W

Following a recommendation of the Sept. 11 commission, the House and Senate are moving toward setting rules for the states that would standardize the documentation required to obtain a driver's license, and the data the license would have to contain.

Critics say the plan would create a national identification card. But advocates say it would make it harder for terrorists to operate, as well as reduce the highway death toll by helping states identify applicants whose licenses had been revoked in other states.

The Senate version of the intelligence bill includes an amendment, passed by unanimous consent on Oct. 1, that would let the secretary of homeland security decide what documents a state would have to require before issuing a driver's license, and would also specify the data that the license would have to include for it to meet federal standards. The secretary could require the license to include fingerprints or eye prints. The provision would allow the Homeland Security Department to require use of the license, or an equivalent card issued by motor vehicle bureaus to nondrivers for identification purposes, for access to planes, trains and other modes of transportation.

Repeatedly invoking the threat of terrorism, the Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved a $5.6-billion, 10-year initiative to encourage private industry to develop vaccines and drugs that would protect Americans from biological, chemical or nuclear attacks.

If terrorists have access to anthrax, smallpox, botulism toxin, plague or Ebola virus, said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), "there is no question they will use it. And they will use it in a place where people gather to go about their daily lives."

The Senate vote came more than two years after anthrax-filled letters caused five fatalities, changed the way mail was inspected and delivered, and highlighted the nation's vulnerability to bioterrorist attacks.

President Bush, who on Wednesday praised passage of the bill as "another important step in winning the war on terror," proposed Project Bioshield in his 2003 State of the Union address. The House passed a bill, 421-2, last summer, but the legislation stalled in the Senate over the technical concerns of a handful of lawmakers.

If you have ever seen the cult '60s British television program The Prisoner, in which captured Cold War spies live on an island under constant surveillance, you can imagine what life may soon be like on Ayers Island, on the Penobscot River near the University of Maine.

In coming years, visitors to Ayers Island, the site of an abandoned paper and textile mill in Orono, Maine, will be spied upon by a comprehensive network of video cameras, motion detectors and sensors. Lurking behind all of those sensors will be an artificial intelligence system that will decide who can be trusted and who is deserving of greater scrutiny.

The engineers, drawn largely from the nearby University of Maine, will use the network to test the reliability of new sensors. They will also attempt to demonstrate that AI, combined with ubiquitous sensors, may be able to provide civil authorities with comprehensive, real-time intelligence about the whereabouts of individuals and cars, and the status of buildings and other structures within a particular geographical area.

Ayers Island will be open to the public, who are expected to visit the island for its nature trails, amphitheater, sculpture garden and museum, all part of a planned renovation project for the island. A contemporary arts festival on Ayers Island is scheduled for this summer. Many cameras and motion detectors will be in place by that time, according to the company that owns the island, Ayers Island LLC.

Physicists have discovered a new signature characteristic of radiation that could be used to detect the gamma ray emissions of smuggled illegal nuclear materials, even if they are concealed among large bundles of shipping containers.

The problem of detecting smuggled nuclear weapons or devices presents an enormous challenge for security officials. More than 6 million containers enter U.S. ports annually. West Coast facilities alone process about 11,000 a day, or an average of eight every minute. A single container can hold up to 57,000 pounds.

Officials have been attempting to figure out how to inspect containers for smuggled nuclear materials without disrupting the flow of the nation's commerce.

The physicists, from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., think they have come up with the solution.

"We have identified a new radiation signature, unique to fissionable material, that exploits high-energy, fission-product, beta-delayed, gamma ray emissions," said lead researcher Thomas Gosnell. "Fortunately, this signature is robust in that it is very distinct compared to normal background radiation, where there are no comparable high-energy gamma rays."

The Pentagon's New Map
By Thomas P. M. Barnett
Copyright 2004

Club-goers in Spain get implanted chips for ID, payment purposes.

Being recognized has never been easier for VIP patrons of the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, Spain.

Like a scene out of a science-fiction movie, all it takes is a syringe-injected microchip implant for the beautiful men and women of the nightclub scene to breeze past a "reader" that recognizes their identity, credit balance and even automatically opens doors to exclusive areas of the club for them.

For all of human history, people have looked at the stars with a sense of wonder. More recently, some U.S. military planners have looked skyward and seen something very different — the next battlefield.

While the military's presence in space stretches back decades, now there appears to be a new emphasis. Officials in the Bush administration and the Department of Defense are actively pursuing an agenda calling for the unprecedented weaponization of space.

The first real step in that direction appears to be coming in the form of a little-noticed weapons program at the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. The agency has now earmarked $68 million in 2005 for something called the Near Field Infrared Experiment.

The NFIRE satellite is primarily designed to gather data on exhaust plumes from rockets launched from earth, and defense officials claim it is therefore designed as a defensive, rather than offensive weapons.

But the satellite will also contain a smaller "kill vehicle," a projectile that takes advantage of the kinetic energy of objects traveling through low-Earth orbit (which move at several times the speed of a bullet) to disable or destroy an oncoming missile or another orbiting satellite.

To cope with the possibility that terrorists might someday detonate a nuclear bomb on American soil, the federal government is reviving a scientific art that was lost after the cold war: fallout analysis.

The goal, officials and weapons experts both inside and outside the government say, is to figure out quickly who exploded such a bomb and where the nuclear material came from. That would clarify the options for striking back. Officials also hope that if terrorists know a bomb can be traced, they will be less likely to try to use one.

A Danish biotech company has developed a genetically modified flower that could help detect land mines and it hopes to have a prototype ready for use within a few years.

"We are really excited about this, even though it's early days. It has considerable potential," Simon Oestergaard, chief executive of developing company Aresa Biodetection, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

The genetically modified weed has been coded to change color when its roots come in contact with nitrogen-dioxide (NO2) evaporating from explosives buried in soil.

Adapting a concept that supermarkets have perfected, U.S. immigration authorities today began using a digital inventory control system to keep tabs on millions of foreign visitors who enter the country with visas.

Instead of bar codes and scanners that shopkeepers use to track cereal boxes, the government has started taking digital fingerprints and photos to register visitors as they arrive in the United States, and eventually to confirm their departure.

Ultimately, fighting the war on terrorism may have less to do with giant aircraft carriers and more to do with atomic-scale detection and prevention systems. Nanotechnology, which is expected to transform everything from computer processors to drug delivery systems, may also be the key to homeland security, argues a new book.

In Nanotechnology and Homeland Security: New Weapons for New Wars (Prentice Hall, 2003), Mark A. Ratner, a professor of chemistry at Northwestern University and a noted expert in molecular electronics, and his son Daniel Ratner, a high-tech entrepreneur, claim that current research in nanotechnology will lead to intelligent sensors, smart materials, and other methods for thwarting biological and chemical attacks.

Nanotechnology could strengthen the nation's shield against terrorist bombs, biological weapons or attacks on power plants and reservoirs, participants at a Mountain View forum said Monday.

But homeland security may not benefit from nanotechnology's potential unless government funding lays the groundwork for the private businesses that could produce new defense products, most experts agreed.

There are more than 1m closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in use in Britain, keeping a beady eye on public places in a bid to fight crime and control traffic. This Big Brotherly obsession has caught on elsewhere as concerns about security have mounted since the terrorist attacks of September 2001. But as the number of remote video cameras has risen, so have the problems of dealing with their output. There is not much point in aiming a CCTV camera at a car park or road if nobody is watching its monitor.

Among the ideas that seemed to collapse along with the twin towers two years ago was a view of globalization as a kind of manifest destiny. Unlike the 19th-century version of manifest destiny, this vision didn't involve expanding America's borders. Rather, America's values — notably economic and political liberty — would spread beyond those borders, covering the planet. And this time around America's mission didn't have the widely assumed blessing of God. But it had the next best thing: the force of history. Globalization was seen by some as a nearly inevitable climax of the human story — destiny of a secular sort.