4.7 Errors or First and Second Kind: Doing Good Isn’t Easy
73
that the suspect was innocent. And yet the effort needed to reach even this level of
accuracy is considerable and costly: according to media reports, one million people
with National Security Agency (NSA) clearance on the level of Edward Snowden
are employed by the USA alone.
38
Thus, large-scale surveillance doesn’t seem to be an effective means of fighting
terrorism. Indeed, this conclusion has been reached by several independent empirical
studies.
39 Attempting to keep the entire population under surveillance is not sensible
for the same reason why it is generally not useful to screen the entire population for
a particular disease or to administer a particular preventative drug nationwide; since
such mass screenings imply large numbers of false positives, millions of people would
be needlessly treated, often resulting in negative side effects for their health.
40 Thus,
for most diseases, patients should only be tested if they show worrying symptoms.
Apart from these type I and type II errors, a third type of error may be encountered:
the application of wrong models. For example, models which did not sufficiently
account for rare, extreme events were one of the reasons for the recent financial and
economic crisis. The risks of many financial products turned out to be much greater
than anticipated, creating immense losses. Adair Turner, head of the UK Financial
Service Authority, pointed out that there is
“a strong belief … that bad or rather over-simplistic and overconfident
economics helped create the crisis. There was a dominant conventional wisdom
that markets were always rational and self-equilibrating, that market completion by itself could ensure economic efficiency and stability, and that financial innovation and increased trading activity were therefore axiomatically
beneficial.”
38 Business Insider, How a GED-holder managed to get ‘top secret’ government clearance (June 10,
2013), http://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-top-secret-clearance-nsa-whistleblower2013-6.
39 The Washington Post (January 12, 2014): NSA phone record collection does little to prevent
terrorist attacks, group says, https://web.archive.org/web/20150815210511/https://www.washingto
npost.com/world/national-security/nsaphone-record-collection-does-little-to-prevent-terrorist-att
acks-group-says/2014/01/12/8aa860aa-77dd-11e3-8963-b4b654bcc9b2_story.html; http://securi
tydata.newamerica.net/nsa/analysis; Gill [8]; see also BBC News (August 24, 2009): 1000 cameras
‘solve one crime’.
40 A good example are recent large-scale immunization campaigns and their unexpected side effects:
Swine flu vaccine can trigger narcolepsy, UK government concedes, see http://www.theguardian.
com/society/2013/sep/19/swine-flu-vaccine-narcolepsy-uk; see also New research implies potential
link between European H1N1 flu vaccine and narcolepsy, http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/
209324-a-vaccine-health-scare-thats-actually-real.
73
that the suspect was innocent. And yet the effort needed to reach even this level of
accuracy is considerable and costly: according to media reports, one million people
with National Security Agency (NSA) clearance on the level of Edward Snowden
are employed by the USA alone.
38
Thus, large-scale surveillance doesn’t seem to be an effective means of fighting
terrorism. Indeed, this conclusion has been reached by several independent empirical
studies.
39 Attempting to keep the entire population under surveillance is not sensible
for the same reason why it is generally not useful to screen the entire population for
a particular disease or to administer a particular preventative drug nationwide; since
such mass screenings imply large numbers of false positives, millions of people would
be needlessly treated, often resulting in negative side effects for their health.
40 Thus,
for most diseases, patients should only be tested if they show worrying symptoms.
Apart from these type I and type II errors, a third type of error may be encountered:
the application of wrong models. For example, models which did not sufficiently
account for rare, extreme events were one of the reasons for the recent financial and
economic crisis. The risks of many financial products turned out to be much greater
than anticipated, creating immense losses. Adair Turner, head of the UK Financial
Service Authority, pointed out that there is
“a strong belief … that bad or rather over-simplistic and overconfident
economics helped create the crisis. There was a dominant conventional wisdom
that markets were always rational and self-equilibrating, that market completion by itself could ensure economic efficiency and stability, and that financial innovation and increased trading activity were therefore axiomatically
beneficial.”
38 Business Insider, How a GED-holder managed to get ‘top secret’ government clearance (June 10,
2013), http://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-top-secret-clearance-nsa-whistleblower2013-6.
39 The Washington Post (January 12, 2014): NSA phone record collection does little to prevent
terrorist attacks, group says, https://web.archive.org/web/20150815210511/https://www.washingto
npost.com/world/national-security/nsaphone-record-collection-does-little-to-prevent-terrorist-att
acks-group-says/2014/01/12/8aa860aa-77dd-11e3-8963-b4b654bcc9b2_story.html; http://securi
tydata.newamerica.net/nsa/analysis; Gill [8]; see also BBC News (August 24, 2009): 1000 cameras
‘solve one crime’.
40 A good example are recent large-scale immunization campaigns and their unexpected side effects:
Swine flu vaccine can trigger narcolepsy, UK government concedes, see http://www.theguardian.
com/society/2013/sep/19/swine-flu-vaccine-narcolepsy-uk; see also New research implies potential
link between European H1N1 flu vaccine and narcolepsy, http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/
209324-a-vaccine-health-scare-thats-actually-real.