Responsible Counterterrorism Policy

8/11/2019 Responsible Counterterrorism Policy

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PolicyAnalysisS 10, 2014 | N 755

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

John Mueller is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a political scientist at Ohio State University. Mark G. Stewart is Professor and Director,Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.

Responsible Counterterrorism PolicyB J M M G. S

Terrorism is a hazard to human life, and itshould be dealt with in a manner similar tothat applied to other hazardsalbeit withan appreciation for the fact that terror-ism often evokes extraordinary fear and

anxiety. Although allowing emotion to overwhelm sensibleanalysis is both understandable and common among ordi-nary people, it is inappropriate for officials charged withkeeping them safe. To do so is irresponsible, and it costslives.

Risk analysis is an aid to responsible decisionmakingthat has been developed, codied, and applied over thepast few decadesor in some respects centuries. We deal with four issues central to that approach and apply themto the hazard presented by terrorism: the cost per savedlife, acceptable risk, costbenet analysis, and risk com-munication.

We also assess the (very limited) degree to which riskanalysis has been coherently applied to counterterrorismefforts by the U.S. government in making or evaluatingdecisions that have cost taxpayers hundreds of billions ofdollars.

At present, the process encourages decisionmakingthat is exceptionally risk averse. In addition, decision-makers appear to be overly fearful about negative reac-tions to any relaxations of security measures that failto be cost-effective and also about the consequences offailing to overreact.

If other uses of the funds available would more effec-tively save lives, a government obliged to allocate moneyin a manner that best benets public safety must explain why spending billions of dollars on security measures with very little proven benet is something other than areckless waste of resources.


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Officialsserving thepublic are

tasked atthe mostfundamentallevel tospend fundsin a mannerthat mosteffectivelyand efficientlykeeps peoplesafe.

INTRODUCTION

As declared in the rst sentence of theAmerican Constitution and throughout the work of Thomas Hobbes, a key reason for

founding governments is to insure domesticTranquility. Accordingly, officials serving thepublic are tasked at the most fundamentallevel to spend funds in a manner that most ef-fectively and efficiently keeps people safe.

Doing so is neither easy nor precise, andthe funds available for that purpose are, ofcourse, limited. Moreover, distortions inevi-tably stem from public and personal emotionand from political pressures. But, to the degree possible, the task should be carried out

systematically and professionally. To do other- wise is irresponsible and costs lives.

Terrorism is a hazard to human life, andit should be dealt with in a manner similar tothat applied to other hazardsalbeit with anappreciation for the fact that terrorism oftenevokes extraordinary fear and anxiety. How-ever, although allowing emotion to overwhelmsensible analysis is both understandable andcommon among ordinary people, it is not ap-propriate for officials charged withand re-sponsible forkeeping them safe. As CassSunstein puts it, If peoples values lead themto show special concern with certain risks, government should take that concern into ac-count. But any official response should bebased on a realistic understanding of the facts,not on factual mistakes. 1

Risk analysis is an aid to responsible deci-sionmaking that has been developed, codied,and applied over the past few decadesor insome respects centuries. 2 In this paper, wedeal with four issues central to that approach

and apply them to the hazard presented byterrorism: the cost per saved life, acceptablerisk, costbenet analysis, and risk commu-nication. We also assess the (very limited)degree to which risk analysis has been coher-ently applied to counterterrorism efforts bythe governmentparticularly by the U.S. gov-ernmentin making or evaluating decisionsthat have cost taxpayers hundreds of billionsof dollars over the past dozen years. We ndthat the process encourages decisionmak-

ing on counterterrorism that is exceptionallyrisk averse. Decisionmakers also appear to beoverly fearful of negative reactions to any re-laxations of security measures that fail to becost-effective, as well as of the consequencesof failing to overreact.

COST PER SAVED LIFE

When regulators propose a new rule orregulation to enhance safety, they are routinelyrequired to estimate how much it will cost tosave a single life under their proposal. Table 1supplies information about how that calcula-tion comes out for dozens of government rulesand regulations in the United States.

The results are anything but tidy, and theyoften reect psychological and political as-

Table 1Regulatory Expenditure per Life Saved

Regulation Year Agency Cost per Life Saved(in 2010 dollars)

Steering column protection standards 1967 NHTSA 140,000

Unvented space heater ban 1980 CPSC 140,000

Seatbelts and air bags 1984 NHTSA 140,000

Aircraft cabin fire protection standard 1985 FAA 140,000

Underground construction standards 1989 OSHA 140,000

Auto fuel system integrity 1975 NHTSA 710,000Continued on next p


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Regulation Year AgencyCost per Life Saved

(in 2010 dollars)

Trihalomethane in drinking water 1979 EPA 850,000

Aircraft seat cushion flammability 1984 FAA 850,000Alcohol and drug controls 1985 FRA 850,000

Aircraft floor emergency lighting 1984 FAA 990,000

Concrete and masonry construction 1988 OSHA 990,000

Passive restraints for trucks and buses 1989 NHTSA 1,100,000

Childrens sleepwear flammability ban 1973 CPSC 1,400,000

Auto side-impact standards 1990 NHTSA 1,400,000

Metal mine electrical equipment standards 1970 MSHA 2,400,000

Trenching and evacuation standards 1989 OSHA 2,600,000

Hazard communication standard 1983 OSHA 2,700,000

Trucks, buses, and multipurpose vehicle sideimpact 1989 NHTSA 3,700,000

Grain dust explosion prevention 1987 OSHA 4,700,000

Rear lap and shoulder belts for autos 1989 NHTSA 5,400,000

Standards for radionuclides in uranium mines 1984 EPA 5,800,000

Ethylene dibromide in drinking water 1991 EPA 9,700,000

Asbestos occupational exposure limit 1972 OSHA 14,000,000

Benzene occupational exposure limit 1987 OSHA 15,000,000Electrical equipment in coal mines 1970 MSHA 15,800,000

Arsenic emission standards for glass plants 1986 EPA 22,900,000

Covering or moving of uranium mill tailings 1983 EPA 76,100,000

Acrylonitrate occupational exposure limit 1978 OSHA 87,000,000

Coke ovens occupational exposure limit 1976 OSHA 107,400,000

Arsenic occupational exposure limit 1978 OSHA 180,800,000

Asbestos ban 1989 EPA 187,200,000

1,2-dechloropropane in drinking water 1991 EPA 1,103,900,000

Hazardous waste land disposal ban 1988 EPA 7,084,000,000

Municipal solid waste landfills 1988 EPA 32,300,000,000

Formaldehyde occupational exposure limit 1987 OSHA 145,723,000,000

Atrazine/alachlor in drinking water 1991 EPA 155,640,000,000

Source: Adapted by Mark Stewart from W. Kip Viscusi, The Value of Life in Legal Contexts: Survey and Critique, AmericanLaw and Economics Review 2, no. 1 (2000): 195222.Note: CPSC = Consumer Product Safety Commission; EPA = Environmental Protection Agency; FAA = Federal AviationAdministration; FRA = Federal Railroad Administration; MSHA = Mine Safety and Health Administration; NHTSA =National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; OSHA = Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Table 1 Continued


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In general,regulatorsand adminis-

trators tend tobe unwillingto spendmore than$1 million tosave a life, andthey are veryreluctantto spendmore than$10 million,preferringinstead toexpend fundson measuresthat save livesat a lower

cost.

pects of risk perception or electoral and lob-byist pressure. However, some general ten-dencies and limits have been established overtime. Thus, looking over such data, ElisabethPat-Cornell suggests that a ceiling of $3 mil-

lion per life saved (ination adjusted to 2010dollars) seems roughly appropriatethough anumber of entries in the table are substantial-ly, even spectacularly, higher. 3 But in general,she nds that regulators and administratorstend to be unwilling to spend more than $1million to save a life, and they are very reluc-tant to spend more than $10 million, prefer-ring instead to expend funds on measures thatsave lives at a lower cost.

That approach can be, and more recently

has been, expanded to embrace deaths byterrorism. In a study for the Department ofHomeland Security (DHS), Lisa Robinson andher colleagues conclude that the best estimateof a value of a saved human life for homeland se-curity analysis would be about $7 million in 2013dollars.4 Most studies focus on relatively com-mon risks, such as workplace or motor vehicleaccidents, and the Robinson study goes on tosuggest that more involuntary, uncontrollable,and dread risks may be assigned a value that isperhaps twice that of more familiar risks orsome $14 million. That approach essentiallyadds into the analysis much of the substantialindirect and ancillary costs, including emotion-al ones, associated with a terrorist event.

As will be discussed more fully later, theUnited States spends about $100 billion per year seeking to deter, disrupt, or protect againstdomestic terrorism. If each saved life is valuedat $14 million, it would be necessary for thecounterterrorism measures to prevent or pro-tect against between 6,000 and 7,000 terror-ism deaths in the country each year, or twicethat if the lower gure of $7 million for a savedlife is applied.

Those gures seem to be very high. Thetotal number of people killed by terrorists within the United States is very small, and thenumber killed by Islamist extremist terroristssince 9/11 is 19, or fewer than 2 per year. Thatis a far cry, of course, from 6,000 to 7,000 per

year. A defender of the spending might arguethat the number is that low primarily becauseof the counterterrorism efforts. Others mightnd that to be a very considerable stretch.

An instructive comparison might be made

with the Los Angeles Police Department, which operates with a yearly budget of $1.3 billion.5 Considering only lives saved followingthe discussion above, that expenditure wouldbe justied if the police saved some 185 liveevery year when each saved life is valued at $million. (It makes sense to use the lower gurefor the value of a saved life here, because po-lice work is likely to have few indirect and an-cillary costs: for example, a fatal car crash doesnot cause others to avoid driving.) At present,

some 300 homicides occur each year in the cityand about the same number of deaths from au-tomobile accidents. 6 It is certainly plausibleto suggest that both of those numbers wouldbe substantially higher without police efforts,and accordingly that local taxpayers are get-ting pretty good value for their money. More-over, the police provide a great many otherservices (or cobenets) to the communityfor the same expenditure, from directing traf-c to arresting burglars and shoplifters.

ACCEPTABLE RISK

Another way to approach the issue is tocompare the annual fatality rates caused byterrorism with those caused by other hazards.Table 2 provides relevant information. It leadsto a consideration of the central analytic issueof acceptable risk. Is the likelihood of beingkilled by the hazard unacceptably high, or is itlow enough to be acceptable? That is, just howsafe is safe enough?

We often say that nothing is more impor-tant than the value of human life. Yet, obvi-ously, we dont really believe that. Americansare clearly willing to sacrice tens of thou-sands of lives per year to have the automobile,even though it is quite possible to move people without killing them: passengers killed on rail-roads in a year can often be numbered on thengers of one hand. Many other social policies


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Table 2Comparison of Annual Fatality Risks

Hazard Territory PeriodTotal Fatalities

for Period Annual Fatality

Risk

World War II Worldwide 19391945 61,000,000 1 in 221Cancers United States 2009 560,000 1 in 540

War (civilians) Iraq 20032008 113,616 1 in 1,150

All accidents United States 2007 119,000 1 in 2,500

Traffic accidents United States 2008 37,261 1 in 8,200

Traffic accidents Canada 2008 2,431 1 in 13,500

Traffic accidents Australia 2008 1,466 1 in 15,000

Homicide United States 2006 14,180 1 in 22,000

Traffic accidents United Kingdom 2008 2,538 1 in 23,000Terrorism Northern Ireland 19702012 1,758 1 in 49,000

Industrial accidents United States 2007 5,657 1 in 53,000

Homicide Canada 2008 611 1 in 55,000

Intifada Israel 20002006 553 1 in 72,000

Homicide Great Britain 2008 887 1 in 67,000

Homicide Australia 2008 290 1 in 76,000

Terrorism United States 2001 2,982 1 in 101,000

Natural disasters United States 19992008 6,294 1 in 480,000Drowning in bathtub United States 2003 320 1 in 950,000

Terrorism United Kingdom 19702012 2,196 1 in 1,200,000

Home appliances United States Yearly average 200 1 in 1,500,000

Deer accidents United States 2006 150 1 in 2,000,000

Commercial aviation United States Yearly average 130 1 in 2,300,000

Terrorism United States 19702012 3,292 1 in 4,000,000

Terrorism Canada 19702012 336 1 in 4,300,000

Terrorism Great Britain 19702012 438 1 in 5,900,000

Peanut allergies United States Yearly average 50100 1 in 6,000,000

Lightning United States 19992008 424 1 in 7,000,000

Terrorism Australia, including Bali 19702012 117 1 in 8,000,000

Transnationalterrorism

World outside war zones 19752003 13,971 1 in 12,500,000

Source: Terrorism fatalities from the Global Terrorism Database developed by the U.S. National Consortium for the Studyof Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). It contains country-by-country information for more than 80,000 terror-ist incidents that took place throughout the world between 1970 and 2012. See http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/.


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Governmentshave been ableto set out, and

agree on, riskacceptancecriteria for usein decision-making for a wide varietyof hazards,including onesthat are highlycontroversialandemotive.

involve the same sort of consideration. To takean extreme example, every year, a few thou-sand people in the United States die in fallsfrom buildings that are more than one storyhigh. Those lives could be saved by closing off

all buildings at the ground oor. To reject sucha policy is to say tall buildings are worth thatcost in lives. As a society, then, we regularlyand inescapably adopt policies in which hu-man lives are part of the price.

A review of 132 U.S. federal governmentregulatory decisions associated with publicexposure to environmental carcinogens foundthat regulatory action never occurred if theindividual annual fatality risk was lower than 1in 700,000. 7 Established regulatory practices

in several developed countries are similar. In general, risks are deemed unacceptable if theannual fatality risk is higher than 1 in 10,000or perhaps higher than 1 in 100,000. They aredeemed acceptable if the annual fatality risk islower than 1 in 700,000 or perhaps 1 in 1 mil-lion or 1 in 2 million.

Those considerationssubstantially ac-cepted for years, even decades, by public regu-latory agencies after extensive evaluation andconsiderable debate and public discussionare designed to provide a viable, if somewhatrough, guideline for public policy. Clearly, haz-ards that fall in the unacceptable range (traf-c accidents, for example) should generallycommand the most attention and the mostresources. Those hazards in the acceptablerange (drowning in bathtubs, for example) would generally be deemed of little or evennegligible concernthey are risks we can live withand further precautions would scarcelybe worth pursuing unless they are remarkablyinexpensive.

Overall, then, it is clear that governmentshave been able to set out, and agree on, risk ac-ceptance criteria for use in decisionmaking fora wide variety of hazards, including ones thatare highly controversial and emotive, such aspollution, nuclear and chemical power plantaccidents, and public exposure to nuclear ra-diation and environmental carcinogens.

Yet only once, as far as we can see, has DHS

actually, if accidentally, engaged in a publicassessment of acceptable risk. It involves therisk that body scanners using x-ray technology will cause cancer. Asked about it, the DHS of-cial in charge, John Pistole, essentially said

that, although the cancer risk was not zero,it was acceptable. A set of studies, he pointedout, have all come back to say that the expo-sure is very, very minimal and well, well within all the safety standards that have been set. 8

Since the radiation exposure delivered to eachpassenger is known, one can calculate the riskof getting cancer from a single exposure usinga standard approach that, although controver-sial, is officially accepted by nuclear regulatorsin the United States and elsewhere. On the

basis of a 2012 review of scanner safety, thacancer risk per scan is about 1 in 60 million. 9

As it happens, the chance that an individualairline passenger will be killed by terrorists onan individual ight is much lower1 in 90 million.10 Therefore, unless one believes that ter-rorists will in the near future become far morecapable of downing airliners with body-bornebombs than they have been in the past, therisk of being killed by a terrorist on an airlineris already fully acceptable by the standards ap-plied to the cancer risk from body scanners us-ing x-ray technology. But no official has drawnthat comparison.

Things are no better in the media. For ex-ample, on the PBS NewsHour on December 28,2009, Gwen Ill, introducing a discussion ofthe then-recent underwear bombers attemptto down an airliner, happened to note that thenumber of terrorist incidents on Americanairliners over the previous decade was 1 for every 16.5 million ights. That interesting bit ofinformation, however, was never brought upagain, either by Ill or by the three terrorismexperts she was interviewing. Nor, of course,did anyone think of considering that, at thatrate, maybe the airlines were safe enoughthat the risk was acceptable.

Table 2 provides a listing of fatality ratesfor a wide variety of hazards, both natural onesand human-made ones like war and homicide.As can be seen, almost all the annual terrorism


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Terrorismunder currenconditions o

threat andsecurityspendingpresents ahazard tohuman lifethat is, ingeneral,acceptable,and efforts,particularlyexpensiveones, tofurtherreduce itslikelihood oconsequenc

are scarcely justied.

fatality risks are less than 1 in a millionforthe United States (as well as for Great Britain,Canada, and Australia), they are less than 1 in 4million per year. Therefore, they generally lie within the range deemed by regulators inter-

nationally to be safe or acceptable and do notrequire further regulation. 11 Applying conven-tional standards, then, terrorism under cur-rent conditions of threat and security spend-ing presents a hazard to human life in theWestern world that is, in general, acceptable,and efforts, particularly expensive ones, to fur-ther reduce its likelihood or consequences arescarcely justied.

Indeed, a legitimate policy considerationmight be to wonder whether expenditures

designed to keep the terrorism risk that lowhave been excessive and whether some of themmight be better focused on hazards with a high-er risk, even if doing so increases the terrorismrisk somewhat. One should keep in mind insuch a consideration that for the terrorism riskto border on becoming unacceptable by estab-lished risk conventionsthat is, to reach anannual fatality rate of 1 in 100,000the num-ber of fatalities from all forms of terrorism inthe United States and Canada would have toincrease 40-fold, in Britain (excluding North-ern Ireland) more than 55-fold, and in Australiamore than 80-fold.

We have been using historical data on ter-rorism here, and there is, of course, no guaran-tee that the frequencies of the past will neces-sarily persist into the future. However, thereseems to be little evidence that terrorists arebecoming any more destructive, particularlyin the West. In fact, the level of terrorist activ-ity and destruction seems to be diminishing,not expanding, at least outside of war zonesindeed, no major terrorist attack has occurredin the West since 2005. Moreover, we includethe 9/11 attacks in this count. No terrorist at-tack before or since, even in war zones, hasinicted even as much as one-tenth as muchdamage. That tragedy thus seems to stand outas an aberration, not as a harbinger. 12 Those who wish to discount such arguments and pro- jections need to demonstrate why they think

terrorists will suddenly get their act togetherand inict massively increased violence, vis-iting savage discontinuities on the historicaldata series.

COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS

Costbenet analysis brings the issues ofacceptable risk and the value of a saved life together and puts them into a broader and fullerframework.

The conventional approach compares thecosts of a security measure with its benet astallied in lives saved and damages averted. Thebenet of a security measure is a multiplica-tive composite of three considerations: (1) the

probability of a successful attack absent thesecurity measure, (2) the losses sustained in asuccessful attack, and (3) the degree to whichthe security measure reduces the risk by low-ering the probability and/or the consequencesof a successful attack.

The interaction of those variables can per-haps be seen in an example. Suppose a danger-ous curve on a road results in an accident fromtime to time. To evaluate measures designedto deal with that problem, the analyst wouldneed to estimate (1) the probability of an ac-cident each year under present conditions; (2)the consequences of the accident (death, injury,property damage); and (3) the degree to whicha specic proposed safety measure lowers theprobability of an accident (erecting warningsigns) or the losses sustained in the accident(erecting a crash barrier). If the benet of therisk-reduction measurethose three itemsmultiplied togetheroutweighs its cost, themeasure would be deemed to be cost-effective.

Those considerations can be usefullyadapted in a procedure known as break-evenanalysis. In break-even analysis, we seek todetermine what the probability of a successfulterrorist attack would have to be for a securitymeasure to begin to justify its cost.

We have applied that approach to theoverall increase in domestic homeland secu-rity spending in the United States by the fed-eral government (including for national intel-


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The tragicevents of 9/11massively

heightenedthe awarenessof the publicto the threatof terrorism,resulting inextra vigilancethat has oftenresulted inthe arrest ofterrorists orthe foilingof terroristattemptsat little orno cost tothe govern-

ment.

ligence) and by state and local governments.That is, we assume that homeland securitymeasures in place before the 9/11 attacks con-tinue, and we evaluate the cost-effectiveness ofthe additional funds that have been allocated

to homeland security. By 2009 that increasetotaled some $75 billion per year. That is a veryconservative measure of the degree to whichhomeland security expenditures have risensince 9/11, because it excludes such items as pri- vate-sector expenditures, hidden and indirectcosts of implementing security-related regula-tions, and costs of the terror-related (or terror-impelled) wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 13

To evaluate the reduction in risk providedby that array of security measures, we need to

consider their effectiveness in deterring, dis-rupting, or protecting against a terrorist at-tack.

In assessing how much the risk has been re-duced, it is important, rst, to assess the risk-reduction effectiveness of homeland securitymeasures that were in place before 9/11 andthat continue. In addition, one should keep inmind that the tragic events of 9/11 massivelyheightened the awareness of the public to thethreat of terrorism, resulting in extra vigilancethat has often resulted in the arrest of terror-ists or the foiling of terrorist attempts at littleor no cost to the government. In our analysis, we assume that risk reduction caused by the se-curity measures in place before 9/11 and by theextra vigilance of the public after that eventtogether reduced risk by 50 percent. That es-timate is exceedingly conservative, because se-curity measures that are at once effective andrelatively inexpensive are generally the rstto be implementedfor example, one erects warning signs on a potentially dangerous curvein the road before rebuilding the highway.

Furthermore, most terrorists (or would-beterrorists) do not show much intelligence, clev-erness, resourcefulness, or initiative. 14 A 2009DHS report describes terrorists as relentless,patient, opportunistic, and exible. 15 Althoughsome of those words may apply to some ter-rorists somewhereincluding at least a few ofthose involved in the 9/11 attacksthey hardly

apply to the vast majority of those individualspicked up on terrorism charges in the UnitedStates since those attacks. The authors ofcase studies of those terrorists or would-beterrorists mostly use descriptors such as in-

competent, ineffective, unintelligent, idiotic,ignorant, inadequate, unorganized, misguided,muddled, amateurish, dopey, unrealistic, mo-ronic, irrational, foolish, and gullible. 16 Mea-sures to deal with such people are relativelyinexpensive and are likely to be instituted rst.Dealing with the smarter and more capableterrorists is more difficult and expensive, butthose people represent, it certainly appears, adecided minority among terrorists.

For our analysis, we assume that the in-

crease in U.S. expenditures on homeland secu-rity since 2001 has been dramatically effective,reducing the remaining risk by an additional 45percent. Total risk reduction is generously as-sumed, then, to be 95 percent, with the preex-isting measures and the extra public vigilanceresponsible for 50 percent of the risk reduc-tion and the added expenditures responsiblefor the remaining 45 percent.

Putting it all together, we nd that, foradded homeland security expenditures of $75billion per year to be deemed cost-effectiveunder our approachwhich substantially bi-ases the consideration toward nding themeffective1,667 successful attacks comparableto the one attempted on Times Square in 2010 would have to happen each year without anysecurity measures in placethat is, more than4 per day.17 If the added measures managed todeter, disrupt, or protect against 45 percent ofthem (two a day), they would begin to becomecost-effective. That hardly seems plausible.

Some homeland security spending is devot-ed to ventures other than counterterrorism, ofcourse: to patrol and secure the border, for ex-ample. However, one should keep in mind that we are assessing only the increase in homelandsecurity spending that has taken place since9/11, and that has overwhelmingly been moti- vated by concerns about terrorism. Moreover,our estimate that this increase has been $75billion per year is decidedly on the low side.


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In animportantsense, the

most cost-effectivecounterter-rorismmeasure is trefrain fromoverreact-ing.

And nally, even if one wishes to maintain, say,that only half of the increase has been spenton counterterrorism measures, those expen-ditures would still need to deter, disrupt, orprotect against one Times Squarelike attack

per day, or the equivalent. As has been suggest-ed, terrorists scarcely seem to be numerous,competent, and dedicated enough to carry outsuch a task.

There are extreme scenarios that can betaken to suggest that enhanced U.S. security ex-penditures could be cost-effectiveif they rou-tinely prevented a nuclear attack in a crowdedcity, for example. However, for those who ndthat outcome dangerously likely, the policy re-sponse would logically be to spend on reducing

the risk of nuclear terrorism by putting togeth-er international agreements to keep track ofstocks of nuclear material and to institute stingsto undercut the illegal transfer of such mate-rial.18 The response would not be, for example,to spend tens of billions of dollars each year onprotection measures that are scarcely likely tobe effective against an atomic explosion.

In an important sense, the most cost-ef-fective counterterrorism measure is to refrainfrom overreacting. Thus, 9/11 not only led toconsiderable indirect costs as people avoidedying and traveling for a time, but the attacks were also used to propel the United States andits allies into costly overseas wars.19 Few ter-rorist events trigger such extreme reactions, which can be considered as contributors ei-ther to the costs of the terrorist attack or tothe costs of counterterrorism. To the extentthat extreme reactions like multitrillion dollar wars are considered to be a (self-inicted) partof the cost of the terrorist attack, they do farmore damage to the attacked than the effortof the terrorists. To the extent that such reac-tions are considered to increase the costs ofcounterterrorism, they are likely to render al-most any counterterrorism security measurescost-ineffective: if an increase in counterter-rorism spending of $75 billion per year failsto be cost-effective as we have suggested, anincrease of several times that amount will beeven less cost-effective.

RISK COMMUNICATION

Officials who seek to expend limited fundsin a manner that best enhances public safetyshould be risk neutral: insofar as that can be

determined, they should deal with the objec-tive likelihood that the hazard will occur andshould rely on that in their decisionmaking.Although we understand that people are oftenrisk averse when considering issues like ter-rorism, we follow the Office of Managementand Budget requirement that governmentsexpending tax money in a responsible mannerneed to be neutral when assessing risks, some-thing that entails focusing primarily on meanestimates in risk and costbenet calculations,

not primarily on worst-case or pessimisticones.20

The willingness to accept risk, however, isinuenced not only by its objective likelihoodbut also by a considerable variety of psycho-logical, social, cultural, and institutional fac-tors. These factors include the uncontrollabil-ity of the risks, the dread (or fear) they inspire,and their involuntary nature or catastrophicpotential. Also taken into account is whetherthe risks are increasing or not observable; whether they are unknown to those exposed,are new or unfamiliar, or are unknown to sci-ence; whether they have immediate effect oraffect a large number of people; and whetherthey can be preventively controlled, are cer-tain to be fatal, can easily be reduced, wouldresult in an inequitable distribution of risk, would threaten future generations, or wouldaffect one personally.21

It is important, then, for officials to com-municate risk objectively. If they can convincetheir constituents to adopt a risk-neutral per-spective, they will be in a far better positionto expend public funds in ways that mostenhance public safety. Yet although there isa fundamental responsibility to inform thepublic honestly and accurately of the risk thatterrorism presents, the emphasis has been onexacerbating fears. 22

In fact, just about the only official in theUnited States who has ever openly put the


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Althoughthere is afundamental

responsibil-ity to informthe publichonestly andaccuratelyof the riskthat terror-ism presents,the emphasishas been onexacerbatingfears.

threat presented by terrorism in some sort ofcontext is New Yorks former mayor, MichaelBloomberg, who in 2007 pointed out thatpeople should get a life and that they have a greater chance of being hit by lightning than of

being struck by terrorism. 23 It might be notedthat his unconventional outburst did not havenegative consequences for him. Although hehad some difficulties in his reelection two years later, his blunt, and essentially accurate,comments about terrorism were not the cause.

It is true that few voters spend a greatamount of time following the ins and outs ofpolicy issues, and even fewer are certiablepolicy wonks. But they are grownups, and it is just possible they would respond reasonably to

an adult conversation about terrorism. 24

CAN SECURITY EXPENDITURESBE REDUCED?

Because people often evaluate risk differ-ently from what an objective analysis woulddictate, politicians and bureaucrats face, or be-lieve they face, considerable political pressureon the terrorism issue. Their dilemma is nicelyparsed by James Fallows. He points out thatthe political incentives here work only one way. A politician who supports more extrava- gant counterterrorism measures can neverbe proven wrong, because an absence of at-tacks shows that the measures have worked, whereas a new attack shows that we must gofurther still. Conversely, a politician seek-ing to limit expenditure can never be provenright, while any future attack will always andforever be that politicians fault.25

However, despite that problem, there havealready been some modest relaxations in someairline security measuresthe security mea-sures that are most visible to the public andtherefore the ones most likely to stir commentand controversy. For the most part, thosereductions seem to have been sensible andto have reduced costs. Moreover, they haveproved to be acceptable: they have been es-sentially accepted by the ying public, havenot led to a decline in airline passenger traffic,

and have not generated focused cries of alarmfrom politicians and interested groups. Thefollowing are among those measures:

Passengers in the United States are no

longer routinely required to undergo thetime-consuming process of answeringquestions about whether they packedtheir luggage themselves and have hadtheir bags with them at all times.

Beginning in late 2005, passengers in theUnited States were allowed to take shortscissors and knives with them on planes,as these items were deemed too insig-nicant to pose much of a security risk.Australia soon followed suit. 26 (Howev

er, efforts in 2013 to extend that measurefurther were not so successful.)

Officials eliminated the ritual of forc-ing passengers to remain in their seatsduring the last half hour of ights toWashingtons Ronald Reagan NationalAirport.

Considerations of permanently closingWashingtons Ronald Reagan NationalAirport, potentially a very costly ven-ture, were abandoned.

Harassment of automobiles picking upand dropping off passengers appears tohave been relaxed.

Passengers are now usually required toshow boarding passes only once to in-spectors.

Domestic passengers in the UnitedStates no longer need to show their iden-tication at the gate.

The orange alert put in place at Ameri-can airports after an airline bomb plot was rolled up in distant Britain in 2006 was abandoned in 2011 when the wholecolor-code scheme, of which it was part, was scrapped. The number of federal air marshals haspresumably been reduced with a hiringfreeze that began in 2012.27

Passengers under age 13 and over age 7are no longer required to remove shoesor jackets when going through screening.


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The UnitedKingdom, which faces

internal threfrom terror-ism that may well be greathan that forthe UnitedStates, nonetheless spenproportion-ately muchless than halas much onhomelandsecurity, andthe sameholds forCanada and

Australia.

The Transportation Security Adminis-tration has begun to institute PreCheck.That program allows expedited screen-ing for a large portion of passengerspotentially half of themselected from

frequent-ier programs and from GlobalEntry and other trusted traveler programs. Those passengers do not need totake off belts, shoes, or jackets, nor dothey need to remove liquids and laptopsfrom their carry-on luggage. In addition,they are not required to undergo full-body screening. Even though that program might, in some sense, be viewed asmaking us less safe, it appears to have gen-erated no opposition. Indeed, any clamor

created among the public has come fromthose who are anxious to join up.

Furthermore, it is possible that politiciansand bureaucrats are overly fearful about thepolitical consequences of reacting moderatelyto terrorism. Sometimes, leaders have beenable to restrain their instinct to overreact, andthis has often proved to be entirely acceptablepolitically. The United States did not mas-sively overreact to terrorist bombings againstits soldiers and citizens in Lebanon in 1983 orover Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.28

This issue is particularly important because,as noted, it certainly appears that, to the degreethat overreaction increases the costs inictedby terrorism without providing compensatingbenets, avoiding overreaction is by far themost cost-effective counterterrorism mea-sure. One might, in that respect, compare thereaction to 9/11 with that to the worst terror-ist event in the developed world before then,the downing of an Air India airliner departingCanada in 1985 in which 329 people, 280 ofthem Canadian citizens, perished. JournalistGwynne Dyer points out that, proportionateto population, the losses were almost exactlythe same in the two cases. But, continues Dyer,heres what Canada didnt do: it didnt sendtroops into India to stamp out the roots of theterrorism and it didnt declare a global war onterror. Partly because it lacked the resources

for that sort of adventure, of course, but alsobecause it would have been stupid. 29 A similarconclusion was presumably reached by the In-dian government after the dramatic and costlyterrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008.

Moreover, although political pressures mayforce actions and expenditures that are un- wise, they usually do not precisely dictate thelevel of expenditure. Thus, although there arepublic demands to do something about ter-rorism, nothing in those demands specicallyrequires American officials to mandate remov-ing shoes in airport security lines, to requirepassports to enter Canada, to spread bollardslike dandelions, or to make a huge number ofbuildings into forbidding fortresses. The Unit-

ed Kingdom, which faces an internal threatfrom terrorism that may well be greater thanthat for the United States, nonetheless spendsproportionately much less than half as muchon homeland security, and the same holds forCanada and Australia. 30 Yet politicians andbureaucrats in those countries do not seem tosuffer threats to their positions or other politi-cal problems because of it.

RESPONSIBLE

COUNTERTERRORISMPOLICYMAKING

In seeking to evaluate the effectiveness ofthe massive increases in homeland securityexpenditures since September 11, 2001, thecommon and urgent query has been are wesafer? That, however, is the wrong question.Of course, we are saferthe posting of a single security guard at one buildings entranceenhances safety, however microscopically. Thecorrect question to begin with is how safe are we? and that should lead to a systematic ex-amination of another query, are the gains insecurity worth the funds expended? Or, asit was posed shortly after 9/11 by risk analystHoward Kunreuther, How much should webe willing to pay for a small reduction in prob-abilities that are already extremely low? 31 Working to answer that absolutely centralquestion involves dealing with considerations


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When wespendresources on

regulationsand proce-dures thatsave lives at ahigh cost, weforgo theopportunityto spendthose sameresources onmeasures thatcan save morelives at thesame cost oreven at alower one.

of cost per saved life and acceptable risk as fedinto costbenet analysis.

As far as we can see, DHS decisionmakersdo not follow robust risk assessment method-ology. If they did, low-cost solutions that are

easily deployed and effective would be the rstto be implemented, and we do not nd thatto be the standard. That observation is sup-ported by a committee of the U.S. NationalAcademy of Sciences in a 2010 report. Afterspending the better part of two years inves-tigating the issue, the committee could notnd any DHS risk analysis capabilities andmethods adequate for supporting the deci-sions made about spending on terrorism andnoted that little effective attention was paid

to fundamental issues. The committee cameacross only one document that could explainexactly how the risk analyses are conductedand looked over reports in which it was notclear what problem is being addressed. Thatsituation is particularly strange because, as thecommittee also notes, the risk models used inthe department for natural hazards are nearstate of the art and are based on extensivedata, have been validated empirically, and ap-pear well suited to near-term decision needs. 32 As far as we can tell, the report, which essen-tially suggests that DHS had spent hundredsof billions of dollars without knowing what it was doing, generated no coverage in the media whatsoever.

A 2012 evaluation by the RAND Corpora-tion of a risk analysis tool developed for theDHS is similarly critical. The report notes thatthe tool has thousands of input variables,many of which cannot be estimated with muchprecision, and it could generate results that arecompletely wrong. Moreover, running thetool takes so long that it was not possible toconduct even a supercial sensitivity analysisof the tools many thousands of assumptionsand parameter estimates. In addition, thetool deals with only relative risk, not absoluterisk (a key criticism as well in the 2010 Nation-al Research Council study), and its estimatesof relative risk are subject to strong, probablyuntenable, assumptions. The tool is also in-

sensitive to changes in the magnitude of riskand assumes no attack can be deterred. 33

Moreover, when it comes to terrorism,DHS appears to be exceptionally risk averse:its decisions cannot be supported even with

the most risk-averse utility functions possible,and its level of risk aversion is exhibited byfew, if any, government agencies, including theNuclear Regulatory Commission and Environ-mental Protection Agency. 34 Much the sameseems to hold for the development of counter-terrorism security measures in other countries.

More broadly, a ny responsible analysis mustalso include a consideration of what else couldhave been done with the effort and money be-ing expended on the policy proposed. 35 When

we spend resources on regulations and proce-dures that save lives at a high cost, we forgo theopportunity to spend those same resources onmeasures that can save more lives at the samecost or even at a lower one.36 Spending on a wide range of more cost-effective risk-reduc-tion programs like ood protection, vaccina-tion and screening, vehicle and road safety,health care, and occupational health and safety would probably result in far more signicantbenets to society. For example, diverting afew percent of the nearly $10 billion per yearspent on airline security could save many livesat a fraction of the cost if it were spent insteadon bicycle helmets for children, tandem massspectrometry screening programs, smokealarms, or tornado shelters .37

It may be useful in that light to put counter-terrorism expenditures in the broadest com-parative context. Bjrn Lomborg assembled a group of international experts to answer onequestion: if we had an extra $75 billion to putto good use, which problems would we solverst?38 That sum is less than what the UnitedStates spends on homeland security in a single year. More than 40 experts, tasked to do whatis rational instead of what is fashionable, ap-plied costbenet thinking to a wide range ofissues. For many measures, the benet is 10times greater than the cost, and, most impor-tant, the number of lives saved is spectacular.According to those analysts, spending merely


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Risk andcostbenetconsideratio

should notbe the solecriteria forpublic deci-sionmakingNonethelessthey canreveal wastefulexpenditureand allowlimited fundto be directe where themost benetcan beattained.

$2 billion could save more than 1.5 millionlives: 1 million child deaths could be avertedby expanded immunization coverage, whilecommunity-based nutrition programs couldsave another half-million lives. In assessing ex-

penditures for dealing with transnational ter-rorism, by contrast, the experts found costs tobe 3 to 25 times higher than any benets. 39

We recognize that risk and costbenetconsiderations should not be the sole criteriafor public decisionmaking. Nonetheless, theyprovide important insights into how securitymeasures may (or may not) perform, their ef-fect on risk reduction, and their cost-effective-ness. They can reveal wasteful expendituresand allow limited funds to be directed where

the most benet can be attained. If risk andcostbenet advice is to be ignored, the onusis on public officials to explain why that is soand to detail the tradeoffs and cuts to otherprograms that will inevitably ensue. That is,if diversions of funds would easily save manylives, a government obliged to allocate fundsin a manner that best benets society mustexplain why it is spending billions of dollarson security measures with very little provenbenet and why that policy is something otherthan a reckless waste of resources.

Our ndings dealing with the question-able cost-effectiveness of overall increases inhomeland security expenditures since 9/11should not be taken to suggest that all securitymeasures necessarily fail to be cost-effective:there may be specic measures that are cost-effective. But each should be subjected to thekind of risk analysis we have applied to theoverall increases in expenditure.

We have done so for several specic mea-sures. It appears, for example, that the protec-tion of a standard office-type building is highlyquestionable: under most circumstances, it would be cost-effective only if the likelihoodof a sizable terrorist attack on the building isa thousand times greater than it is at present.Something similar holds for the protectionof bridges.40 Conversely, hardening cockpitdoors and training ight crews about how toresist ight deck invasions on aircraft appear

to be cost-effective. However, the provision forair marshals on the planes decidedly is not, andthe cost-effectiveness of full-body scanners isquestionable at best. Indeed, sizable reduc-tions in those two programs could easily result

in saving hundreds of millions of dollar per yearboth for the taxpayer and for the airlines, withno negative consequences for safetyparticu-larly if a bit of the saved money is spent on lessexpensive security measures like secondarycockpit barriers and armed pilot training. 41

Policy-making is a risky business, one group of analysts has acknowledged. But, theycontinue, regardless of the varied desires andpolitical pressures, we believe that it is the re-sponsibility of analysts forcefully to advocate

rational decision methods in public policy-making, especially for those with high risk. 42 Or as Pat-Cornell observes, if policymakersdont embrace rational approaches, politicallydriven processes may lead to raising unneces-sary fears, wasting scarce resources, or ignor-ing important problems. 43 And, one mightadd, when public safety is the issue at hand,they may cost lives. Central in all that, as riskanalyst David Banks has suggested, is the dis-tinction between realistic reactions to plau-sible threats and hyperbolic overreaction toimprobable contingencies. 44

To be irrational with your own money maybe foolhardy, to give in to guilty pleasure, orto wallow in caprice. But to be irrational withother peoples money, particularly where pub-lic safety is concerned, is irresponsible. In theend, it becomes a dereliction of duty that can-not be justied by political pressure, bureau-cratic constraints, or emotional drives.

If officials in charge of providing for pub-lic safety are incapable of carrying out their jobs in a manner that provides the most safetyfor the money expended, they should franklyadmit that they are being irresponsiblethatthey consider retaining their position to bemore important than providing for publicsafetyor they should refuse to take the jobin the rst place. People who join the army orbecome reghters accept the possibility thatat some point they may be put in a position in


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which they are shot at or are required to entera burning building. People who become deci-sionmakers should in equal measure acknowl-edge that to carry out their job properly andresponsibly, they may be required on occasion

to make some difficult, even career-threaten-ing decisions.

NOTES

1. Cass R. Sunstein, Misfearing: A Reply, JohnM. Olin Program in Law and Economics WorkingPaper no. 274, University of Chicago Law School,2006, pp. 15, 18.

2. See, for example, ISO 310002009, Risk Man-

agementPrinciples and Guidelines (Geneva, Swit-zerland: International Organization for Standard-ization, 2009); and Peter L. Bernstein, Againstthe Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996).

3. M. Elisabeth Pat-Cornell, Quantitative Safe-ty Goals for Risk Management of Industrial Facili-ties, Structural Safety 13, no. 3 (1994): 14557.

4. Lisa A. Robinson et al., Valuing the Risk ofDeath from Terrorist Attacks, Journal of Home- land Security and Emergency Management 7, no. 1(2010): art. 14. Characteristically, court awardsor compensation payouts are considerably lower.The average life insurance payout to 9/11 victims was $350,000, and for workers compensation was $400,000. See Lloyd Dixon and Rachel K.Stern, Compensation for Losses from the 9/11 At-tacks (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Institute forCivil Justice, 2004), pp. 31, 17. Court awards maybe higher than that, but not always. A study ofaviation fatality payments found that the averagecompensation for cases that went to trial was ap-proximately $1.2 million with a maximum of $10million in 2010 dollars; however, half of all pay-outs, including those settled before trials began, were less than $350,000. See James S. Kakalik,Elizabeth M. King, Michael Traynor, Patricia A.Ebner, and Larry Picus, Costs and Compensation Paid in Aviation Accident Litigation (Santa Monica,CA: RAND Institute for Civil Justice, 1988), p.

x. Payments to the families of soldiers killed inthe Iraq War total $500,000, up from $112,240before that conflict. Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes,The Three Trillion Dollar War: The TruCost of the Iraq Conflict (New York: W. W. Norton,

2008), p. 17.

5. City of Los Angeles Fiscal Year 201415, Deta Department Programs: Volume II , April 2014, pp4347. The FY 201415 proposed budget is similarto FY 201314 expenditures, p. 397.

6. U.S. Cities with Bigger Economies than En-tire Countries, Wall Street Journal , July 20, 2012.

7. Curtis C. Travis, Samantha A. Richter, Edmund

A. C. Crouch, Richard Wilson, and Ernest D. Kl-ema, Cancer Risk Management: A Review of 132Federal Regulatory Decisions, Environmental Scence and Technology 21, no. 5 (1987): 41520. On thissue, see also John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart,Terror, Security, and Money: Balancing the Risks, efits, and Costs of Homeland Security (New York: Ox-ford University Press, 2011), pp. 5659.

8. PBS NewsHour , November 16, 2010.

9. Scientific Committee on Emerging and NewlyIdentified Health Risks (SCENIHR), HealthEffects of Security Scanners for Passenger Screen-ing, European Commission, Brussels, April 26,2012. Passenger exposure to backscatter scannersis 0.4 mSv (millisieverts) per scan. A 1 mSv doseaccording to standard models, increases the riskof fatal cancers by 0.004 percent. The increasein fatal cancer risk per scan is thus 0.4 0.001 0.00004 = 1 in 60 million.

10. During a 14-year period, 19992012, 363 ailine passengers were killed by terrorists (mainly, ofcourse, on 9/11). The total number of global airlinepassengers over the same period is approximately29 billion.

11. See also Kenneth T. Bogen and Edwin D. Jones, Risks of Mortality and Morbidity fromWorldwide Terrorism: 19682004, Risk Analys26, no. 1 (2006): 56; and Daniel Gardner, The Sc


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Walter A. Albers (New York: Plenum, 1980), pp.181216.

22. A recent case in point is Thomas H. Kean andLee H. Hamilton, Todays Rising Terrorist Threat

and the Danger to the United States: Reflections onthe Tenth Anniversary of the 9/11 Commission Report (Washington: Bipartisan Policy Center, July 2014).On this issue, see Benjamin H. Friedman, JimHarper, and Christopher A. Preble, eds., Terroriz-ing Ourselves (Washington: Cato Institute, 2010);A. Trevor Thrall and Jane K. Cramer, American Foreign Policy and the Politics of Fear: Threat Infla-tion since 9/11 (London and New York: Routledge,2009); Ian Lustick, Trapped in the War on Terror(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,

2006); John Mueller, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National SecurityThreats, and Why We Believe Them (New York: FreePress, 2006); and Robert H. Johnson, Improbable Dangers: U.S. Conceptions of Threat in the Cold War and After (New York: St. Martins, 1997).

23. Sewell Chan, Buzz over Mayors Get a LifeRemark, New York Times, June 6, 2007. See alsoMueller, Overblown, pp. 15152.

24. For a discussion, see John Mueller, Mark G.Stewart, and Benjamin H. Friedman, FinallyTalking Terror Sensibly, National Interest , May24, 2013, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/ finally-taking-terror-sensibly-8511.

25. James Fallows, If the TSA Were RunningNew York, Atlantic, May 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/05/if-the-tsa- were-running-new-york/39839/.

26. See also Kip Hawley and Nathan Means, Per- manent Emergency: Inside the TSA and the Fight forthe Future of American Security (New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2012).

27. Written testimony of DHS Management Di-rectorate, U.S. Customs and Border Protection,U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,and Transportation Security Administration fora hearing of the House Committee on Homeland

Securitys Subcommittee on Oversight and Man-agement Efficiency, The Impact of Sequestra-tion on Homeland Security: Scare Tactics or Pos-sible Threat? April 12, 2013.

28. On this issue, see Mueller and Stewart, TerrorSecurity and Money, pp. 17982.

29. Gwynne Dyer, The International Terror-ist Conspiracy, GwynneDyer.com, June 3, 2006,http://gwynnedyer.com/2006/the-international-terrorist-conspiracy/.

30. Mueller and Stewart, Terror, Security, and Money, ch. 4.

31. Howard Kunreuther, Risk Analysis and RiskManagement in an Uncertain World, Risk Analy sis 22, no. 4 (2002): 66263. See also John MuelleSome Reflections on What, If Anything, Are WeSafer? Might Mean,Cato Unbound , September 112006, http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/09/11/ john-mueller/some-reflections-what-anything-are-we-safer-might-mean.

32. National Research Council of the NationalAcademies, Review of the Department of HomelSecuritys Approach to Risk Analysis (Washington:National Academies Press, 2010).

33. Andrew R. Morral, Carter C. Price, David S.Ortiz, Bradley Wilson, Tom LaTourrette, BlakeW. Mobley, Shawn McKay, and Henry H. Willis, Modeling Terrorism Risk to the Air TransportatSystem (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation,2012).

34. Mark G. Stewart, Bruce R. Ellingwood, and John Mueller, Homeland Security: A Case Studyin Risk Aversion for Public Decision-Making, International Journal of Risk Assessment and Man ment 15, no. 56 (2011): 36786; Mark G. Stewaand John Mueller, Aviation Security, Risk Assess-ment, and Risk Aversion for Public Decisionmak-ing, Journal of Policy Analysis and Managemen 32no. 3 (2013): 61533.

35. Bruce Schneier, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sens


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about Security in an Uncertain World (New York:Copernicus, 2003).

36. Tammy O. Tengs and John D. Graham, TheOpportunity Costs of Haphazard Social Invest-

ments, in Risks, Costs, and Lives Saved: Getting Better Results from Regulation, ed. Robert W. Hahn (Wash-ington: American Enterprise Institute, 1996), pp.16782.

37. Mueller and Stewart, Terror, Security, and Mon-ey, pp. 18283.

38. Bjrn Lomborg, Global Crises, Global Solutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009),p. 1.

39. Todd Sandler, Daniel G. Arce, and WalterEnders, Transnational Terrorism, in Lomborg,Global Crises, Global Solutions, p. 552. They placethe value of a life at $2 million in their calculations.

40. Mueller and Stewart, Terror, Security, and Mon-ey, ch. 6.

41. Ibid., ch. 7; Mark G. Stewart and John Mueller,A Risk and Cost-Benefit Assessment of U.S. Avia-

tion Security Measures, Journal of TransportationSecurity 1, no. 3 (2008): 14359; Mark G. Stewartand John Mueller, Cost-Benefit Analysis of Ad- vanced Imaging Technology Fully Body Scannersfor Airline Passenger Security Screening, Jour-

nal of Homeland Security and Emergency Manage- ment 8, no. 1 (2011): art. 30; Mark G. Stewart and John Mueller, Terrorism Risks and Cost-BenefitAnalysis of Aviation Security, Risk Analysis 33, no.5 (2013): 893908; Stewart and Mueller, AviationSecurity, Risk Assessment, and Risk Aversion forPublic Decisionmaking; Mark G. Stewart and John Mueller, Cost-Benefit Analysis of AirportSecurity: Are Airports Too Safe? Journal of AirTransport Management 35 (March 2014): 1928.

42. J. Brian Hardaker, Euan Fleming, and Gud-brand Lien, How Should Governments MakeRisky Policy Decisions? Australian Journal of Pub- lic Administration 68, no. 3 (2009): 25671.

43. Elisabeth Pat-Cornell, Risk and UncertaintyAnalysis in Government Safety Decisions, Risk Analysis 22, no. 3 (2002): 644.

44. David L. Banks, Statistics for Homeland De-fense, Chance 15, no. 1 (2002): 10.


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Responsible Counterterrorism Policy

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Transcript of Responsible Counterterrorism Policy