Abstract
What differentiates a terrorist from a tourist? Besides their motives, not much.
HOMELAND SECURITY: Terrorism takes a holiday
Like many others who visit a foreign country, Syrian national and Spanish citizen Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun documented his 1997 travels to the United States with a video camera. In San Francisco, he shot footage of the Golden Gate Bridge; in Chicago, he videotaped the Sears Tower. While in New York City, he showed a particular fascination with the World Trade Center, filming it from numerous angles.
Then and now, Ghalyoun claims he was a tourist fulfilling a lifelong dream of traveling to the United States. Spanish authorities believed otherwise. When they discovered Ghalyoun's tapes during a 2002 raid of his Madrid home, they accused him of aiding the 9/11 hijackers and charged him with mass murder. (According to an attorney for the 9/11 families, Ghalyoun's footage ominously traces what would become the hijackers' flight pattern into the Twin Towers.) But upon closer inspection, the tapes included enough touristy behavior–an audible “Say cheese!”–and amateurish picture quality that in late May Spain's High Court freed Ghalyoun on bail, a signal that he might be cleared of wrongdoing.
The “I'm just a tourist” defense is not as tenuous an alibi as it might seem. Terrorists (especially those conducting reconnaissance) behave remarkably like tourists–by happenstance and design. Both travel to the United States from foreign countries in small (sometimes familial) groups, visit the nation's most identifiable landmarks, and take endless photographs. “This is where the research on guerrillas and terrorists really overlaps,” says Donna Schlagheck, a terrorism expert at Wright State University, “because the difficulty lies with distinguishing them from the general population.”
Terrorists certainly understand the advantages of blending in. In Israel, terrorists have dressed as Orthodox Jews or soldiers in order to fool security. (Similar tactics have been used in Northern Ireland.) Schlagheck notes that the 9/11 hijackers flew first class to appear more like businessmen or wealthy tourists.
That said, terrorists and tourists do exhibit some distinguishing behaviors. “Most people will pose in front of a monument and one of their friends will take one or two pictures and then move away,” says Abraham Pizam, the dean of the University of Central Florida's Rosen College of Hospitality Management. “They won't sit there for 15 minutes and take pictures from all sides and every aspect, studying it in-depth. That's a sign something is wrong.”
Terrorism brings yet another criminal element to tourist destinations, which–because of the high turnover of visitors–have long served as a haven for petty and master criminals. For local law enforcement, curbing this crime is a top priority since it scares away tourists and hurts the local economy. In the age of terrorism, both law enforcement and those in the tourism industry are working together to heighten awareness. “Every employee of an organization that is a potential target should be trained by a security employee to observe abnormal or unusual behavior,” Pizam says. “We must have as many eyes as possible in those situations.”
In Anaheim, California, the home of Disneyland (video of which was found on Ghalyoun's tapes), the police department trains hoteliers and others in the local tourism community exactly how to spot visitors who might seek to rain destruction down upon the “Happiest Place on Earth.” “[Terrorists] are going to adjust their strategies, and then we're going to adjust ours,” says Capt. Craig Hunter of the Anaheim Police Department. “That's the continual cat-and-mouse game that occurs with all criminals.”
IN
Q+A Jay Labov
The senior adviser for education and communications at the National Academy of Sciences talks about the battle over evolution in public schools.
TECHNOLOGY: Airtight security
The Civil War marked the first time in U.S. military history that balloons were used for reconnaissance purposes. Today, the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon are borrowing a page from history and adding airships (blimps to the layman) to their wish list of unmanned aerial vehicles. A Purdue University research team–funded by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory–is studying the feasibility of a helium-filled airship that could maintain for up to a year a geostationary position at 65,000 feet–higher than air traffic, but lower than satellites.
Blimp my ride: A model of the Purdue University airship.
Homeland Security hopes the airships, outfitted with imaging sensors and other surveillance equipment, will furnish comprehensive visual coverage of U.S. borders, while the military envisions them as a quickly deployable telecommunications platform for the battlefield. The airship's high altitude makes it attack-proof against countries with little or no air power. Plus, “the airship's advantage is that you're able to bring it down, upgrade the electronics, and then put it back up again,” says Purdue aeronautics and astronautics professor John P. Sullivan.
IN
Afraid it might inspire terrorists, in late May the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences pulled a scientific paper about botulism in the milk supply–at the request of the Department of Health and Human Services.
% POINTS
27 percent of Americans would support using nuclear weapons against terrorist facilities, and 53 percent believe a nuclear terror attack is at least somewhat likely, but 66 percent do not want any country–including the United States–to possess nuclear weapons, and 66 percent think it is unnecessary to develop new types of nuclear weapons.
SOURCES: GALLUP ORGANIZATION; IPSOS-PUBLIC AFFAIRS; PROGRAM ON INTERNATIONAL POLICY ATTITUDES
IN SPACE: Seeking higher ground
Home on LaGrange: An artist's rendering of a possible L5 space colony.
For decades, people have dreamed about the potential of the five LaGrange points, intersections in space where gravitational and centrifugal forces balance out to provide orbital stability. One of the earliest visionaries was Sir Arthur C. Clarke, whose 1961 novel A Fall of Moondust envisioned a habitat at L1, the LaGrange point between Earth and the Sun.
More recently, the points have been eyed as stepping stones to U.S. full-spectrum dominance. In High Frontier, Space Command's official journal, Lt. Col. G. W. Rinehart suggests the United States consider building bases at the points. “[The United States] might be well served by seizing ‘territory’ or planting the flag before anyone else,” the forward-thinking Rinehart writes. “We face the need to control the chokepoints of the solar system.”
What does Clarke, godfather of space innovation, think? “I have long advocated the human exploration of near and far space, and getting a ‘foothold’ on LaGrange points will be part of that process,” he says. “However, I'm concerned about any one nation trying to claim these pivotal locations in near space.”
What Clarke calls the “absurdity of exporting national rivalries beyond the atmosphere” was the theme of Prelude to Space, his first sci-fi book. “I summed it up in one phrase: ‘We will take no frontiers into space.’”
BIO WEAPONS: Thirtysomething
Forget the traditional pearls, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention could use a set of dentures for its thirtieth anniversary. On March 26, the treaty celebrated 30 years since its entry into force, but despite its goal of banning the development, production, possession, and transfer of biological weapons, the treaty has led to little transparency.
In 2001, parties to the treaty were poised to give it some bite, but the United States scuttled the draft inspection protocol that would have allowed international monitoring and investigations into alleged violations. To date there is still no way to verify whether states are meeting the treaty's obligations. That means that despite Defense Department estimates (from 2004) that “more than 10” countries are developing biowarfare capabilities, no one knows for sure.
Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, the chair of the Scientists Working Group on Biological and Chemical Weapons at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, considers this a major concern. She says that as technology develops and spreads, the potential for countries to build bioprograms will only increase and bring with it greater risk: “State sponsorship is the most likely way that terrorists could get access to biological weapons.”
Unfortunately the political will to address these concerns is nearly nonexistent. “Since the protocol fell apart, nothing is being done on an international scale,” Rosenberg says.
EDUCATION: Science's social work
E = MC squares: A sixth-grade girl's portrayal of life as a scientist.
Physical scientists have an image problem. Research shows that when asked to draw what they think a physicist or a mathematician looks like, young people most frequently conjure up an image of someone a lot like, you guessed it, Albert Einstein.
That young people have such a narrow idea of what physical scientists do could be deterring them from pursuing careers in those fields. This is especially true for young girls, according to Jacquelynne S. Eccles, director of the University of Michigan's Gender & Achievement Research Program, which supervises several long-term studies of adolescents.
“Young women with math talent, who are part of a pool that could go into these fields, are more likely than young men to want jobs that have concrete benefits for other people–like medicine,” she says. “They tend to see [the physical sciences] as occupations where you don't work closely in collaboration with other people, where you work primarily on mechanical problems as opposed to human problems.”
The image of scientists as “loners” belies the fact that many of these occupations are now quite collaborative and contribute to solving important social problems. “We've got to get out and give a better image,” she says.
The stakes are high. If more U.S. children–of both genders–don't pursue the physical sciences, then homegrown talent for such jobs will continue to shrink. For young women, there is even more at play. “If people don't see women scientists, they are going to continue to believe that women can't do science,” Eccles says.
NANOTECH: Meet the goos
NANOTECHNOLOGY HAS OFFICIALLY GONE MAINSTREAM. Grey Goos, a new online comic strip, attempts to present nanotechnology in a humorous, easily digestible manner for general audiences. “My intention was to educate, make people laugh, and bring nanotech out of the shadows of fear,” the strip's creator and nanotech junkie Joel Fisher says.
Grey Goos features a gaggle of runaway goos (get it?) and other nanotech-related characters who reside in a New York City loft. The strip debuted on NanoInvestorNews.com in March. Fisher, a restoration artist by trade, hopes to one day syndicate it in newspapers throughout the country. A full-length comic book is also in the works. “We won't attract Joe Six-Pack, but I do think we can get the electronic herd,” Fisher says.
DULY NOTED: No-fight zone
Here's an unconventional approach to guaranteeing that India and Pakistan will never take their disputes to the battlefield: Convince India to follow Pakistan's lead and purchase a fleet of F-16 fighter planes from U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin. “Two countries that have F-16s have never fought a war,” aircraft analyst Richard Aboulafia recently told the Washington Post.
Following that logic, other F-16 owners that won't be engaging each other in armed fisticuffs any time soon:
