., the Columbine killers); domestic right-wing extremist organizations (e.g., white supremacists); and anti-American foreign terrorists (e.g., al Qaeda).

For the Columbine killers, the objective was some combination of hurting peers, thrill-seeking, and attacking the school itself. It is difficult to know which of these was most important, but the first two could have been satisfied by attacking another target. For example, they could have killed large numbers of their peers (though a somewhat smaller number) by attacking school buses, and they could have sought similar thrills by attacking any place where people gather --- for example, a shopping mall or train station. It is conceivable that the attackers specifically wished to attack the high school; for example, the school might have held special emotional associations which made the idea of attacking it especially attractive. However, even in this case, one hesitates to bet the bank that the attackers would not have sought out some other target if the high school were hardened against attack.

Laqueur notes (Laqueur05) that right-wing extremist organizations wish to cause a breakdown in the existing order of society and the government; they believe that violence furthers this end by undermining people's faith in the state's ability to protect them. In some sense, the target doesn't matter much to these extremists --- government buildings (like the Oklahoma City Federal building targeted by Timothy McVeigh) may be especially attractive, and this category may include public schools. However, if schools are not available then substitute targets will be sought out.

Finally, consider al Qaeda as a representative of international terrorist organizations. Many observers (including Laqueur) believe that Al Qaeda appears to be motivated by the quixotic desire to topple America's geopolitical dominance. Lacking the resources of a nation-state, they cannot literally destroy America's physical infrastructure. Their motivation for attacking Americans on American soil is therefore a matter of public relations and politics: by attacking Americans, they draw publicity for themselves, and they arouse a political reaction in the American public. By showing that icons of American power are vulnerable, al Qaeda hopes to increase its popular support. Attacking a public school seems rather unlikely to be productive: Chula Vista High School is not an icon of American power, and attacking schoolchildren is unlikely to arouse broad popular support, even among populations predisposed to anti-Americanism. In a way, therefore, these organizations were unlikely to target schools to begin with, and diverting their attacks elsewhere would make very little difference one way or the other.

Therefore, for all three of the above classes of attackers, increasing deterrent defenses at schools will most likely divert attacks to other locations. Given the consistency of this answer, it seems likely to carry over to other classes of attackers as well.

The question then arises as to whether diverting attacks from high schools to other locations might be a good idea anyway. Children obviously occupy a unique position of psychological and social importance. Attacks agaist schools may be more psychologically devastating to the surrounding community than attacks on other targets. However, many of these other targets, including shopping malls and school buses, also offer the opportunity of violence against large numbers of minors.

From all of the above, we conclude that deterrent attacks should focus on deterring adversaries in general, not on preventing adversaries from attacking schools. Therefore, for example, attempting to turn the school into a fortress by constructing gated walls around the perimeter, limiting physical access to registered students and employees, etc., seems relatively unproductive. We advise that deterrent methods should focus on apprehending the potential attacker rather than hardening the target.

Detection

We have also considered countermeasures focused on detection --- for example, the use of surveillance cameras. Detection measures also suffer from the aforementioned problem --- you may observe all that occurs on one campus, but in doing so you may merely have relocated attacks to another location. Surveillance methods also suffer from an internal version of this problem: it is usually prohibitively expensive to install security cameras to cover every single location of a school. Surveilling an entire perimeter may be

Schools are frequently understood as centers of education, but they are also sites of socialization. The school environment must prepare students with the mental and emotional skills and habits required to participate in society; or, at a minimum, it must not actively interfere with this development. The socialization mission of schools is one of the reasons, for example, that American schools choose not to copy the model of many East Asian countries, which expect secondary students to devote nearly all their waking hours to some form of academic labor.

One of American society's fundamental values is privacy. This value is embodied not only in informal social codes, but in formal laws such as the Fourth Amendment's restrictions on search and seizure.

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Response

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References

• Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hate Crime Statistics 2004. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2004/openpage.htm

• Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) Regulations. U.S. Department of Education. http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/

• The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001) http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/reg/ferpa/index.html

• Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ppra/index.html