On Wednesday it was reported that terrorists may begin surgically implanting bombs inside militants bodies in order to evade airport detection devices. And if you're thinking this sounds vaguely familiar, yes, this is straight out of the scene in The Dark Knight in which the Joker blows up the Gotham City police headquarters via a bomb implanted in an unwitting henchman.
Will Saletan of Slate writes a well-linked piece explaining why current scanner technology would be unable to detect these bombs, and that we are therefore vulnerable until we develop a technology capable of seeing completely through a person to detect any foreign object.
To me, this illustrates a point in my book, which is that we are over reliant on technology in our counterterrorism efforts. I don't mean to imply that technology plays no role in manhunting, only that satellites and eavesdropping technology can not locate every terrorist, and work best when supplementing human intelligence. Similarly, passive defensive technologies are most effective when backing up well-trained security personnel that possess good judgment.
It is telling that Saletan never even considers this human dimension (in his telling, humans are automatons that only act when the scanners tell them to), or the fact that certain types of profiling (shhhh!) . . . i.e. past travel itineraries, age groups, physical "tells" . . . can be effective where technology fails. But because of our reliance on technology (okay, and probably political correctness) Saletan never discusses these as possibly effective methods for ferreting out terrorists carrying surgically implanted bombs.
If we conducted offensive counterterrorism in a similar manner (i.e. only targeted terrorists positively identified by satellite before striking), Osama bin Laden and countless other bad guys would still be alive.
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