Thursday, June 08, 2006
Prejudiced Homeland Security ignores Risk Analysis
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The 40% cut in urban security anti-terrorism funds (ATF) awarded to NYC by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has once more proven two points – that the administration uses the threat of terror as a political weapon to gain votes, and that NYC in the eyes of the official Washington and the red states is an enemy. If you find it paradoxical that a similar cut was experienced by Washington, DC, think again.
The ATF topic is particularly significant for us Midtowners, living near such targets as East River tunnels and bridges, major hospitals and the UN, the latter both a potential objective and a deterrent to terrorist attacks (do not ascribe a sense of reason to terrorists when Sunnis kill their co-religionists and potential allies Shiites as our collaborationists). The approach used by DHS, peer review of NYC’s plans, has the patina of business-like veracity, although the results show ignorance, prejudice and petty reasoning, e.g. accusing NYC of sloppy paperwork and pointing to absence of national monuments and icons. Another business methodology that would reveal the damages to the nation and the world, risk analysis, appears to have been ignored, typical of an administration that has ignored the potential of such damages consistently, in its war and peacetime policies.
I’ll abstain from reciting the cultural monuments at threat, there are economic and environmental dangers that will have worldwide impact, should terrorists penetrate the NYC defenses.
To begin, NYC is the world’s capital of finance, with targets that cannot be replaced no matter what mirroring record and alternate processing sites have been installed. The DHS evaluators in their profound ignorance (they forgot about the Statue of Liberty, possibly on purpose in their prejudice to immigrants) did not think of such institutions as Depository Trust Company, the world’s clearing house, that records and transfers titles, counting transactions in the trillions of dollars. The sites, no matter how perfect in a test environment (they never are, really) depend on people, and knowledgeable New Yorkers are a perishable commodity.
This brings up the unique geographic risk – New York is an island, and we cannot escape, should terrorists attack any combination of our bridges, tunnels and subway lines. Evacuation is impossible, and the existing facilities for traveling north – Willis Avenue Bridge and such – are inadequate even when operational. Add Long Island to the mix. None of the other major city targets have such vulnerabilities.
Next, the harbors and airports. New York is the largest intake facility, both of goods and people. Think disease, chicken flu or another pestilence. Medical observance of arrivals is critical, and requires human presence. This topic does not appear on the DHS observations, as reported in the press.
The importing of a “dirty bomb,” both intact or piece by piece, is a real threat. The critics of New York’s Atlas project (putting trained observant policemen in critical locations and alternating them in on a schedule that appears random) do not want to acknowledge that immediate reaction capacity is a cost-effective deterrent. They want to have cameras at critical centers that scare off terrorists, whether attended or not. This mass collection of data technique, monitoring by both phone and pictures, has been reported as ineffective, with massive data left unexamined forever, and the enemy knows it – although, putting aside the privacy issue, the method of collecting and extracting all calls passing through a suspect telephone might be more efficient than most other terror countermeasures, and should be made operational, with all the proper safeguards for protecting our civil rights. Making a 24/7 rotating judiciary rapid response system for evaluating subpoenas should cure the present ills – listen up, Washington.
The cameras are less efficient than the policemen on the beat, and monitoring a battery of them simultaneously is tedious, sleep inducing and therefore unreliable, a major controls weakness. There are effective analog watch systems in nuclear plants, oil refineries and other critical industrial facilities, geared to ring alarm bells upon the occurrence of specific events, but street-corner cameras are useful for stores and ATMs, to find the perpetrator after the event. A terrorist driving a truck will not be stopped by such equipment, only a policeman on the spot will provide a deterrent. Such cameras reacting to motion detectors and ringing bells for immediate response may be more effective, and should be installed in selected locations, but traffic-light cameras? Think efficiency, DHS.
Efficiency is not a DHS virtue, rather the opposite. For the past years small-town America has been claiming DHS funds to buy new fire trucks, night vision goggles and up the pay of officials. Where are the peer-group evaluations of these abuses of taxpayer money? The NYTimes unhesitatingly calls it pork-barrel politics, and the FEMA fiascos are a proof. DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, defending the cuts of funding for New York and Washington and reportedly throwing money at Omaha and Louisville, is just another Administration spin-doctor, and has no credibility.
New York Congressional delegation must send facts to the DHS, not just pictures of our endangered landmarks. Good legislators, you must expose the ignorant and prejudiced practices, and claim the appropriate funds, to protect the city, the nation and the world.
The 40% cut in urban security anti-terrorism funds (ATF) awarded to NYC by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has once more proven two points – that the administration uses the threat of terror as a political weapon to gain votes, and that NYC in the eyes of the official Washington and the red states is an enemy. If you find it paradoxical that a similar cut was experienced by Washington, DC, think again.
The ATF topic is particularly significant for us Midtowners, living near such targets as East River tunnels and bridges, major hospitals and the UN, the latter both a potential objective and a deterrent to terrorist attacks (do not ascribe a sense of reason to terrorists when Sunnis kill their co-religionists and potential allies Shiites as our collaborationists). The approach used by DHS, peer review of NYC’s plans, has the patina of business-like veracity, although the results show ignorance, prejudice and petty reasoning, e.g. accusing NYC of sloppy paperwork and pointing to absence of national monuments and icons. Another business methodology that would reveal the damages to the nation and the world, risk analysis, appears to have been ignored, typical of an administration that has ignored the potential of such damages consistently, in its war and peacetime policies.
I’ll abstain from reciting the cultural monuments at threat, there are economic and environmental dangers that will have worldwide impact, should terrorists penetrate the NYC defenses.
To begin, NYC is the world’s capital of finance, with targets that cannot be replaced no matter what mirroring record and alternate processing sites have been installed. The DHS evaluators in their profound ignorance (they forgot about the Statue of Liberty, possibly on purpose in their prejudice to immigrants) did not think of such institutions as Depository Trust Company, the world’s clearing house, that records and transfers titles, counting transactions in the trillions of dollars. The sites, no matter how perfect in a test environment (they never are, really) depend on people, and knowledgeable New Yorkers are a perishable commodity.
This brings up the unique geographic risk – New York is an island, and we cannot escape, should terrorists attack any combination of our bridges, tunnels and subway lines. Evacuation is impossible, and the existing facilities for traveling north – Willis Avenue Bridge and such – are inadequate even when operational. Add Long Island to the mix. None of the other major city targets have such vulnerabilities.
Next, the harbors and airports. New York is the largest intake facility, both of goods and people. Think disease, chicken flu or another pestilence. Medical observance of arrivals is critical, and requires human presence. This topic does not appear on the DHS observations, as reported in the press.
The importing of a “dirty bomb,” both intact or piece by piece, is a real threat. The critics of New York’s Atlas project (putting trained observant policemen in critical locations and alternating them in on a schedule that appears random) do not want to acknowledge that immediate reaction capacity is a cost-effective deterrent. They want to have cameras at critical centers that scare off terrorists, whether attended or not. This mass collection of data technique, monitoring by both phone and pictures, has been reported as ineffective, with massive data left unexamined forever, and the enemy knows it – although, putting aside the privacy issue, the method of collecting and extracting all calls passing through a suspect telephone might be more efficient than most other terror countermeasures, and should be made operational, with all the proper safeguards for protecting our civil rights. Making a 24/7 rotating judiciary rapid response system for evaluating subpoenas should cure the present ills – listen up, Washington.
The cameras are less efficient than the policemen on the beat, and monitoring a battery of them simultaneously is tedious, sleep inducing and therefore unreliable, a major controls weakness. There are effective analog watch systems in nuclear plants, oil refineries and other critical industrial facilities, geared to ring alarm bells upon the occurrence of specific events, but street-corner cameras are useful for stores and ATMs, to find the perpetrator after the event. A terrorist driving a truck will not be stopped by such equipment, only a policeman on the spot will provide a deterrent. Such cameras reacting to motion detectors and ringing bells for immediate response may be more effective, and should be installed in selected locations, but traffic-light cameras? Think efficiency, DHS.
Efficiency is not a DHS virtue, rather the opposite. For the past years small-town America has been claiming DHS funds to buy new fire trucks, night vision goggles and up the pay of officials. Where are the peer-group evaluations of these abuses of taxpayer money? The NYTimes unhesitatingly calls it pork-barrel politics, and the FEMA fiascos are a proof. DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, defending the cuts of funding for New York and Washington and reportedly throwing money at Omaha and Louisville, is just another Administration spin-doctor, and has no credibility.
New York Congressional delegation must send facts to the DHS, not just pictures of our endangered landmarks. Good legislators, you must expose the ignorant and prejudiced practices, and claim the appropriate funds, to protect the city, the nation and the world.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:36 PM 
