Technology Obsession
Liquid explosives and bomb detectors make for great gee-whiz articles, but the instinct to focus on technologies largely misses the point. The plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic failed because, attempting to match the 9/11 attacks, it became too large and was penetrated by British intelligence. A similar plot ten years ago, aimed at brining down airplanes over the Pacific, failed because two conspirators started a fire while experimenting with explosives in Manila, and alert law enforcement officials followed up. When people argue that the 9/11 attacks might have been prevented, they don’t have stronger cockpit doors or bans on box cutters in mind – they mean that better coordination and follow-up in both law enforcement and intelligence might have thwarted the attacks.
In the face of innovative terrorist tactics – bombs in soda bottles, airliners as missiles – we’re often blinded to the fact that when it comes down to basics like finance, training, travel, and coordination, terrorists tend to not be nearly so creative. That’s why an approach focused first on law enforcement and intelligence probably makes a lot more sense than one aimed at finding just the right counterterrorism technology. Counterterrorism technology inevitably plays an important role – it forces terrorists to innovate, exposing them to a greater risk of failure. But before we start calling for the USG to spend untold amounts on large-scale deployment of standoff liquid-explosive detectors, and on other technology-specific defenses, let’s make sure that investing that money in admittedly less sexy intelligence and law enforcement resources – the things that actually defeated today’s plot – doesn’t make more sense.
The vain hope of preventing smart terrorists from escaping detection fails even in the extreme case of naked or unconscious passengers.
The one package that can't be opened for inspection is the body. Starting with carrying materials in one's personal orifice(s) the next step is surgical implantation. X-rays, you say? How could you detect simple liquids held in plastic bags? That would require seriously unhealthy radiation doses or a fast CAT or NMR scan. How about an apparently normal metal knee or hip replacement that harbors an explosive? Pacemaker, maybe?
Technology works both ways, but law enforcement has the support of the public at large, an overwhelming advantage. I have a post pending that considers the brittle, vulnerable nature of centralized technology. ("The Risks of Civilization").
August 11, 2006 9:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is such a great point. The US has an obsession with technology fixes for every problem, when the people who actually develop the technology know all about its shortcomings. Electronic voting is just another manifestation.
While the US pours billions of taxpayer dollars into fancy technology of dubious usefulness, the rest of the world gets on with getting the job done (paper ballots for elections, detective leg work for foiling plots, etc).
August 11, 2006 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ummmm...it would not be a good idea for me to get an MRI scan (as opposed to nonimaging nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which isn't a good idea either). One or more bad things would happen to my pacemaker.
The Authorities must be perceived, however, at Doing Something. Hmmm...what's the policy about gel silicone or saline breast implants? I can think of several nasty liquids that could be put in just that sort of plastic sac. Where is the usual place shivs are secreted in prisons or, for that matter, excreted?
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Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
August 11, 2006 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Having what we'd like to think of as a general view of what is not going to show, is exactly what we look for in a highlight of the area of non-conformity. Your not looking at a threat or some off the wall act of terror for the veiw of leagal steps defending your country. The real veiw is the way you find those things, have two or three sources of what is there can not only inform you but give you the next opening conversation or give more than what you need to know for what is there, having your way with the technology is the right to man given to us by it's creator. Thank you.
August 11, 2006 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
ah but you're talking the real nuts & bolts of police work that so many love to hate, ( I guess ever since J. Edgar Hoover abused the power):
humint, surveillance, informers, infiltration, profiling, stuff like that.
I note that there's plenty of stories in the UK press already complaining about all of those with this case.
In airline security, El Al has had success so far in using those and not relying on "technology." In the U.S., I suspect there would be a lot of complaints if the airlines here operated the same way. It should said that they do have the luxury of a much much smaller and select population even attempting to use the airline; to do what they do would be very expensive for the U.S. (I'd like to point out, though, that it would probably been a lot less expensive than the Iraq War.)
Technological answers are so nice and clean and amoral and fair and "scientific"....until people wake up some day in the future and realize that that ideal amoral genius computer robocop can find out anything he wants on anyone, and there's still plenty of crime going on.
Criminals v. law enforcement is never going to be perfectly "clean," on either side.
August 11, 2006 11:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Where is the usual place shivs are secreted in prisons or, for that matter, excreted?
Big moan....next you'll claim shivelry is alive and well in our prison system.
But here's a thought. As we know, terrorists lean towards abstract symbolism whose dominate psychologem is I have power - the unfortunate Rx for the otherwise powerless. Mohammed Atta has achieved some kind of immortality, which may have been his deeply personal objective in the first place. Toppling great buildings and ending human lives are one way to make this statement, but simply disrupting the lives of the many is also a way to make this statement.
Our obsession with technology then can become yet another terrorist WMD - the requirement is that an individual or group only need make a credible threat, and sets into motion gargantuan responses involving huge expenditures and a serious reduction in the quality of life of individuals. Soda-Pop bombs...the mind boggles. It doesn't even have to be real to satisfy the terrorist - like the guy who liked to set-off fire alarms for the fun of it. It's a real pisser.
Neoboho
August 12, 2006 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
More seriously, you raise a valid point, which I believe some of the FBI behaviorists say is often true of the spree, as opposed to serial, mass murderers. To take a very differently motivated set of spree killers at Columbine High School, for even a matter of minutes, they felt powerful, in control, and able to strike back at those whom they hated.
There are other ways to feel powerful, but very large numbers of people don't have them. It doesn't need to be power over others, but a sense of accomplishment. Now, Isaac Asimov once said he hated to write, but he loved to have written. Most of the time, especially when I changed editors and got away from the one who I called "Ilsa, She-Bitch Editor of the Gestapo", there was a real sense of accomplishment when the package came from the publisher, with my author copies. Technical books often don't sell well, but there was satisfaction in my last $38 royalty check. I wonder if Atta ever found that?
Fairly recently, I've started drawing again. Again I wonder if some of the angry killers know the satisfaction of looking at the paper and knowing you've mastered another level of light and shadow, or portraying hands that look like actual hands. A friend of mine just did a social work practicum in a Canadian maximum security prison. She is by no means starry-eyed; she spent a significant amount of time on the streets herself. Still, her observations are that while there is no single remedy for recidivism, getting hard-core convicts to learn they can create is, sometimes, a major step in rehabilitation.
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Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
August 12, 2006 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very unlikely. MRI risk of dangers to biomedical devices are rare but definitely not zero. Future pacemakers wil be totally MRI safe.
www.biophan.com/mrisafety.php
August 16, 2006 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
There will be increased safety because the external field coils can be smaller and more focused, but I see Biophan, the manufacturer, being more optimistic than the American College of Radiologists. I would accept a skull MRI if I had personally checked the documentation of the coil, but I consider cardiac MRI, in the presence of a pacemaker, a risk that I would not be willing to take.
There are alternatives, such as angiography, and I'd rather take the risk of more invasive procedures than an unknown and separate probability of inductive coupling betwee the pacemaker proper, and the cardiac leads, with the magnetic field. Much variation could occur on the relative geometry of the magnetic field and intrathoracic conductors.
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Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
August 16, 2006 3:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Off-topicness, but I had always heard the comment about the enjoyment of having written attributed to Dorothy Parker...
PSA: There is a Users' Help Forum.
August 16, 2006 7:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even more off-topic, and medically obsolete, I think first of her:
I'd rather fail my Wassermann Test
Than read the poems of Edgar Guest
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Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
August 16, 2006 7:57 PM | Reply | Permalink