City Would Photograph Every Vehicle Entering Manhattan and Sniff Out Radioactivity

The proposal — called Operation Sentinel — relies on integrating layers of technologies, some that are still being perfected. It calls for photographing, and scanning the license plates of, cars and trucks at all bridges and tunnels and using sensors to detect the presence of radioactivity.
Data on each vehicle — its time-stamped image, license plate imprint and radiological signature — would be sent to a command center in Lower Manhattan, where it would be indexed and stored for at least a month as part of a broad security plan that emphasizes protecting the city’s financial district, the spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said. If it were not linked to a suspicious vehicle or a law enforcement investigation, it would be eliminated, he said.
“Our main objective would be to, through intelligence, find out about a plot before it ever got to a stage where a nuclear device or a dirty bomb was coming our way,” Mr. Browne said. “This provides for our defense after a plot has already been launched and a device is on its way.”
The proposal is one element of a 36-page plan for security, mainly focused on the site of ground zero, that Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and his counterterrorism bureau commanders have shared with the director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
For months, Mr. Kelly and his command staff have been urging the creation of a London-style surveillance system for the financial district that relies on license plate readers, movable roadblocks and 3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street, all linked to a coordination center at 55 Broadway. Known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, the center is to open in September.
At the same time, a federal Securing the Cities program is going forward: The police are creating links with law enforcement agencies within a 50-mile radius around the city. That plan includes outfitting officers with radiation detectors to stop a nuclear or radiological threat as far from the target as possible.
Operation Sentinel would combine strategies from the security initiative and Securing the Cities and use them at choke points into Manhattan.
Mr. Browne could not say when the program would be completed, though the Lower Manhattan initiative is expected to be in place by 2010. “This is just a planning document,” he said of the proposal. “It’s a vision of how it will work if all the components come together.”
He said he could not predict what the city’s law enforcement leaders would do after the Bloomberg administration leaves at the end of 2009. But he said that Mr. Kelly was concerned that a more robust security system be in place before the World Trade Center area opens for business again.
“The importance of protecting the nation’s financial center will remain,” Mr. Browne said. “And the ability to protect an urban center from a dirty bomb or a nuclear device will also remain.”
Since early 2007, the police have been using technology to read license plates and to check the information against databases, including one for stolen cars. Similarly, they are using closed-circuit TV and radiation-detection equipment in various counterterrorism operations.
For instance, the department owns portable radiation vehicles — known as TRACS, for Tactical Radiation Acquisition and Characterization System — that can detect radiological agents like cesium or cobalt and differentiate between dangerous ones and ones used in products like smoke detectors or medical devices.
Operation Sentinel would synchronize the three forms of technology — photographs, license plate readers and radiation detectors — in one system.
But there are hurdles. The costs of the project, and its feasibility, have not been fully determined. The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative is a $90 million program; the Securing the Cities program is being paid for with federal money, including $40 million earmarked in the 2008 fiscal year 2008 and $30 million expected the following year. Also, tracking many thousands of vehicles and people every day raises alarm with civil libertarians.
However, Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism in Washington, a nonprofit research organization that investigates terror groups worldwide, said that the tactics would not invade people’s privacy and that they were critically important, given plots to attack Lower Manhattan.
“It is one tool of ensuring that if there is somebody on a terrorist watch list or someone driving erratically, or if a pattern develops that raises suspicions, it gives them an opportunity to investigate further and — if need be — track down the drivers or the passengers,” he said. “The bottom line is they can’t frisk everybody coming into Manhattan; they cannot wand everyone, as they do at airports. This is a passive collection of data that is not as personally invasive as what they do at airports.”
Operation Sentinel calls for the cameras, license plate readers and radiological scanners to be deployed at seven vehicle crossings: the Brooklyn-Battery, Holland, Lincoln and Queens-Midtown Tunnels, and the George Washington, Henry Hudson and Triborough Bridges.
Mr. Browne said the plan was to include every crossing, including the smaller bridges connecting the Bronx and Upper Manhattan like the Willis Avenue and Macombs Dam Bridges.
A major challenge is to develop technology to discern the radiological signature of vehicles across several lanes at a toll plaza, where many enter at once, and to have the ability to align that data with the correct closed-circuit image and license plate.
“That is the principal challenge they are looking to resolve,” Mr. Browne said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/nyregion/12cars.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

U.S. Ship Heads for Arctic to Define Territory
Monday, August 11, 2008 9:57 PM
NEW YORK - A U.S. Coast Guard cutter will embark on an Arctic voyage this week to determine the extent of the continental shelf north of Alaska and map the ocean floor, data that could be used for oil and natural gas exploration.
U.S. and University of New Hampshire scientists on the Coast Guard Cutter Healy will leave Barrow, Alaska, on Thursday on a three-week journey. They will create a three-dimensional map of the Arctic Ocean floor in a relatively unexplored area known as the Chukchi borderland.
The Healy will launch again on September 6, when it will be joined by Canadian scientists aboard an icebreaker, who will help collect data to determine the thickness of sediment in the region. That is one factor a country can use to define its extended continental shelf.
With oil at $114 a barrel, after hitting a record $147 in July, and sea ice melting fast, countries like Russia and the United States are looking north for possible energy riches.
"These are places nobody's gone before, in essence, so this is a first step," said Margaret Hays, the director of the oceanic affairs office at the U.S. State Department. She said the data collected may provide information to the public about future oil and natural gas sources for the United States.
This will be the fourth year that the United States has collected data to define the limits of its continental shelf in the Arctic.
Russia, which has claimed 460,000 square miles of Arctic waters, last summer planted its flag on the ocean floor of the North Pole.
Hays said the Alaskan continental shelf may lie up to 600 nautical miles from the coastline, far beyond the 200-mile (322-km) limit where coastal countries have sovereign rights over natural resources.
The research could also shed light on other potential energy resources, like methane frozen in ice under the ocean, that Hays said might one day have some commercial interest.
Larry Mayer, a university scientist, said melting sea ice, presumably from global warming, helped last year's mission. "It was bad for the Arctic, but very very good for mapping."


Federal Judge: No Guns at Atlanta Airport
Monday, August 11, 2008 7:30 PM
ATLANTA -- A federal judge on Monday upheld a gun ban at the world's busiest airport, dealing a blow to gun rights groups who argued a new Georgia law authorized them to pack heat in certain parts of the Atlanta airport.
U.S. District Judge Marvin Shoob expressed concern that allowing guns at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport could cause significant economic damage and could be a "serious threat to public safety and welfare."
His decision rejected a request by GeorgiaCarry.org that would have temporarily allowed gun owners to carry their weapons in the airport until his final ruling on the gun ban _ a challenge that could likely last months.
The legal showdown erupted when the state law that allows people with a concealed weapons permit to carry guns into restaurants, state parks and on public transportation took effect on July 1.
City officials quickly declared the airport a "gun-free zone" and warned that anyone carrying a gun there would be arrested.
GeorgiaCarry.org sued the city and the airport, claiming that the airport qualifies as mass transportation under the new state law. Attorney John Monroe told the judge repeatedly that no law makes it a crime for residents with permits to bring their guns into terminals, parking lots and other unsecured areas.
Gov. Sonny Perdue, who signed the bill into law in May, supports the lawsuit. The Republican suggested that his own wife might want to carry a firearm for long walks between the parking lot and the airport's terminal.
City officials have angrily fired back, arguing that allowing some residents to carry guns at the airport could pose a dire threat to the millions of passengers it serves each year. Even an accidental firearm discharge, they say, could cause mayhem.
"First, you're going to have a stampede," said Robert Kennedy, the airport's assistant general manager.
Meanwhile, airport officials are quietly devising a backup plan.
They have asked the Transportation Security Administration to amend the airport's federal security program so that guns are banned in all areas, including certain parking facilities.
TSA officials said the agency is reviewing the request, the first such appeal it has ever received.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has also urged the agency to strengthen its restrictions and warned that Congress could intervene if national regulations are not adopted.
The judge's ruling was a defeat for GeorgiaCarry.org, a two-year-old group that has won a string of victories reversing city and county firearm restrictions around the state.
But state Rep. Tim Bearden, a Republican who co-sponsored the law, said it was only a temporary setback.
"In the long run, the Constitution always prevails," said Bearden, a former police officer who wore a yellow tie imprinted with the document's words. "At least, it's supposed to."
http://www.newsmax.com/us/airport_guns/2008/08/11/121071.html

EDITORIAL: 'Golden Eye' c. 2008?
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
When contemplating a nuclear attack on the United States, Americans generally think of one or two scenarios: a nuclear-armed ballistic-missile attack or a terrorist strike utilizing nuclear materials smuggled into a large city and detonated there. But an attack could take the form of an atomic-generated electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strike, which could destroy electronic systems and power grids.
Such an attack "is one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold our society extremely at risk and might result in the defeat of our military forces," a federal commission reported in 2004. That panel — known officially as The Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack — was created by Congress in 2001 to counter the possibility that a hostile force might launch an EMP attack against the United States: specifically, detonating a nuclear weapon anywhere from 25 miles to several hundred miles above the Earth's atmosphere.
The blast would do immense damage to anything with electronic wiring - including cars, computers, airplanes and communication lines - depending on the location of the attack and how well protected the wiring is. A nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of 250 miles over the central United States would be capable of causing damage covering all of the continental United States as well as parts of Canada and Mexico.
And there are plenty of potential adversaries who may soon have the technological capability to carry out such an attack. In March 8, 2005, testimony before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, Lowell Wood, acting chairman of the panel, noted that a Scud missile launched from a freighter off the Atlantic Coast could permit a terrorist organization to launch an EMP attack. "Scud missiles can be purchased inexpensively [for about $100,000] by anyone, including private collectors, in the worlds' arms markets. Terrorists might buy, steal, or be given a 'no fingerprints' nuclear weapon. For example, North Korea has demonstrated willingness to sell both missiles and nuclear materials," Mr. Wood said. "Iran, the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism" is "known to have successfully test-launched a Scud missile from the Caspian Sea, a launch mode that could be adapted ... to support an EMP attack against the United States from the sea." Also, Iran has conducted high-altitude tests of the Shahab III missile in mode consistent with an EMP attack, and Iranian military literature has included references to the damage that such a nuclear blast could do to U.S. military capabilities.
In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee last month, EMP commission chairman William Graham noted that China and Russia have also considered limited nuclear attack options. In May 1999, during NATO's bombing of the former Yugoslavia, senior members of the Russian Duma, during a meeting with a congressional delegation, suggested that Moscow might launch an EMP attack that could paralyze the United States. In testimony before the same congressional panel in June, Assistant Secretary of Defense James Shinn noted that China's military is working on EMP weapons that can destroy electronic systems. "The consequence of EMP is that you destroy the communications network," Mr. Shinn said. "And we are, as you know, and as the Chinese also know, heavily dependent on sophisticated communications, satellite communications, in the conduct of our forces. And so, whether it's from an EMP or it's some kind of a coordinated [anti-satellite] effort, we could be in a very bad place if the Chinese enhanced their capability in this area."
There are preventive measures that can be taken, including urging utility companies to take steps to protect the nuclear grid, as the commission recommended. Few utilities have done so. In the end, the best way to deter a potential adversary from using such a system against the United States is to deploy a robust missile defense system, including space interceptors.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/12/goldeneye-c-2008/

Waterboarding an attraction at amusement park By Ritsuko Ando Thu Aug 7, 11:26 AM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - A man with a black hood pours water on the face of a prisoner in an orange jumpsuit strapped to a table: no, it's not Guantanamo Bay naval base, but New York's Coney Island amusement park. The scene using robotic dolls is an installation built by artist Steve Powers to criticize waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique the United States has admitted using on terrorism suspects, but that rights group say is torture. "Waterboard Thrill Ride" beckons a sign along with cartoon character "SpongeBob SquarePants" who appears tied down and exclaiming: "It don't Gitmo better!" The public can peek through window bars and feed a dollar into the slot to bring the robotic dolls into action, one more attraction in the beachfront amusement park in the New York neighborhood of Brooklyn. "Anyone can see this is painful from 50 feet away," said Powers, who had previously been painting signs and storefronts in the area. "I wanted people to understand the psychological ramifications of this." Marion Tracey, 57, from New Jersey, said she found the installation disturbing. It made her think of her father who had nightmares after returning from World War II. "In all wars, horrible things happen," she said. "I'd rather not see it." Alex Soto, 23, said he thought it was a good thing for people to learn about waterboarding, but he added: "It is pretty twisted." http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080807/od_nm/waterboarding_art_odd_dc;_ylt=A0wNcx86zKFIDmUANwkSH9EA

U.S. to plug border 'loophole': Open seas U.S. Coast Guard officers move in on a boat packed with suspected illegal immigrants last month. By Emily Bazar, USA TODAY Immigration officials are beefing up patrols, buying more boats and preparing for a surge in illegal water crossings as immigrants and drug smugglers are likely to chart new routes into the USA through the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean. Heavier enforcement on the U.S.-Mexican land border, in the form of staffing, fencing, cameras and other detection technology, will force smugglers and migrants to look for easier entry spots, says Lloyd Easterling, assistant chief of the Border Patrol. There are about 17,000 Border Patrol agents nationwide, compared with 12,000 two years ago. The Department of Homeland Security intends to complete 670 miles of fence by year's end. "What we're doing … has been effective. Now they're having to go try different things," Easterling says. In Southern California, the San Diego Marine Task Force seized 10 human- and drug-smuggling boats last year. With nearly two months to go in this fiscal year, there have been 22 boat seizures, more than double last year's total, says Lauren Mack, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in San Diego. "Clearly, San Diego has seen an upturn in smuggling by sea," says James Spero of ICE. "It's likely the next loophole could be the Gulf." Easterling says officials are increasing water patrols and adding boats, jet skis and helicopters. He did not provide details, citing security. Illegal immigrants found new paths after a crackdown at the Southern California border in 1994, says Doris Meissner, then commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. She is a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington. As a result of that earlier crackdown, illegal crossers started taking more dangerous routes through remote deserts and mountains, she says. "It has consistently been the experience that strengthening in one place leads to new places becoming pressure points," she says. Fernando Garcia of the Border Network for Human Rights in El Paso says smugglers, who charge thousands of dollars to guide people across, will charge more, and more migrants will die navigating dangerous waters. Capt. Thomas Farris, commander of the Coast Guard's San Diego sector, says his team is installing more sensors on land and at sea to detect movement and is closely coordinating efforts with the Border Patrol. Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California-San Diego, says dozens of smugglers' boats have been captured or found abandoned in the past year. "The increase in maritime people smuggling is already with us," he says. Extra border fortification "is only deflecting migrant traffic into other modes of entry." http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-12-gulfmigration_N.htm