CJCCJ
/ RCCJP
June / juin 2006 Volume 48, no. 3
Contents / Sommaire
Air transportation and riskmanagement /
Le transport ae¤ rien et la gestion des risques
Edited by / Sous la direction de Jean-Paul Brodeur
Introduction
Jean-Paul Brodeur
Articles
Ten Uncertainties of Risk-Management Approaches to
Security
Richard V. Ericson
Gestion des risques, lutte contre le terrorisme
Jean-Pierre Galland
L’expert, le profane et le terrorisme : quelques
e´le´ments de re´flexion sociologique
Patrick Peretti-Watel
Airport Screening, Surveillance, and Social Sorting:
Canadian Responses
to 9/11 in Context
David Lyon
Risks, Ethics, and Airport Security
Pat O’Malley
Neither Safe Nor Sound? The Perils and Possibilities
of Risk
Lucia Zedner
Se´curite´ nationale et se´curite´
globale : l’adaptation des services de
renseignements francais
Fre´de´ric Ocqueteau
Reflections on Risk Analysis, Screening, and Contested
Rationalities
Peter K. Manning
Commentary / Interventions
Face au terrorisme global
Michel Wieviorka
Droit et management de la se´curite´
Hubert Seillan
Le risque et la menace
Jean-Paul Brodeur
Ten
Uncertainties of Risk-Management Approaches to Security
Richard V. Ericson
This paper
examines 10 sources of uncertainty in any risk-management
system and illustrates them in security measures against terrorism.
First, any
risk assessment is an uncertain knowledge claim about contingent future
events that cannot be fully known. Second, only some risks can be
selected
for attention, and those left unattended are sources of uncertainty.
Third,
specific decisions in risk management bear the uncertainty of false
positives
and false negatives. Fourth, risk-management technologies manufacture
new
uncertainties, some of which pose risks greater than those they were
designed
to control. Fifth, risk is reactive: as people act on knowledge of
risk, they
simultaneously change the risk environment and create new uncertainties.
Sixth, the complexity of risk-management systems can result in multiple
and unexpected failures occurring simultaneously; such ‘‘normal
accidents’’
are a source of uncertainty beyond any direct human capacity for control.
Seventh, catastrophic failures result in the urge to risk manage everything:
intensified surveillance, audit, and regulation increase system complexity
and yield more uncertainty. Eighth, risk managers facing an increasingly
litigious environment for failures become defensive, focusing more
on
operational risks that might affect the reputation of their organization
than
on the real risks they are supposed to manage. Ninth, excessive precaution
escalates uncertainty and breeds fear, leading to risk-management
measures
that are at best misplaced and at worst incubate new risks with catastrophic
potential. Tenth, risk-management systems can restrict freedom, invade
privacy, discriminate, and exclude populations. Such self-defeating
costs
and the uncertainties they entail can be minimized only by infusing
riskmanagement
systems with value questions about human rights, well-being,
prosperity, and solidarity.
Gestion
des risques, lutte contre le terrorisme
Jean-Pierre Galland
Examining
natural, industrial, health, and other characteristics of modern
risk management in industrialized countries and trying to draw from
them
ideas, techniques, and approaches that could make a useful contribution
to
the war on terrorism takes researchers down different paths. Following
one
path, the researcher concludes that the current process of technical
democratization in risk management, at least as it is practised in
Europe,
with the increasingly strong tendency to inform users, citizens, and
communities about, and even involve them in, the issues concerned,
is
incompatible with the propensity to withhold information specific
to
anti-terrorism activities because releasing it may pose ‘‘a
risk.’’ By following
another path, however, it may be possible to transpose to an anti-terrorism
context the findings of research on the difficulty of gathering and
structuring
incident databases with a potential to help prevent disasters, current
investigations into the application of lessons learned to ultra-secure
systems
(nuclear facilities, aviation), and studies on ‘‘organizational
reliability.’’
A third path, that of the distinctive ‘‘enlightened catastrophism’’
school,
leads to simultaneous consideration of both risk-management and
anti-terrorism perspectives.
L’expert,
le profane et le terrorisme : quelques e´le´ments de re´flexion
sociologique
Patrick Peretti-Watel
The management
of technological and health risks has been the source of many
sociological studies in recent years. The purpose of this article
is to draw on
some of them to show how both the successes and the failures of technology
and health risk management can contribute to ideas and discussions
on
terrorism prevention. The author examines three main questions: (1)
Is
terrorism a risk, or can it be treated as one through the application
of
conventional risk prevention tools? (2) What is, or should be, the
role of the
general public in preventing terrorist acts? (3) What is the primary
goal of
prevention? To prevent attacks or to prevent terror? Recent incidents
show
that managing one risk may intensify risks elsewhere and that there
is a need
to take into account not only the expectations and working conditions
of those
actually implementing the preventive measures but also public reaction.
User
empowerment and accountability is unlikely to be a contributing factor
in
terrorism prevention. On the other hand, some prevention efforts must
be
aimed at the general public, if only to forewarn people of the potential
for
terror and its devastating effects.
Airport Screening, Surveillance, and Social Sorting:
Canadian Responses
to 9/11 in Context
David Lyon
Since 9/11, aviation security has become a major preoccupation of
Western
governments, not least Canada’s. Some unprecedented security
measures
have been taken, and all air travelers are aware both of how these
now
affect their need for certain documents and of the extra time required
for
air travel. When placed in a broader frame, however, these developments
may be seen as rational expansions of existing measures increasingly
common
to what might be seen as the symbiotically growing ‘‘surveillance
society’’ and
‘‘safety state.’’ Here, surveillance has become
a feature not of specific
monitoring of suspects but of generalized social sorting of populations,
in this
case in relation to their perceived levels of dangerousness. And safety
is the
new criterion of good policy within risk-management regimes. The result,
in Canadian airports, is a new emphasis on Advanced Passenger Information
(API) and the Passenger Name Record (PNR) as the means of tracking
travellers and the development of a coordinated plan under the new
Canadian
Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) for the screening of passengers
and baggage. The demands of global free trade mean that mobility of
goods
and persons is a high priority, but this is constrained by the need
to
demonstrate that airport conditions are safe and that certain classes
of
person do not cross the (internal) border easily.
Risks,
Ethics, and Airport Security
Pat O’Malley
A key distinction needs to be made between formal and informal risk
profiling. It is usually assumed that formal risk profiling, based
on statistical
data, provides an optimal means of prediction and thus of detecting
high-risk
individuals or situations. However, it must be recognized that formal
profiles
are based extensively on informal profiles – those built upon
the experience
and working cultures of security-related officials. Formal profiles
are thus
prone to the same errors and tend to produce self-fulfilling prophecies,
resulting in both errors of fact and discriminatory consequences for
falsepositive
cases. All profiles, however, are fraught with problems, perhaps
the most obvious and significant being that the targets of interdiction
readily
become aware of them and modify their operations to incorporate activities
and/or individuals that do not fit existing profiles. Consequently,
totally
risk-based security, ironically, may become less effective than alternatives
such as randomly assigned focused interdictions.
Neither Safe Nor Sound? The Perils and Possibilities
of Risk
Lucia Zedner
The rise of risk as a basis for public policy has profound implications
for civil
liberties. Where risk prevails over adherence to rules in public policy
making,
it has the potential to undermine both human rights and basic legal
values.
The fact that threats to security license derogation from basic rights
requires
careful attention to the limits to scientific measurement of human
risks.
Distinguishing between the assessment and the management of risk offers
only a partial solution to the danger that political considerations
inform
and distort risk measurement. Examining how adjacent social scientific
disciplines conceive, deploy, and respond to risk and uncertainty
reveals
a powerful, if problematic, set of analytical resources with which
criminology might profitably engage.
Se´curite´
nationale et se´curite´ globale : l’adaptation des
services de
renseignements francais
Fre´de´ric Ocqueteau
Since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, all intelligence
services have
been encouraged to reorganize, based on the conclusion that their
ability to
respond to new types of threats was limited. In France, the impetus
for change
has been twofold. The intelligence services of the ministries of defence
and
the interior are being asked to cooperate more effectively while remaining
secret services. At the same time, a new rhetoric of ‘‘global
security,’’
originating in prefecture offices, seems to have taken root in support
of
the push for change. The author examines the premises underlying these
phenomena, drawing on classified documents. While actual practices
are
not questioned, the author outlines the nature of the changes sought
in the
state bureaucracy, which must be carefully kept beyond citizens’
control.
Reflections
on Risk Analysis, Screening, and Contested Rationalities
Peter K. Manning
The
concept of risk and modelling it (imagining possible outcomes with
negative consequences) has a long history in social science and crisis
management. Risk lies in the shadow between the known and the unknown.
This article reflects discussions of low-probability, high-cost events
such
as those reflected in the conventional tactics associated with terrorism.
Risks and fear of them are shaped extraordinarily by ‘‘big
bang events’’
such as 9/11, and these shape imagined future deciding, prevention
tactics,
and organizational routines. Short-time crisis deciding is guided
inordinately
by ‘‘group effects,’’ pressure for consensus,
and action over cogitation,
difference, and muddling through. The attraction of risk analysis
to security
matters is clear: It makes simple decisions that are not. It easily
fits with the
technological conceit that assumes electronic-computer-based surveillance,
artifice, and models can reduce human judgement to questions easily
answered by a computer with a database. It enables a front stage of
statistical
rational planning and execution of policies that fail but permit backstage
manipulations, profit taking, and obfuscation of matters of human
judgement.
