In this interview, personal‑security expert Robert Siciliano discusses the 2013 Navy Yard shooting and broader workplace violence prevention. He argues that active‑shooter incidents are fundamentally a people problem, not a technology problem, and that the key to prevention is a culture where coworkers, family members, and employers actively notice and report concerning behavior. Siciliano dismisses reliance on bullet‑proof glass, surveillance cameras, or government intervention, emphasizing that most prevented incidents involved someone noticing warning signs and alerting law enforcement, which then uncovered weapons caches. He likens the evolution of public awareness around drunk‑driving and bullying to the emerging focus on active‑shooter threats, suggesting education and open dialogue can deter potential shooters. The conversation also touches on the tension between proactive employer monitoring (e.g., reading emails, social media) and privacy concerns, and acknowledges the risk of false accusations but argues that erring on the side of reporting is preferable to inaction. The interview concludes with a call for workplaces to adopt a “see something, say something” mindset to protect employees.
Chapters
Yesterday's rampage at the Navy Yard in Washington raising new questions about workplace violence and of course security. Joining us now to discuss all this, Robert Siciliano. He's a personal security expert, and good morning to you, sir. Good morning. So help us here a little bit, um, best practices. I mean, it's sort of a hard thing to avoid, I imagine, but if you run a workplace, is there 2 or 3 things that you can do to actually avoid something like this, or is this just It's just gonna happen.
You know, this is not a technology problem that can't be solved with bullet-resistant glass or even with surveillance cameras or bomb-sniffing dogs. This is a people problem. And all of the active shooter incidences that have taken place, they all come down to one thing, is that the shooters themselves at some given point in time consider themselves victims, either victims of their employer's doings or fellow employees. They consider themselves victims of their classmates or teachers or even victims of their government. And they all speak out about their victimization at some given point in time and what they plan on doing about it, essentially to solve that problem. So the active shooter incidences that have been prevented all boil down to somebody seeing something and somebody saying something. But does that mean, Robert, that there has to be almost an active—
I mean, people talk about the NSA— almost an active surveillance program going on in the workplace, reading emails, looking at people's Facebook pages, doing all sorts of things? I mean, people often think of that as stuff that law enforcement does, but is that what the employer should be doing too?
That's what the employer should be doing, the husbands, the wives, the kids, the moms, the dads, the fellow coworkers. Again, this is a people problem. And when you see somebody coming undone, getting unhinged, you talk about it, you mention it to someone, you bring it to someone's attention, you report it, you essentially drop that dime. You know, again, all of the incidences that have been prevented, somebody actually said, you know, I feel that this person may act out in a way that could hurt people, and then law enforcement intervened and they found stashes of guns. That's usually what happens when it is prevented. And you can't rely on our governments to protect us from this. You can't rely on technology to investigate this. It really does boil down to you. When you see something, you alert somebody about it. And it beca— it's abou— if you think about how mad, uh, back in the day, you know, drunk— drinking and driving was actually okay. And then someone had said, hey, this isn't good, and we be— we started a huge education campaign. Same thing with bullying. Bullying now is on people's minds. It's, it's, it's on our radar, and we're doing something about it. Active shooters is something that we need to talk more about and do something about.
Robert, but where's the line? And when I say the line, there's always been a cultural resistance to saying something for fear that actually we're implicating the wrong person.
So what? So what? You know, so we implicate the wrong person, we apologize, we move on, we learn from that mistake. You know, right now we're doing nothing, or not enough. And so what happens is, you know, we say, "Oh, Charlie's just Charlie, he's just acting out." "Oh, he's a part of that paramilitary group and he loves guns. Big deal, he's just a weirdo." Well, that weirdo may come into your place of business and shoot it up and kill a dozen people. So you have to say something, and eventually It'll be such top of mind that anybody who has any intentions of doing something like that will go, "Well, wait a minute, maybe I really shouldn't. Maybe it's not such a good idea because maybe I will get caught." Or maybe, you know, the consciousness of the shooter will evolve to the point where they begin to see that it's not really how to solve a problem.
Okay, Robert, we're going to leave it there. It's an important message, and we thank you for joining us this morning.
