You, I, and James Woods: missing elements in homeland security

9/11/06

As we look back on this sad anniversary of 9/11, I wish that homeland security policymakers were students of history and could look fartherback — back to World War II.

During World War II, every community had plane spotters, older men and boys trained to recognize and report Axis planes. Posters everywhere warned “Loose Lips Sink Ships.” Everyone felt they played a vital role in avoiding potential danger from infiltrators. President Roosevelt established an agency, the Office of Civilian Defense, specifically to:

“…. assure effective coordination of Federal relations with State and local governments engaged in defense activities, to provide for necessary cooperation with States and local governments in respect to measures for adequate protection of the civilian population in emergency periods, to facilitate constructive civilian participation in the defense program, and to sustain national morale.” (my emphasis).

By contrast, when was the last time you were asked to help prevent another 9/11?

When did you see information from the FBI to help you distinguish between benign activities of an unfamiliar immigrant group and a terror cell’s dry run — not to mention what information would be helpful to authorities and how to report it? (the only page on their web site dealing with this issue was posted on August 2, 2004, and apparently hasn’t been updated. I find it hard to believe the FBI hasn’t learned of new sorts of threats since then, so the static nature of this page is a sorry reflection on how seriously the government takes public involvement).

There is NOTHING on this issue on the entire DHS web site — apparently, all they think the public is capable of is using the Ready.gov site to prepare ourselves to wait out the first 72-hours after a disaster — nothing more demanding than that (could it be, that, like Bush’s strategy of pursuing tax cuts and the Iraq War, this is another example of trying to have it both ways: fight a war on terror, but not ask the public for any sacrifice or involvement?).

When I think about “what ifs?” regarding 9/11 (and remaining equally valid today) I remember how actor James Woods, if proper governmental mechanisms were in place, might have thwarted it (read on for explanation). I wonder why Woods, you, and I, aren’t being asked to help fight terror — especially since today’s personal communication devices could make us effective “eyes and ears” in our communities.

Woods took an Aug. 1, 2001 Boston-LA flight: less than 6 weeks before 9/11, and also on a Tuesday (Given Al Quaeda’s penchant for long-term planning and dry runs, I suspect that the plotters were in the final phases of their planning at that point, and had already determined, perhaps by idling at Logan Airport, that Tuesdays were the days when there were the fewest travelers on the trans-continental flights, which meant both fewer people to overwhelm and more jet fuel available for these grotesque flying bombs).

For more than 6 hours in first class’ close confines Woods observed 4 well-dressed, apparently Middle Eastern men traveling together. He told The New Yorker, “… the guys were in synch — dressed alike. They didn’t have a drink and were not talking to the stewardess. None … had a carry-on.” He told the attendant “‘I think this plane is going to be hijacked …. I know how serious it is to say this,’ and asked to speak to the captain.’” The first officer agreed, locked the cockpit door, and the flight ended uneventfully.

Woods heard nothing more until 9/11, when he called the FBI’s LA bureau after photos of the hijackers had been broadcast. He believed he recognized two hijackers’ pictures the agents showed him.

Whether or not Woods actually did see two hijackers, there’s a good chance you, I or Woods — not a FBI agent — will observe a terrorist attack in the making. The U.S. is so large authorities can’t watch every potential target. Because we’re doing our jobs and in our neighborhoods every day, we’re more likely to notice strangers and/or people who are doing something out of the ordinary.

Also, unlike WWII plane spotters, we carry devices every day that can significantly improve the value of information we report about potentially-dangerous activities.

In particular, consider the cameraphone, basically unknown 3 years ago, now ubiquitous (850 million of them in use worldwide). Individuals instinctively use cameraphones to document and report, among other things, the license plates of pedophile abductors, burglaries in progress, and various other crimes. Since the same phones now often have built-in GPS, not only can citizens send police photos of suspects on a real-time basis, but also pinpoint their exact location. Imagine
what could be done if government realized how these and other personal communication devices could supplement its efforts, creating formal processes to educate us about what content would be valuable in a photo, and how to deliver it instantly.

Liberals are inherently queasy about the threat such a program might turn into state-sanctioned programs to rat out innocent people, especially those whose perfectly normal activities might be misunderstood and reported simply because of their ethnicity or appearance (as happened frequently in the period immediately following 9/11, and, of course, was reminiscent of the Japanese internments during WW II. However, protections could easily be built into the reporting process to almost eliminate privacy invasions, coupled with stiff criminal penalties for knowing distortions (and, of course the camera’s GPS chip would identify the phones and location of those who abused the reporting process, increasing odds they’d go to the slammer!).

Equally important, the technological genie is out of the bottle now when it comes to cameraphones, videophones, and increasingly powerful smartphones. Reporting suspicious activities by the general public will become more and more common whether we like it or not, so the challenge is to set up workable programs to channel this information while preserving privacy and civil liberties, and make the general public into responsible eyes and ears to extend authorities’ ability to get accurate information as the situation develops.

Yet, 5 years after 9/11, a period in which there have been tremendous advances in personal communications technology, if James Woods, you, or I were to observe a terrorist attack in the making today, the process to report it responsibly to the government would be as missing as it was in August, 2001.

We’ve seen, in the examples of average people who have already used their personal communication devices to report criminal activity, that it’s human nature to do this. When will government do its part to design a simple process, complete with tough safeguards to protect the innocent, to make us modern plane spotters?

(BTW, the ultimate irony of 9/11 was that a year later, Woods played Rudy Giuliani in a TV biopic. Would that he’d instead been been the hero who prevented its occurrence!)

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