My esteemed friend Chris Van Vechten posted this article recently discussing the need for Indians to carry guns and this might have somehow prevented the tragedy in Mumbai.

First off, I never predicted any sort of terrorist activity was going to happen. In fact, I wrote “This is the first time I have actually been a little scared for both my life and for something serious happening in Kerala. I don’t think something is going to happen. But something might. The local police are really cracking down on the different groups. It is quite stunning to much of the local population. There is very little rivalry in Kochi like there is in the North.”

The people that were arrested in Kerala have two different fundamentalist strains. Those who are supporting the insurgency by the Muslims in Indian−Administered Kashmir and the Hindu nationalists who-at the cost of being a little non-pc−want their culture raised above all else. The people in Kerala are mainly small time agitators with minimal connections to the major planning areas that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai received in Pakistani-Administered Kashmir.

There is a second insurgency being waged in India, in the Northeast of the country, where many Bengalis want greater autonomy. That was the jumping off point of my original post. Please note, that those active in the Northeast have very little in common, and presumably, little contact with those active in Kashmir.

Finally, Sri Lanka is nearing the end of its Civil War with the Tamil Tigers. India’s Tamil Nadu, a state on the southeast corner of the country, obviously has a large Tamil population. More importantly, Tamil is a very important race, culture and language. There is a lot of ill will within Tamil Nadu towards the Sri Lankan governments’ rather violence campaign to eradicate the Tigers (the Tigers themselves are no angels either).

These are all different. Also, you have native Hindus who have become even more violent towards other cultures at the suppression of Hindu superiority. Raj Thackeray and his ridiculous attacks on North Indians. There is a lot of conflict.

Chris argues that “like America’s pre-wire taps 9/11, practically everyone in India’s intelligence community knew something was coming.” This is simply wrong. There is evidence now being reported in the local media that there were rumors of some sort of attack at Western frequented places in Mumbai, and more specifically the train station, but those rumors died down in September. These reports surface all the time. Probably because there are always new plots being hatched and then shut down.

More importantly Chris wrongly asserts that the cops only had bamboo sticks. Not true. The biggest problem was the complete lack of infrastructure for most of the soldiers and the community. The fire trucks took three hours to get to the Taj and start working on the fires. Many of the police officers have bolt action rifles. In one security camera scene being replayed endlessly here in India, a police officer at the train station had a good shot at one of the terrorists. However, his gun jammed. The terrorists saw him and sprayed bullets at him, but he escaped. They had guns. They didn’t work.

This week a special panel created by Congress to investigate…something (CNN did not deign to give the name or purpose of the “blue ribbon panel” – way to increase knowledge and transparency, CNN!) has concluded that a biological terror attack somewhere in the world will happen by 2013. Since the raw materials and knowledge required for biological (read: disease) weapons are widely available, presumably, terrorists will make use of disease, somewhere, somehow.

Let us examine this argument by looking first at the potential contagion-spreading terrorist. He will have many diseases to pick and choose from, so which he selects depends exactly on what his goals are. If his goals are distinctly nationalistic – say, he is a Tamil Tiger, a Chechan or Tibetan separatist, a member of Hezbollah, or some other group with the goal of living in a certain area in a certain way – then he is unlikely to use biological weapons. The risk of the disease spreading back into his home community, whose health and continued existence he is presumably fighting for, is far too great. While some individuals in nationalistic groups may favor suicide attacks, it is likely that they will stick to good old fashioned bombs and guns, since they provide control over who and how many are being killed and to what extent. Likewise, terrorists that have any sort of goal that involves a society after the enemy is wiped out (such as the Taliban) are unlikely to use biological weapons in their home territories. They may identify enemies in other regions and try to kill them with disease, but these folks have very particular regional goals.

Which brings us to the problem of disease – why wouldn’t a group like FARC use biological terror? I’ve answered it a little above, but unless a group’s goals are to “Destroy Everything”, disease just doesn’t work. Diseases, for the purposes of a terrorist, fall into two categories: easy and hard. They can be easy to spread (tuberculosis, smallpox, the flu) or not (SARS, some parasites). If they are easy to spread, they may target particular populations based on class or climate, so their effectiveness is limited. And if they are easy to spread, they may also be easy to survive, to cope with, or vaccinate against.

The goal of most nationalist(ic) terrorist groups is to convince a local population that they should live as the terrorists propose. In this they differ only in methodology from mainstream nationalist groups. That is, groups like FARC argue that Colombia and South America should turn to communism in one way, while communists politicians, lobbyists, artists, and others use more acceptable methods of persuasion for the same goal. Thus FARC in the end wants to kill only a selected group of people, because if everyone started dying then they would never win anyone over. Terrorists like these were the ones most ingrained in the popular consciousness before September 11, and they remain the most common.

Then there are the terrorists we now associate with September 11: crazy motherfuckers (CMFs) who want to “Destroy Everything”. These folks are in very short supply. It is feasible to know the name of every CMF currently living, which shows you how kind of ridiculous (not bad, just strange) it is that they have dominated security policy discussions for the past seven years. CMFs are definitely the ones who will be using biological weapons.

CMF Aum Shinrikyo Wanted Poster

The diseases they choose will be meant to have maximum killing effect – they will be totally uncontrollable and very spreadable. The problem for them is getting access to known massively deadly diseases. AIDS, for example, while deadly and common, is difficult to spread since a change in victim behavior easily prevents further infection. So diseases that are airbourne, or even mosquito-bourne in some cases will be preferable. It will also be best if the disease hides for a short while so that victims can infect others before realizing they are sick. And it needs to be something without a readily-available vaccine.

CMFs may use themselves as a way to spread the disease, and the people hardest hit will probably be poor urban dwellers. The question is only when and where, not if, at this point. Since that is the case, we should not get overexcited about it – that is, resort to fearmongering and taking away minority rights.

An photo of the "Obama 4" taken by a Renton resident

This October 31st was more than just candy and costumes for neighborhood homes in Renton, WA. As children rang doorbells for treats, a gang of Halloween terrorists dressed in Barack Obama masks created utter mayhem by asking instead, for unity and promising socialized medicine.

“I couldn’t believe it,” says Ann Victor, a mother of three. “I opened the door expecting to find a bunch of cute princesses or zombies, and there were four Muslims promising me coverage on my dental. What a horror!”

The terrorists, or Obama 4, as has been coined by the Renton Police, are alleged to have trick or treated at over five-thousand homes, demanding treats or threatening candy-givers with lower taxes and pulling out of the Iraq war.

Thomas Putnam’s son Jerry, age 6, was answering the door with treats when the Obama 4 approached. “They spoke to him elegantly and talked about better education and caring for one another rather than catering to corporate interest,” says Thomas, “No child should have to grow up in a world where people bring goodwill onto others. That’s domestic terrorism!”

Obama mask used by the terrorists

The Renton police have been stumped as to who might be involved with the terrorist attack.  “We considered possibilities in the John McCain campaign,” says Police Chief Ken Sharp, “But universal healthcare coverage and ending futile wars is something the McCain campaign would never force onto others.”

John McCain issued a statement soon after the attacks, denouncing the actions of terrorists. “My condolences go to the families and victims of these brutal, distasteful and dishonorable attacks,” says McCain, “This gives further evidence, my friends, that an American under Barack Obama is an America filled with hate, terrorism, and decent family men.  I’m for tricks, not terrorism!”

The Obama campaign refused to comment, dismissing the acts as “just some silly kids playing around.”

A warrant for the arrest of the Obama 4 has been put out by the Renton Police Department, though none have been made.

Jonathan Klick, professor of law and economics at Florida State University, had an idea for how to examine a difficult social science question: Do more police officers in fact reduce crime?

Over and over again, myopic economists answer this question by excluding important independent variables, like you are about to see.

In a paper titled “Using Terror Alert Levels to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime” (a copy of the article is available here) Klick and Tabarrok argue that changes in the national terror alert (“green”, “yellow”, “orange”, “red”, etc.) corresponded to shifts in crime levels.

“On high-alert days,” they wrote, ”total crimes decrease by an average of seven crimes per day, or approximately 6.6 percent.”

And, every $1 to add officers would reduce the costs of crime by $4.

By measuring elasticities for auto theft and other street crimes while the terror alert is high as opposed to when it is low, the economists conclude with a straight face that “if we had a 10 percent increase in police, crime would go down by about 4 percent.” Nationally, ”that means about 700,000 fewer property crimes and 213,000 fewer violent crimes.”

Or in other words, an increased threat of terrorism makes America’s streets safer. Only the economists’ argument is for carefully designed to talk only about the ‘effect of police on crime’, not the ‘effect of expected terrorism on the person in the street’.

All surface-level discussion of urban social policies emerges from a context of fragmented thinking. Many theoretical accounts in political science, economics, criminal justice, are not validated, or held to rigorous social scientific (more broadly defined) standards. But this does not stop us from implementing flawed policies. Even if terror alerts or the number of police decrease crime on a superficial level like this, it is still highly contestable whether an emergency policed state is the social meaning of order and security.

Professor Klick offered an even more striking suggestion to a NYTimes reporter. ”It wouldn’t be unreasonable,” he said, ”based on our estimates and based on conservative estimates of the costs of crime, to say it would be cost-effective to actually double the number of people working in police forces, which is pretty amazing.”

In another installment of “Holy shit, are we really doing that?!?”, today I bring you news of US Department of Homeland Security’s Project Hostile Intent. This is a series of cameras, infrared detectors, and other sensor devices that scan a crowd and look for, supposedly, people who have hostile intent. Really, the scanners are looking to see if people seem overly nervous or frightened. The goal is to find terrorists in a crowd before they actually do anything. Just think what happens when we install these in airports. Everyone who’s nervous and running late for their flight is going to have cops come up and question them extensively while they’re trying to make it to their flight. Everyone who loses their bag is going to have to deal with an hour of police questioning before they can start the long process of recovering their luggage.

The government is also mounting these scanners on trucks in the hopes that they can quickly be deployed at sporting events, speeches, and (I’d imagine) protests and rallies to help with security. Presumably, this system will simply run passively until it sees someone who matches the profile of a terrorist (whatever that is) and then alert security somehow.

I see two big problems with this. The first is a privacy issue. I imagine that all that data the sensors are taking in is being recorded. With storage so cheap, all that data will likely be stored in case it’s useful later. So it’s conceivable that there will now be records of where you were (using GPS) at a specific time paired with data about your heart rate, perspiration, etc. I’m not really keen on anyone, especially the government, having that kind of information about me. It could not only be used to track your attendance to events (did you go to the opposition party’s rally?), but it also monitor your reaction to the event (did it make you excited, fearful, etc). Furthermore, such devices could be surreptitiously installed around a city to provide much more detailed tracking of people’s movements and moods. This, of course, assumes that the system will actually be able to live up to its claims. Detecting another person’s emotions or psychological state from a distance is difficult to begin with and trying to so to a crowd of people simultaneously is nearly impossible.

The second big problem is one that I alluded to earlier: the huge number of false positives such a system would generate. Lots of people will be nervous or acting strangely in airports, sporting events, protests, and rallies and there’s simply no way that all of those nervous and strange people could be screened. The truth is, we don’t have a profile for what a terrorist is or how they behave. If we did, we could train humans to recognize it with much greater accuracy than these machines will be able to. In the end these devices aren’t going to stop terrorists and aren’t going to be any more effective than the ridiculous airport security measures that have already been put in place. What it will do, though, is make people worry more about what they say and where they say it. Systems like this will have a chilling effect on speech and that is something that no healthy democracy can or should support.