Detention laws and cognitive biases

When faced with any idea, it's a good idea to ask: what cognitive biases are at play here? In the case of proposals to detain terrorist suspects without charge for 90 days,  I suspect there are quite a lot.
I've already mentioned one - plain wishful thinking. Here are a few others.
1. Hindsight bias. This leads us to believe that earlier terrorist threats - such as from the IRA - were small, simply because we now know exactly how great they were. By contrast, we don't know the scale of the threat from al-Qaeda. The upshot is that we think al-Qaeda is a greater threat than the IRA - because we forget how scared we were after the Birmingham pub bombings. Was Ian Blair committing the hindsight bias when he said?:

"I have been in the police service 30 years. I have been a top cop for ten years. I have never seen anything like what is happening at the moment. There are people out there in this country plotting mass atrocities without warning.

2. Ambiguity aversion. People are more averse to unknown risks than to quantifiable ones - this is the Ellsberg paradox. So they pay more - maybe too much - to avoid them.
3. The Frankenstein effect. From Luddism to fears about GM foods, people often overstate the dangers and understate the benefits of technology. In his letter to the Home Secretary Andy Hayman says:

Terrorists are now highly capable in their use of technology...The examination and decryption of such vast amounts of data takes time...The use of mobile telephony by terrorists as a means of secure communication is a relatively new phenomenon. Obtaining data from service providers and subsequent analysis of data to show linkage between suspects and location takes time.

What he doesn't say is that earlier terrorist threats gave the police little to go on: Mick and Paddy's quiet chats plotting IRA bombings. But new technology generates useful information for the police - phone, credit card and computer records*. In this sense, the war on terrorism is now easier than it was in the 1970s.
4. The myth of the unbiased expert. Generalists - politicians or journalists - under-estimate the extent to which expert opinion is biased by self-interest. Maybe the police want greater powers for the same reason all public "servants" want more resources.
5. The salience heuristic. We often over-rate the importance of facts that are prominent, and under-estimate less salient tendencies. Hayek thought this was a common reason why we lose freedoms - because possible gains from the restriction were salient whilst losses were less obvious:

Since the value of freedom rests on the opportunities it provides for unforeseeable and unpredictable actions, we will rarely know what we lose through a particular restriction of freedom. Any such restriction, any coercion other than the enforcement of general rules, will aim at the achievement of some foreseeable particular result, but what is prevented by it will usually not be known....And so, when we decide each issue solely on what appear to be its individual merits, we always over-estimate the advantages of central direction. (Law Legislation and Liberty Vol I, p56-57.)

Now, I don't want to make too much of this. The strongest case against the detention proposals lies elsewhere. Cognitive biases are often correct - that's why they haven't been weeded out by selection mechanisms; sometimes, experts are unbiased and salient information is the most important. And they are like conspiracies - once you start looking for them, you see them everywhere. And maybe opponents of the detention proposals are also subject to such biases.
All I'm saying is that we should try at least to think clearly. Perhaps.
* A few months ago, I served on a jury in a case where much of the evidence consisted of mobile phone records. The police seemed (moderately) capable of collecting such evidence under current detention laws. (Of course, in putting much weight upon this, I am using the salience heuristic myself.)

Comments

[Deb]

Your Frankenstein effect is a fake bias. It's an open question whether the fear of technology is irrational since as your bias 4 suggests, experts themselves are often biased.

A big bias in the moronic war on terrorism is representativeness bias- stereotypical thinking. Americans think terrorist=arab, forgetting about Ted Kaczynski and Tim McVeigh. And ever since the shoe bomber, millions (billions?) of travelers at airports have had to take off their shoes. This is nuts.

[dearieme]

No, Deb, the nuts are higher up than the shoes.

[sean morris]

Simple fact, The IRA were a secular organisation fighting a secular war. AQ and the Islamists are a theological organistation fighting a theological war.

At the end of the day, you can sit down and do a deal even with your enemies if they share some of your values, you cannot do that with people who see you and yours as the devine anointed enemies marked for total destruction.

Thus even if the IRA had a much better orgainisation, weapons ect the threat from them was managable.

The threat from a minority sect from the worlds second largest religion is thus greater, and not just in practical terms .