Lessons Learned: Only Our Own?

It's probably a universal human trait: We're very adept at changing our ways based on what's in the rear-view mirror. But only our own, not someone else's.

That's why it's so vital to share information and learn from others' experiences. For example:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Kanawha County officials have changed an emergency response plan more than three months after a deadly explosion at the Bayer CropScience plant in Institute.

Depending upon the severity of an event, Emergency Services Director Dale Petry says the county will issue an automatic shelter-in place during a chemical emergency if officials can't get clear information about the incident within 10 minutes.

Emergency services officials have criticized Bayer CropScience for failing to provide timely information following the Aug. 28 incident in which two people died. The incident remains under federal, state and local investigation.

Has Kanawha County's experience caused any other local government officials, anywhere else in the United States, to re-consider their own emergency response plan?

There are 15,000 hazardous chemical facilities in the United States. 7000 of them could affect more than 1000 people in the local area in the event of an accident or intentional release. 123 of them could affect more than 1 million people (source). When is the last time the communities near those chemical facilities examined their emergency response plans?

LA Re-thinks Emergency Management

The Mayor's office in Los Angeles has released a new emergency management initiative.

This initiative ... involves several components to enhance the City’s planning and preparedness efforts, train city employees in disaster response, better prepare the community in disaster preparedness, and modernize the City’s antiquated emergency management structure.

Here's one thing I find interesting. To describe the current state of preparedness, the city uses measures such as staffing levels, training exercises, programs and strategies. For example:

[T]he City Council recently approved the Mayor’s request to add three new positions to EMD to work on planning and preparedness activities, emergency operations, and public information. In addition, through the leadership of General Manager Jim Featherstone, a former Captain in the LAFD’s Planning and Tactical Training Division, EMD is modernizing its operations, procedures, and principles to reflect a contemporary emergency management approach to the numerous dangers the City faces.

But that's not the best measure of preparedness. Real preparedness has to be measured in terms of capabilities. It's not just how many training exercises you have, the size of your staff, or the strategies and tactics you employ. Those are necessary, yes. But they're not sufficient. If you're going to assess your state of preparedness, you need to be able to declare with some confidence what your capabilities are.

How Do They Do It? ... Volume! Volume! Volume!

State, local, and tribal governments will soon be able to leverage the federal government's buying power to purchase homeland-security related items:

The U.S. General Services Administration received new authority to help state and local governments in purchasing homeland security equipment and services under the Local Preparedness Acquisitions Act (HB 3179) signed by President Bush last week. The new law authorizes the GSA Administrator to allow state, local, and tribal governments to buy homeland security goods and services through the cooperative purchasing program. Officials will be able to use GSA's Schedule 84 to buy items such as alarm systems, facility management systems, firefighting and rescue equipment, law enforcement and security equipment, and marine craft.

Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Jim Williams said, "GSA's ability to leverage the federal government's enormous buying power enables us to provide goods and services at best value and pass the savings on to our client agencies. Now we can pass these discounts on to state and local governments ...

Using your organization's buying power to get discounts is, of course, a no-brainer.

At the same time, state, local and tribal governments have to maintain strategic discipline and avoid slipping into the tempting but faulty line of thinking that homeland security means the opportunity to buy more stuff (!)

Material purchases should always support the state and local homeland security strategy. If they don't, the money is probably better spent elsewhere, even if the new stuff looks great and provides local politicians with some really nice publicity shots.

Priorities?

Forgive me, it's Friday and I couldn't resist posting this:

Delivery boys across America, beware: Zach Phillips was arrested by Homeland Security Thursday afternoon in Kansas City—for delivering a pizza. Phillips parked his car in front of the KCMO Federal Courthouse to deliver lunch to a few judges and on his way out, he was approached by several Homeland Security officers. When questioned, Phillips forked over his I.D. to the inquisitive officers. According to Phillips, the officers then shoved him up against their S.U.V., cuffed him, and escorted him down the block to the county jail. His crime? An outstanding warrant for a minor, non-moving traffic violation. "They were real rough with me, throwing me up against their car," Phillips told CMJ.

"[Kansas City police officers] couldn't believe [Homeland Security] arrested me," Phillips said. "[KCPD] actually apologized to me. They were like 'We like you! Don't spit in our pizza!'" Phillips had a hard time believing it himself. "I was like, shouldn't you be looking for Osama Bin Laden?" said Phillips.

Hmm ... sounds like there are a couple of disconnects here: One between DHS and KCPD, and the other between DHS and its priorities.

Preventing Vandalism = Homeland Security?

Santa Rosa, California, will spend some of its Homeland Security money on surveillance cameras, in part to prevent vandalism:

Sonoma County transit agencies will buy surveillance cameras with the first installment of voter-approved state Homeland Security funds announced Wednesday.

The county and the city of Santa Rosa will get a combined $57,000 of the $21 million that went to 14 Bay Area bus, train and ferry operators.

Brian Albee, head of Sonoma County Transit, said the agency's $31,800 portion will be used to mount cameras at its West Robles Avenue bus yard. The project is expected to cost about $50,000, he said.

Mona Babauta, Santa Rosa's deputy director of transit, said the city will spend its $25,100 on cameras at some bus stops plagued with vandalism.

Unless they're integrated into a real-time information-reporting system, surveillance cameras are not tools for prevention. They'll help you identify perpetrators after the damage has been done.

The larger question is, is this really a homeland security issue? Just what are we protecting ourselves from? Vandalism may be a problem, but unless it's sabotage, it's not a security threat.

Cohabitate :: Collaborate

One way to get to know people is simply by being around them.

In Edison, New Jersey, they're putting that principle into practice by building a new "public safety center" which will house police, fire, EMS, and training facilities:

The facility, which Mayor Jun Choi expects to be open by early next year, will house police, fire and EMS personnel all under one roof. It is intended to be a state-of-the-art facility and will have a full training center for all the township's public safety personnel ... Choi said that coordination between different branches of public safety is essential in improving emergency response in town.

The importance of coordination between police, fire and EMS was a theme repeated multiple times ... something that people said would definitely be helped through the placement of personnel from all three services in the same building.

Col. Rick Fuentes, New Jersey State Police superintendent ... noted that fire and police could help each other, for example, in sharing information about the nature of certain buildings, noting that fighting fires at, say, a methamphetamine lab might be particularly dangerous and require contact with police.

Conversely, he noted that some firefighters report gang members stopping fire trucks from getting near burning buildings until incriminating evidence is cleared.

It's a step.

Cheap Preparedness Stuff

Good idea: In conjunction with Florida's Hurricane Preparedness Week, retailers have lowered the prices on items that can help citizens become better prepared:

Governor Charlie Crist today joined state and local emergency managers and the Florida Retail Federation to promote Florida Hurricane Preparedness Week, May 25-31, 2008. He announced that some Florida retailers will be hosting special sales on hurricane supplies, beginning Friday, May 30, and continuing through June 8.

Some of the items included on the emergency supply list include:

· Flashlights and portable, self-powered light sources
· Portable radios, two-way radios and NOAA weather-band radios
· Flexible waterproof sheeting (tarps)
· Gas or diesel fuel containers
· Batteries
· Medications
· Ice chests or other food storage coolers
· Portable generators
· Carbon monoxide detectors
· Storm shutter devices
· Pet carrier and supplies

That's nice public-private sector collaboration.

Lead, Follow, or ... Something

Evidence that 9/11 is receding into memory: an article in today's New York Times, describing state and local resistance to DHS' priorities for homeland security funding:

More openly than at any time since the Sept. 11 attacks, state and local authorities have begun to complain that the federal financing for domestic security is being too closely tied to combating potential terrorist threats, at a time when they say they have more urgent priorities.

Local officials do not dismiss the terrorist threat, but many are trying to retool counterterrorism programs so that they focus more directly on combating gun violence, narcotics trafficking and gangs — while arguing that these programs, too, should qualify for federal financing, on the theory that terrorists may engage in criminal activity as a precursor to an attack.

I've long argued that precursor crimes are a good way to target potential terrorist cells. But it depends how it's done. If it's a strategic effort that involves information-sharing in an active search for links to potential terrorism, that's good. But if it's simply an attempt to conflate ordinary crime-fighting with "potential terrorism" (because, well, you never know who might be a terrorist...), then that's not strategic. It would just be a matter of luck. Your effort to stop crime might uncover a terrorist because any type of police work could.

The Seattle chief of police, R. Gil Kerlikowske, said, “If the law enforcement focus at the local level is only on counterterrorism, you will be unable as a local entity to sustain it unless you are an all-crimes operation, and you may be missing some very significant issues that could be related to terrorism.”

Chief Kerlikowske is president of a group of police chiefs from major cities who said in a report last week that local governments were being forced to spend increasingly scarce resources because, they say, Homeland Security did not pay for all the costs. “Most local governments move law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence programs down on the priority list because their municipality has not yet been directly affected by an attack,” the report said.

What we're seeing here is two ends of a spectrum, neither of which is appropriate. On the one hand, it's ridiculous to imagine that local law enforcement should exclusively focus on combating terrorism.

And on the other hand, no jurisdiction should ignore the potential for terrorism or erroneously conflate all crime-fighting with counterterrorism. Like any low-probability, high-impact event (an earthquake, a tornado, etc), a potential terrorist attack should be prepared for and prevented and/or mitigated to the degree possible.

Information Sharing Through "Enlightened Bribery"

Alabama has created a geo-spatial tool, Virtual Alabama, that accumulates public data about homes, schools, businesses, and other locations within the state. Police, fire departments, health care providers and other users can use the tool for preparedness and response. (Also see this post from last July.)

Government Computer News offered an inside look at how the state's Department of Homeland Security went about getting the information to populate the database:

[P]rojects such as Virtual Alabama are always hungry for data, especially in their early stages. And one of the best ways to get data from other local agencies is a form of enlightened bribery, Walker said.

“We determined very quickly that the best imagery available in Alabama was in either state agencies or in county revenue departments because they fly and take a picture of your house to reassess it,” Walker said. “So we go to the revenue folks, and I say, ‘I’m the Homeland Security director, and I’d like your imagery.’ And they say, ‘I’m not giving you my imagery. I paid a million dollars for this imagery.’ They don’t want to give it to anybody because they assume that you have some sort of financial gain after they’ve spent this money. So how do we solve this problem?”

Walker’s strategy was to do an end around by going to county sheriffs. “The typical Alabama sheriff carries a pretty big stick in his county,” Walker said. “He can get just about anything he wants. So we bring the sheriffs together and say, ‘OK, sheriffs, if we had your county’s imagery, these are the kinds of things we [could] give you for free,’ ” he continued.

Walker offered to give the sheriffs free access to the data on one condition: “You’ve got to get me your county data.” So, Walker said, “the sheriff goes to the revenue commissioner and says, ‘I’ll tell you what: You’re going to get a ticket every day if you don’t give the Homeland Security director the imagery from our county.’ ”

Sounds like good old-fashioned leveraged negotiations to me.

Virtual Alabama is a real-world demonstration of the concept that, for information-sharing to be successful, two conditions must exist:

1. Parties must be willing to share the information.
2. The information must be presented in a usable format.

Virtual Alabama succeeds on both counts. But too often, even if the first hurdle is passed, the second one is not. We're hearing that out of fusion centers - that there's a lot of data being ostensibly shared, but it's not in a usable form, so it's difficult to use effectively.

Form follows function.

Local Networks as Counterterrorism Tools

I don't have much to add to this story from In Homeland Security, except to say I think it's spot-on:

Israel places a high value on Human Intelligence and weaves HUMINT into all aspects of their law enforcement activities. A prevalent saying in their intelligence community guides their efforts: “the small bring in the big”. Israeli law enforcement and intelligence collection agents build long term, lasting relationships on the ground with all types of business people.

For instance waitresses, bartenders, taxi drivers and barbers can be a wealth of information. Emergency room employees, gas station workers, and grocery or drug store employees are all good collection sources. Around a specific target, street vendors are worthy of engagement since they frequent the same area and have a perfect viewpoint for noticing out-of-the-ordinary activity. If protecting a church is the objective, the clergy and worshippers are valuable informants.

The key is to cultivate the relationship; visit the sources regularly, build their trust, instruct them on what to look for, and make sure they have a way of contacting you 24/7 if they notice something suspicious. Your sources are force multipliers and critical to gleaning the information needed to identify, monitor and then disrupt terrorist activities. ...

If illegal weapons such as grenades are needed, the builder will need to move out of the circle of those aware of the plot, potentially exposing him and the planners. Well cultivated sources will notice this unusual activity and alert you.

Any kind of malicious actor is vulnerable to exposure at certain stages, because they have certain material needs that must be filled. Building a local network, cultivating relationships and - importantly - instructing your partners on what to look out for - is indeed a "force multiplier" in detecting these moments of exposure.

Interfaith Disaster Preparedness Groups

Does your community have one? It's a good idea. Local networks with common interests can accomplish a lot. For instance, here's what they're doing in San Francisco:

Leaders from more than a hundred San Francisco-based churches, synagogues and other places of worship are expected to gather today at St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco to learn how to make their spiritual sanctuaries into places of physical refuge. Alameda and Santa Clara counties have made similar efforts.

In sessions organized by the San Francisco Interfaith Council, the church leaders will be taught how to create disaster plans for themselves, help congregants prepare their own households and be safety hubs for their neighborhoods in the midst of disaster.

"This is not to say we expect congregations ... to conduct a full-scale disaster response," said Alessa Adamo, program director for SFCARD, a nonprofit that trains faith groups and nonprofits on disaster preparedness. "What we're hoping for is that they're able to take care of their existing client base, help their immediate neighbors and provide a way for volunteers to help."

One of the main goals of today's gathering is to create neighborhood-based clusters of sanctuaries so different congregations can learn how to work as teams.

One thing not to repeat: The tendency to wait until after a disaster:

The San Francisco Interfaith Council was created after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake after leaders realized they needed to figure out collaborative ways to bring calm after a crisis. The Marin Interfaith Council was created in response to the devastating floods in 1982.

Business groups and non-profits can also work together, along with public officials. The more planning and preparation that's done ahead of time, the better.

Winning the Battle of Ideas

I found a couple of thought-provoking comments in this opinion piece by Erik Iverson in the Harvard International Review. Although the main focus of the article is on the national counterterrorism strategy, I thought a few points were fit for consideration by state and local "first preventers." First, this is an excellent encapsulation of counterterrorism strategy:

The objective of counterterrorism efforts is to reduce the incidence and effect of terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, an element of behavior; it is not an ideology. Consequently, the objective of counterterrorism policy should not be to change what extremists believe. The objective should be to change how terrorists act on those beliefs.

In other words, focus on behavior. Focus on what they do and how they do it - not on their underlying value structure. An extremist is not likely to be deterred by a crisis of belief, but they can be deterred by a crisis of confidence in their chances for success. To that end, one of Iverson's recommendations includes:

The United States should aggressively exploit the weaknesses of Al Qaeda’s new decentralized structure. It must degrade the trust in the organization’s systems, among its activists, and between its leaders. Al Qaeda is now critically dependent on a high degree of trust for cohesion among its many elements.

Paralysis of Al Qaeda’s critical organizational systems and the degradation of its most important relationships will not eliminate the Salafi jihadist terrorist threat. It will, however, reduce the ability of the organization to execute operationally complex, high-impact, spectacular attacks.

This is the sort of thing that's possible on the local level. During the recruiting, fund-raising, and operational phases, anyone interested in launching an attack - especially a complex, high-yield attack - will have to take actions that risk exposure. All of these actions present an opportunity to sow doubt and discord.

It's absolutely critical to make distinctions, however. If the reach is too broad and innocent people are swept up, then this just feeds into al Qaeda's paranoid propaganda (i.e., "The West is against us!"). But if the targeting is accurate, then there is a potential to disrupt the trusted networks that are so critical to success.

Senate Report on Homegrown Terrorism

I don't really have much to say about the new Senate report on homegrown terrorism and Internet recruiting, because it covers ground that I've covered before.

But after 10 pages - more than half the report - describing al Qaeda's sophisticated media, communications and marketing campaigns, this stuck out like a sore thumb:

[T]he U.S. government has not developed nor implemented a coordinated outreach and communications strategy to address the homegrown terrorist threat, especially as that threat is amplified by the use of the Internet. According to testimony received by the Committee, no federal agency has been tasked with developing or implementing a domestic communications strategy. While there are a series of outreach efforts being pursued by federal agencies, those efforts are limited, isolated, and not part of a strategic, government-wide policy to significantly minimize the influence of violent Islamist ideology in the United States. ...

And finally, the efforts by DHS' Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) and the FBI’s Community Relations Unit are not tied into programs administered by local police departments, some of which are quite comprehensive.

Lesson to local law enforcement and homeland security professionals: If it is to be, it is up to you. (Be countersubversive.)

It's worth remembering that, while someone can be radicalized via the Internet, two things remain true:

1. Radicalization involves a separation from society, so if recruits can be pulled back into the real world of family and society, the process can be reversed.

2. Before recruits can become a legitimate threat, they need tactical skills. To some extent these are available via the Internet (e.g., bomb recipes). But for larger, high-yield attacks, they need to coordinate with others, raise money, and perhaps acquire specialized training. Making these connections and participating in this type of training can be a significant vulnerability for them, as it requires them to leave the relative safety of the virtual world.

Review - Disaster Response and Homeland Security: What Works, What Doesn't

It's time for another book review. This one is James Miskel's Disaster Response and Homeland Security: What Works, What Doesn't (2006). In general, I found that the book accurately identified some of the problems with disaster response, but I'm somewhat skeptical about some of the proposed solutions. Let's dig in:

Problems With The Current System

In discussing the problems with the disaster response system in the U.S., Miskel argues that it often works well for smaller, more common disasters, but not for major catastrophic events:

There has, indeed, been a pattern of "failure" in meeting the needs of the victims of certain types of catastrophic disasters. ... Where preparedness is lacking is in the realm of out-of-the-ordinary disaster.

But the disaster response system has not been improved because it generally works well and fails only in less frequent catastrophic disasters, especially hurricanes:

In fact, few studies look at disaster relief as a system that is built upon a network of interdependence among too-numerous organizations. That network usually functions reasonably well, but it has repeatedly stumbled over its own feet in certain types of major disasters. ...

[A] review of the history of the disaster relief program indicates that the system has never responded well to major hurricanes.

Given that after-action reports on many catastrophic disasters have identified the same problems, again and again, Miskel argues that big changes are needed:

It seems clear that this fine-tuning has not made enough of a difference and there is no reason to believe that the answer is more fine-tuning.

As I said earlier, Miskel identifies a number of problems inherent in the system. First, there are many cooks in many kitchens, which seriously complicates the response to major disasters:

Private sector organizations, state and local government agencies, and federal agencies each have their own disaster relief programs and the challenge imbedded (sic) in the system is how to orchestrate these multiple programs effectively. ...

Just as uncertainly and information overload are inescapable features of war, they seem as well to have been inevitable in the responses to major relief operations. What has made them inevitable is, of course, the scale and geographical dispersion of the disaster itself and the complexity of the response system itself - with its too-numerous actors at the federal, state, and private sector levels...

This problem plagues the response at all levels, not just the federal level:

When Hurricane Hugo struck the state [of South Carolina], the governor's office chose to rely upon the state police radio network to collect information about storm damage, rather than the network that had been set up by the emergency management agency. ... Whatever the motive, the result was that there were two emergency operations centers in the state: one in the governor's office and the other at the emergency management agency, and there were reports that for ten days the emergency management agency did not even know that the second emergency operations center existed.

Another problem, Miskel argues, is that the current reimbursement system provides an incentive for state and local governments not to prioritize preparedness. In the wake of a disaster, the president decides whether to issue a formal disaster declaration, making the state or local entity eligible for federal reimbursement of costs. Then, the federal government makes a political decision regarding the rate at which reimbursement will be provided - usually, 75%, 90% or 100% - though in major disasters the rate tends to creep up, as federal elected officials want to be seen as generous in a time of crisis. Miskel argues that this has a negative effect on the preparedness efforts of state and local governments:

Ninety or 100 percent reimbursements amplify the incentives for states, local governments, and even individuals and private sector organizations to spend less on preparedness on the presumption that whatever the costs are of inadequately preparing for disasters, most if not all of them will ultimately be assumed by the federal government.

The only time there is a focus on preparedness is in the aftermath of a major disaster such as Katrina. But the focus and energy soon fade:

Coordination of before-the-disaster preparedness efforts, on the other hand, is rarely either proactive or consistently effective. Except in rare circumstances (such as the immediate aftermath of disaster when the images of the destruction and suffering are still vivid and the political pressures for action are still strong) preparedness measures have historically been regarded as a low priority relative to other government functions. As a result, the coordination of preparedness at the federal and state level has been only intermittently energetic.

One noteworthy exception: Miskel points out that some private-sector entities, such as insurers and utility companies, have a strong economic incentive to respond quickly and effectively to disasters. And as a result, these entities have generally done a better job of focusing on preparedness.

For its part, the federal government tried to deal with the problem of insufficient preparedness in 1979, when it created FEMA. But FEMA was never vested with sufficient authority to overcome this structural obstacle:

[When FEMA was created in 1979] the prescription was for centralized federal orchestration of preparedness planning at all levels of government by a new agency, FEMA. The executive order did not, however, give FEMA enough clout to overcome the low priority that is ordinarily assigned to preparedness.

As a result, when there a major disaster does strike, the White House usually finds it necessary to play a direct role:

[O]ne of the lessons that can be drawn from tropical storm Agnes [in 1972] is that a heavy White House hand is sometimes necessary to achieve responsiveness and unity of effort within the family of federal agencies. ...

[Hurricane Andrew] was another example of the need for the White House to take special steps to ensure unity of effort by the federal agencies. The other examples that have been noted so far are Vice President Agnew's fact-finding tour after tropical storm Agnes; Jack Watson's interagency strategizing in the Carter White House, and the appointment of Harold Denton as the president's "personal representative" during the Three Mile Island episode; President Clinton's flood relief summits during the Midwest floods; and the replacement of the FEMA Director by Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen in the response to Hurricane Katrina.

So, federal operational leadership is not the reason why the system tends to succeed in response to disasters that are relatively limited in scope. Miskel credits others:

When it succeeds, the disaster relief system does so not because of inspired operational leadership at the federal level, but because it is a system whose pieces have been built beforehand, over time in response to federal preparedness policies, state and local government initiative, and private sector response to market incentives and regulation, as well as the dedication of private voluntary organizations, and the acumen of individuals and families.

Miskel expects nothing to change:

Given the fact that preparedness has always ebbed in the months and years after events such as a major earthquake, hurricane, or terrorist event, there is no reason to expect anything different in the future as long as the existing structure of the disaster relief system remains in place.

So, in review, the basic problems are a too-complicated system, a low priority on preparedness, and an overreliance on federal assistance, especially operational assistance.

Solutions

In discussing potential solutions to these problems, Miskel compares the disaster relief systems in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. These other countries are like the U.S. in that they have developed economic infrastructure, and each also has a federalist system of government in which states and provinces have important - and in many cases, primary - responsibilities.

In making these comparisons, Miskel spends much effort on describing the process by which reimbursements are doled out to Canadian and Australian provinces, in comparision to U.S. states. It is clear that the reimbursement system in both Australia and Canada is both de-politicized and less generous than the U.S. system. Miskel argues that there's an important effect to this:

Lower reimbursement rates are an important consideration. Not only do they restrain federal spending, they also give a stronger incentive for states to take emergency preparedness seriously because that helps reduce costs and to manage their disaster relief expenditures carefully.

Miskel suggests the Canadian model as exemplary. Under Canada's system, provinces are responsible for all disaster response and recovery costs up to $1 per capita, after which the federal government kicks in 50% of all costs up to $3 per capita, 75% of costs from $3 to $5 per capita, and 90% of costs over $5 per capita. Miskel writes:

If the right [reimbursement] trigger were established, as it appears to have been in Canada, states would always have the financial incentive to manage relief operations effectively because their share of the costs would never get as low as it does in the United States.

Recalling the earlier point that federal operational leadership is not often the determining factor in the success of a respons, Miskel's more significant proposal is for the federal government to largely abandon the disaster response business and focus on preparedness. He argues that the federal government's direct involvement in response activities is actually a detriment to an effective response:

One of the surest ways to weaken the self-organizing features of response in the private sector and at the state and local government level would be for the federal government to assume a more direct role in managing disaster responses. The very last thing that the federal government should do is crowd initiative at nonfederal levels out of the system in the name of improving the federal response to catastrophic disasters. ...

The more effective and proactive the federal government becomes at providing disaster relief and the more generous it is in reimbursing state/local governments, the more it may be encouraging the states to trim their investments in preparedness.

As the federal government preempts the states in more and more disaster responses, the result will be the displacement of the very things that make the system work most of the time - state, local, and private sector preparedness and initiative.

Miskel argues that unless the federal government abandons operational assistance for "routine" disasters, not only will state and local governments continue to provide a less effective response, but the federal response to major catastrophes will always be less effective than desirable, because FEMA will always train and prepare for routine events rather than catastrophic ones:

[A]s long as the responsibility for routine and catastrophic disasters remains in FEMA or a successor agency, the habits and protocols that the agency learns and repeatedly relearns during the course of responding to the forty to sixty disasters that are declared in a typical year will necessarily dominate its culture and influence how it responds to atypical disasters.

The answer, Miskel argues, is for the federal government to focus almost exclusively on preparation for major disasters:

[I]f the federal government were to get out of the business of responding to routine disasters, it would be better able to concentrate on addressing the shortcomings in preparedness that have been identified after each of the catastrophic disasters since 1972.

If the Canadian or Australian model were adopted for routine disasters, presidential disaster declarations would become considerably less frequent as they would be required only when a state requested physical, operational assistance from the federal government. ... As state governments would then become unambiguously responsible for disaster response, this should result in greater political attention to preparedness at the level of state and local governments.

So state and local governments would be clearly in charge for routine disasters - but what about major disasters? What sort of steps would the federal government take, once it took charge of preparedness for major disasters? Miskel would give the military much of the job of designing the response system:

[C]onsideration should be given to assigning the military with the mission of developing and managing both a command and control structure for disaster operations and a program for conducting drills and exercises that would work out over time the kinks in command and control procedures, identify gaps in operational plans, and train federal agency personnel.

And since White House pressure is always needed in major disasters anyway, Miskel would formalize this:

In any event, greater White House involvement will be essential if the shortcomings of the past are to be avoided in the future. ... The responsibility for overseeing federal and system wide preparedness should be taken from FEMA and added to the vice president's portfolio or assigned to an Emergency Management Council based in the White House.

I like Miskel's ideas regarding the de-politicization and limitation of the reimbursement process - it never makes sense to incentivize inadequate preparation.

I also agree with his argument that the disaster response system generally deals quite effectively with smaller, more localized disasters.

But I'm less persuaded by his proposed fixes for the federal system. Essentially the argument seems to be that if the military and the White House take over, they will have sufficient capability and power to bring the federal operational response under control, even during a chaotic response to a catastrophe. But how will the federal government interact with state and local governments? How would federal agencies perform during catastrophic operations that are, by definition, infrequent events? How much more seriously will the federal government take its preparedness efforts? Won't the tendency to short-shrift preparation for unlikely catastrophic events persist, even if the charge is led from the White House? Would the White House be able to improve the response under the proposed system, moreso than in the current system, when it has to get involved anyway?
Essentially it seems like the details of the federal response would be kicked over the wall, into the Pentagon and the White House. And it's not clear to me that those are the silver bullets to fixing the federal response system.

Al Qaeda in the U.S.

Last week FBI Director Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee there have been al Qaeda cells in the U.S.:

FBI Director Robert Mueller said last week that the FBI has uncovered small groups of Al Qaida terrorists in the United States, although he declined to provide details.

“As to your first question as to whether we have found affiliates or, as you would call them, cells of Al Qaida in the United States, yes, we have."

Mueller gave some credit to the FBI's program to develop relationships within America's Muslim community.

“And every opportunity I have, I reaffirm the fact that 99.9 percent of Muslim-Americans or Sikh-Americans, Arab-Americans are every bit as patriotic as anybody else in this room, and that many of our cases are a result of the cooperation from the Muslim community in the United States,” Mueller said.

Within some circles, engaging the U.S. Muslim community is controversial. But as a tactic to deter the emergence of radical jihadism in the U.S., I think it only makes sense. As Mueller argues, the vast majority of American Muslims are peaceful, and it only make sense to engage them as allies to be on guard against the emergence of violent groups. This approach is codified in the National Strategy for Homeland Security:

The arrest and prosecution inside the United States of a small number of violent Islamic extremists points to the possibility that others in the Homeland may become sufficiently radicalized to view the use of violence within the United States as legitimate. ... We will continue efforts to defeat this threat by working with Muslim American communities that stand at the forefront of this fight.

I'm also reminded of this 2006 report by the Vera Institute of Justice, which found that, although the FBI had been more proactive in its outreach efforts within Arab American communities, those communities generally perceived local law enforcement as more trustworthy:

Toward local police agencies, Arab Americans reported a fair amount of goodwill, even in jurisdictions where the two had little interaction. Where departments invested resources to cultivate this goodwill, the evidence points to dividends in the form of reduced tension. Community perceptions of federal law enforcement were less positive. Even though most of the FBI field offices in the study had reached out to Arab American communities, many Arab Americans remained fearful and suspicious of federal efforts.

Local law enforcement has a role to play in detecting potential threats of all types - not only those that emerge from a radical jihadist mindset, but from other ideologies as well (e.g., Timothy McVeigh-type "patriot" groups, narco-terrorists, etc.) My post on the Vera report is here.

Update 2008-05-07: Yesterday, DHS Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis Charlie Allen also riffed on al Qaeda's improved recruiting capabilities in Western societies:

Al-Qaeda's leadership has delivered over the past 12 months, an unprecedented number of audio and video messages and has increased its translation capability, diversity of subject matters, and media savvy to reach out to wider audiences globally. Its objective is to gain wide Muslim support, empathy, financing, and future recruits.

At the top of this sophisticated marketing machine, al Qaida leaders have carefully crafted and controlled their words. Al Sahab produces the audio or videotapes; the al-Fajr online media network plays the messages on numerous electronic platforms to include messages that download onto iPods and similar electronic devices. The Global Islamic Media Front then translates, re-packages, and re-disseminates these messages onto numerous - sometimes redundant - websites with the capacity to regenerate any website if a government or private entity attempts to bring it down.

I find it particularly alarming that al Qaida is improving its ability to translate its messages to target Europeans and North Americans. A year ago, al Qaida leaders solicited for "English translators" and subsequently have ratcheted up the speed and accuracy of translated statements openly marketed to U.S. and other English-speaking audiences. Last month, Osama bin Ladin's Chief Deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri released English translations of a two-part online interview to address questions from both extremists and mainstream Muslims around the world. To help al Qaida target US citizens, several radical websites in the United States have re-packaged al Qaida statements with American vernacular and commentary intending to sway U.S. Muslims.

Heavily Armed Anti-Terrorism Police in NYC Subways

Operation Torch:

Part of New York City’s new effort to better defend against terrorism will include the introduction of machine-gun toting NYPD “Torch Teams” in the city’s subways.

In addition to the automatic weapons, the teams will also be patrolling subways with bomb-sniffing dogs. They will be outfitted with body armor as well. Beginning Thursday they will board trains and patrol platforms in Penn Station, Rockefeller Center, and Times Square.

Mostly a deterrent move. It requires the right balance. The deterrent effect won't be maximized unless the Torch groups have enough of a public presence to cause a potential adversary to seriously consider the possibility of running into them during the planning or operations of an attack. If an intervention doesn't have enough of a presence to change the adversary's risk calculus, then it's just theater.

On the other hand, if you go too far, you alter public perception in negative ways - making the city seem like an armed compound, which must be unsafe because all these guys are walking around with automatic weapons, right?

Update 2008-04-25: Newsday has the staffing figures:

Five or six teams -- six police officers and a dog -- each day will patrol heavily used subway stations and lines as part of Operation TORCH...

LAPD Adopts New "Suspicious Activity" Codes

It's a step in the right direction, but I continue to be amazed at how long it takes to implement this kind of thing.

The Los Angeles Police Department has launched a new reporting system aimed to help connect dots that could uncover local terror plots...

During the course of police officer's day, the officer could run across suspicious packages, people taking pictures of bridges or a car that looks out of place parked in front of a water tower.

Now LAPD officers - from traffic cops to detectives - are able to report suspicious activity on their investigative reports, which will later be catalogued by intelligence officers.

What's been lacking for so many years, of course, is the intelligence function. In the past, nobody would have been able to do anything with the information, because there were no intelligence analysts.

If we had truly cross-functional and cross-jurisdictional information sharing, then this wouldn't have been an obstacle. But we didn't/haven't, so there wouldn't have been much of a point in collecting data that couldn't be analyzed. Now, of course, LA has a fusion center with a team of analysts. (I presume that's who's looking at the local data.) So they're collecting it:

Since the September 11 attacks, more local police agencies have been training officers to look for certain indicators of terrorist activity. Some fire departments have also provided this type of training.

But the LAPD's program is the first of its kind to incorporate these reports into a standard system that is used everyday, said John Cohen, senior adviser to the program manager for the Information Sharing Environment.

The LAPD gave each suspicious activity a specific code. There are about 65 codes for activities ranging from surveillance to trespassing at sensitive places, said Joan McNamara, the LAPD commander who developed the system.

It's important, of course, to be forthright about your collection and analysis processes, so that you don't risk the perception of violating civil liberties. That becomes especially important when you start sharing information, which LA is doing in a novel way:

Police departments in Boston, Chicago and Miami-Dade, Fla., are meeting with LAPD officials to learn more about the system, said Michael Ronczkowski, a major in the Miami-Dade Police Department's homeland security bureau.

Ronczkowski said if his officers [in Miami] have seen a certain suspicious activity consistently for a few months, the standard reporting system allows him to call LAPD and tell them about "suspicious activity" code 67, for example. When he does this, LAPD will know exactly what he is referring to and can tell him if their officers have seen the same thing.

I like the direct local-to-local sharing, but DHS really ought to be in on it as well. Cross-jurisdictional sharing should move up the chain as well as down. Still, I thought the LAPD chief said it best:

"Homeland security is really hometown security," Los Angeles police chief William Bratton said during an interview Friday.

I wonder if I can get credit for that ... ?

Update 2008-04-18: Establishing a system for Suspicious Activity Reporting is part of the National Strategy for Information Sharing, which charges fusion centers to:

Ensure that all locally generated terrorism-related information, including suspicious activity and incident reports, is communicated to the Federal Government and other States, localities, and regions, through the appropriate mechanism and systems. Locally generated information that does not appear to be threat or incident related will be gathered, processed, analyzed, and interpreted by the same State and major urban area fusion centers in coordination with locally-based Federal officials. The same information will be disseminated to the national level via appropriate Federal agencies.

Anti-Crime? Counter-Terrorism? Both?

One of the risks of talking about fighting terrorism - especially in the public and political spheres - is the temptation to link everything to terrorism. Terrorism is recognized almost universally as an evil, so you can always pick up political and PR points by tying whatever you're doing to "counter-terrorism."

For instance, over the weekend, the Shelby County (TN) Sheriff's Office coordinated a regional "counter-terrorism" initiative called Operation Sudden Impact. From the advance press release:

In an unprecedented event among law enforcement agencies in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas, Deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office will coordinate a regional crime suppression initiative this weekend that will involve Officers from more than 50 federal, state and local agencies.

"This is the first time a regional effort of this magnitude has ever been conducted. We are proud to be the coordinating agency for ‘Operation Sudden Impact.’ We’ll use this weekend’s initiative as a starting point to begin a routine of sharing crime information among the various agencies," said Shelby County Sheriff Mark H. Luttrell, Jr.

During “Operation Sudden Impact,” the police agencies from six counties in the tri-state area will simultaneously round up fugitives, conduct traffic safety checkpoints and be involved in other crime abatement programs ...

I like the regional, cooperative approach. I like the teamwork. I like the information-sharing. But ... rounding up fugitives? Traffic checkpoints? Is it accurate to call this a counter-terrorism initiative? Media outlets around the region certainly did. But the links seem somewhat tenuous:

The names of those who are arrested, issued traffic citations or noted in other criminal activity will then be reviewed by Intelligence Officers at the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office Homeland Security Operations Center. The crime information will then be forwarded to the State of Tennessee Homeland Security Center in Nashville to see if they might have possible ties to terrorist activity.

The main effort does seem to be an anti-crime effort; and since terrorists are known to commit "precursor crimes" I suppose it's possible to call anything counter-terrorism. But I'm not sure that helps.

For example, does law enforcement expect the public to accept this as counter-terrorism?

Sheriff's Department Patrolman Jason Case Kopacko pulled over a driver for improperly displaying a temporary tag. A closer look revealed the driver had no insurance and no license.

Most criminals caught by the sweep did not have terrorist ties, but law enforcers said you can't be too careful.

Or how about this?

Many agencies put an emphasis on traffic stops. A little after 8 p.m. Saturday in Hickory Hill, Sgt. Chris Harris of the Shelby County Sheriff's Office street crimes unit stopped a white SUV that was booming with music. The driver was driving on a suspended license -- he received a citation -- and there was marijuana residue in the car, but "not enough to weigh out," Harris said.

I suppose it's possible that these drivers could have been linked to terrorism. The Shelby County Sheriff certainly tried to make that case:

Still, every traffic stop holds the potential of netting much more than expected.

"Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma, was stopped because of a busted tail light," said Shelby County Sheriff Mark Luttrell.

Now, when you arrest someone or hand out a citation, it only makes sense to check their name against the state's terrorism database. This ought to be SOP. But this is serious needle-in-the-haystack time. It strains credibility to suggest that traffic checkpoints, targeting random drivers, are a serious counter-terrorism effort. (Worth reading again: This post from HLS Watch.)

However, having said all that, I do like one element of the program as a counter-terrorism initiative:

During the past few months, Deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office Homeland Security Bureau have made on-site inspections at various businesses throughout Shelby County to identify ways terrorists might damage the businesses.

About 500 Officers from the various law enforcement agencies also received specialized training about tactics used by terrorists.

Community education sessions were also conducted recently for the public in Shelby, Tipton and Fayette Counties in Tennessee and in Desoto County, Mississippi. The two-hour sessions helped the students learn to spot possible terrorist activity in their neighborhoods.

Unlike the traffic checkpoints, etc., which seem to have a slim link to counter-terrorism, these certainly can. Forewarned is forearmed. But even then, you have to be sure you're providing useful information, instead of adopting a general "see something, say something" model. If citizens don't have a good idea of what to look for, some of them may not trust their own judgment and won't supply any information. Conversely, others will supply useless leads. (Worth reading again: This post by Bruce Schneier.)

It seems like the agencies did a little of both - supplied some useful information and also asked residents to go fishing for "anything suspicious":

Lt. Perry McEwen with the Shelby County Sheriff's Office said, "Operation Sudden Impact" also is about involving the private sector and citizens in terrorism prevention. It's about people paying attention when something "just doesn't look right" and reporting it to authorities.

Possible indicators of terrorism that FBI intelligence analyst Sarah Pillsbury said citizens should be aware of include: Surveillance of buildings or places; suspicious questioning about employees or security; tests of security; purchases in bulk of items such as fertilizer; suspicious people; "dry runs" such as timing of traffic lights or map making; and the deploying of assets.

I do think businesses and citizens can be helpful partners, and I'd emphasize that their primary utility may be in preventing crime rather than terrorism. The odds of spotting a criminal are much higher than the odds of spotting a terrorist. And by creating an environment that's adverse to criminals, you also help to make it adverse to terrorists as well. (See last week's post about crime prevention in L.A.'s marinas.)

Or perhaps a better way to think about it is: "prevention is prevention." Preventing a crime is just as useful as preventing a potential terrorist incident, and the same process is useful for both.

Anti-crime and counter-terrorism, on the local level, are part and parcel of the same effort. A critical question: Will the law enforcement agencies follow up with the businesses and community groups, or will this be just a one-off effort? These relationships won't open up as trusted channels of information unless the relationships are built over time.

Update 2008-04-15: No word yet on the final tally of terrorism suspects:

The Sheriff’s Department says that altogether 332 people were arrested, 142 of whom are considered fugitives. No word on how many of those arrested may actually have ties to terrorism.

Watching the Water

Just a short note on this system the EPA developed to detect contaminants in municipal water supplies.

The system determines the best places to put sensors and then provides real-time data on potential contamination events:

TEVA sensor placement optimization tool (SPOT) enables water utilities to determine and evaluate sensor placement. TEVA-SPOT requires specific information from the utility and allows users to select design objectives and compare and contrast the benefits of different sensor placement.

The TEVA research program has developed CANARY, an event detection tool, that reads data from water quality sensors in real time and predicts whether the recorded water quality changes are actual contamination events.

I'm sometimes critical of protective interventions, because they can tend to be passive and offer a false sense of security. But assuming this system works as advertised, this is the sort of protective intervention that can yield real results, for a number of reasons.

First, it's capable of detecting both accidental and intentional contamination. This makes it a desirable protective element for any water-supply system, regardless of whether there is a legitimate threat of intentional contamination. Next, it detects things that behave in consistent, predictable ways. If there's a contaminant in the water, you can recognize it and act. You don't have to be concerned with shifting the danger to another place, as you do when your protective intervention is designed to alter the behavior of unpredictable, inconsistent agents (i.e., humans). Third, because this detection system is protective of the entire water system, it provides a real deterrent to any potential malicious actor. A comprehensive protection regime such as this can greatly reduces the chances that someone will use the water system as an avenue of attack.

On the municipal level, the other critical element in the system is communications with the public in the event of a contamination incident. Then you've got a solid protective regime.

The Utility of Security Cameras

To camera or not to camera?

Cities everywhere have addressed this question, with varying answers. London has opted for near-saturation coverage. New York has broad coverage in certain parts of the city. But in other cities, such as San Francisco, the question has been contentious.

The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported on the efficacy of that city's 68 cameras. Researchers discovered little deterrent effect:

San Francisco's 68 controversial anti-crime cameras haven't deterred criminals from committing assaults, sex offenses or robberies - and they've only moved homicides down the block, according to a new report from UC Berkeley.

They looked at seven types of crime: larcenies, burglaries, motor vehicle theft, assault, robbery, homicide and forcible sex offenses.

The only positive deterrent effect was the [22 percent] reduction of larcenies within 100 feet of the cameras. No other crimes were affected - except for homicides, which had an interesting pattern.

Murders went down within 250 feet of the cameras, but the reduction was completely offset by an increase 250 to 500 feet away, suggesting people moved down the block before killing each other.

The cameras have contributed to only one arrest nearly two years ago...

As a result, some in law enforcement argue that the cameras are a waste of resources:

"In their current configuration they are not useful, and they give people a false sense of security, which I think is bad," said Police Commissioner Joe Alioto-Veronese. He added that previous studies of security cameras in other parts of the country have also shown that they do not deter violent crime.

But others argue that the system needs to be upgraded, not scrapped:

Kevin Ryan, director of the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, is pushing for the cameras to be monitored in real-time like they are in Chicago and other cities. Those police departments are often able to catch crimes in progress and immediately respond.

The value of security cameras, as I see it, is not as a preventive tool, although I think Ryan is right that a system like Chicago's, which is networked into a fusion center, is certainly more capable of preventing crime.

For most systems, the primary value of a security cameras is in supplying evidence. Also, after a major crime or terrorist incident - such as the 2005 London transit bombings - camera images can have a calming effect on the population, who can see and recognize the criminals/terrorists and feel assured that they have been positively identified and are no longer a threat.

It's reasonable to debate whether a network of cameras provides enough benefit to justify the cost, but we should be clear about what those benefits are.

(h/t to Bruce Schneier)

Update 2008-04-10: Washington DC is also in the midst of a controversy, regarding its plan to consolidate monitoring of its security cameras and to move to live-monitoring.