I wrote this article in January, 2015: Charlie Hebdo march proves Paris wouldn’t have the first clue how to become a proper police state:

Today was one of those cold and beautiful winter days in Paris that calls to mind a 19th Century painting by Caillebotte. The police had promised “extreme security measures” for the rally: 150 plainclothes officers, 20 teams of snipers, 56 motorcycle teams, and 24 mobile units. When I read this, I didn’t know whether to be moved or horrified.

That is nothing—nothing—like what you need to protect a crowd of the predicted size from a determined group of terrorists. Particularly since their sleeper units—we have been told by the same authorities—may recently have been activated. It is deeply moving that Paris simply has no idea how to become a proper police state. And it also just as clear this city must learn what “extreme security” looks like—it doesn’t look like Paris; and it doesn’t look like this.

It’s been two and a half years since then, and I see little sign that Paris is learning. This is on my mind today for obvious reasons. I’m frustrated that I still see, in Paris, so much security theater and so little common sense. I don’t understand what’s preventing people from spotting the difference.

I sent a frustrated email to a friend this morning elaborating on this complaint. I’m not going to reproduce it because I discussed specific sites that seem to me poorly defended and illustrated my point with photos and maps. The last thing I want to do is hand some lunatic a guide to committing terrorism in Paris, complete with photos and maps. So to illustrate what I mean, I’ve made up the example below. I’ve invented it from whole cloth. It’s fiction. The photo below does not correspond to any real thing or building in Paris. In fact, it isn’t even in France. It’s the Primatial Palace in Brataslava. I’m just showing you something roughly similar to the scenes that vex me.

I have absolutely no idea what the Primatial Palace is really used for, or what security is really like around the building.

Pretend, though, that the photo above depicts a famous museum or a concert hall or a government building in Paris. Imagine that outside the building, you see roughly what you do in the photo above: a pretty esplanade, only with more tourists and heavier foot traffic. Imagine shops, cafes, maybe a church on the other side. Imagine that cars, bikes, motorcycles and delivery trucks enter and exit the square all day long, and that there’s no way to screen them without making commerce — in a historic area that’s central to the city’s life — impossible. Imagine, as in the photo above, that there are no barriers between the square and the front door of the building. 

Now imagine a long line of people — about two hundred of them — waiting to enter that building. Not really an orderly, single-file line, more like a large crowd. They’re all standing outside. Why are they standing outside? Because when they walk through the front door, they’re going to “go through security.” That means they’ll go through a rough simulation of airport-style screening: bags through a scanner, they’ll walk through a metal detector, and if the guards are feeling their oats, they may even be asked to take off their belt or their shoes. It’s not really like airport security, in that it’s more chaotic. It doesn’t seem as if the guards are fully paying attention. The bags are rolling through the scanner while they chat with each other, and it doesn’t look to me as if they’re keeping their eyes, non-stop, on the screens — but it’s not nothing. It does make the building a more challenging target for a terrorist, even if not a completely impenetrable one, and that’s good. Or it’s good, if you’re inside the building. It means that if I were a terrorist, I’d probably think, “Why make this harder than it has to be? Let’s look for an easier target.”

And where would I find it? Why, just outside the building. Where the targets have all been helpfully gathered for me, in one place.

In other words, the ritual of “going through security” creates a new security hazard, one that wasn’t there before. Yes, you’re almost certainly safer once you get inside the building, but that isn’t the point of having “security,” is it?

My guess is that the owners or managers of the building decided to have people “go through security” like that because they want visitors to feel safe. But obviously, no one asked, “Will this actually make them more safe? Or will it just make them feel more safe?”

Imagine a very visible police presence on the square, and I would guess a large invisible one as well. I’m sure they have an eye out for people who “look suspicious.” This, too, is better than nothing — but not by a whole lot. If you wanted to kill a lot of people, all you’d have to do is walk up to that crowd, or drive up on your motorcycle, with a bomb in your backpack or your suitcase. Because it’s a historic area, it’s visited by thousands of tourists daily. Someone with a suitcase wouldn’t look inherently look suspicious. The only thing that would make you “look suspicious” (beyond being young and male) is your body language. I don’t discount the value of scanning people’s faces and body language to see if they look nervous; this is a useful, proven tool of counterterrorism. It can save lives. It’s just far from foolproof.

So what would I do if I were in charge? I’d either get rid of the “security” inside the front door, or I’d keep it, but do it right. That means — even though it would be ugly, and it would impede traffic, both foot and vehicular — putting a physical barrier of some kind between the crowd I’ve created as a result of my “security” and the rest of the square. If there were a barrier of some kind, anyone who tried to approach to the people waiting online would quickly draw attention as “up to no good.” I’d start the security screening as soon as the line begins to form outside: Security officials should be outside the building, asking everyone in the line to open their bags for inspection, asking them questions about why they’re trying to enter the building, and looking at them closely for signs of nervousness or stories that don’t add up.

Otherwise, get rid of the “security.” It’s not fixing anything, it’s inconveniencing people, and it’s making them stupid.

Everywhere in Paris, I see “security” that’s so poorly-conceived that it doesn’t make me feel more secure, and in fact has the opposite effect. I don’t think the terrorist threat should be exaggerated, but I think it’s real. It should be mitigated, where possible, by common sense.

But it often isn’t. For example: There’s no point in replacing Paris’s garbage cans with these:

If — literally on the same block! — you’ve got three of these:

Nor is there any point to blowing up every bit of unattended luggage at the airport and filling the streets with the military if the military is going to walk, solemnly, right past the unattended luggage that’s regularly left in the streets. It’s left, I suppose, by clueless tourists who think it’s fine to leave their luggage on the street while they walk upstairs to see if there’s a vacancy in the hotel, or by homeless people who don’t feel like bringing their worldly possessions with them when they shop for groceries; I don’t really know who’s leaving their luggage in the street, frankly, but for reasons I can’t fathom, I regularly walk past unattended luggage. I’m sick of it. It tells me the whole culture of security in this city is wrong: an unattended suitcase shouldn’t last a nanosecond in the middle of a busy street in Paris. Everyone with a cellphone, that’s to say everyone, should be calling the police the second they see it, and it should be destroyed immediately. Why put the military on the street if it’s just going to wander right past something like that? What’s the point of replacing all the trash cans with transparent plastic bags if you make an exception for all the trash cans on wheels?

This sort of thing all adds up, in my mind, to evidence of something, but I honestly don’t know what it is. It’s certainly not a denial that a threat exists; all these so-called security measures are clearly a response to widespread, and justified, fear. The public clearly does want to see that the state is “doing something,” and that the managers of the buildings they enter are “doing something.” The sight of the military patrolling looks right to them, and makes them feel safer. But perhaps the public doesn’t want to be too inconvenienced by it — not to the point of having to carry their trash to the street in plastic bags. And perhaps the public doesn’t want to make certain concessions to terrorism: Perhaps they don’t want to see fences in their historic city squares; perhaps that just feels like one concession too many. Perhaps they don’t want confused tourists to be told that unless they keep their bags with them at all times, their bags will be destroyed — not just in the airport, but everywhere. Perhaps certain measures, arbitrarily, make people feel less safe — even if they would, in fact, make them more safe. I just don’t know.

Asking people to think rationally about terrorism in the wake of a major terrorist attack is pointless and inhuman. I’m not capable of thinking about it rationally right now, so I can’t really ask my readers to be. Still, Paris has had a bit of time to recover since the last major attack. And no one is in much doubt there will be another one. Why, then, do I see so few signs of a rational approach to risk mitigation here?