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There are essentially two schools of thought on preventing acts of terrorism. There are techies, the folks who say all you need is the right equipment, software and the money to buy them. Then there are the human intelligence advocates, those that say a good tip from a credible source is worth hundreds of hand-held radiation detectors. Luckily for the residents of New York City, the NYPD and Commissioner Ray Kelly believe that a combination of old-time police work and the use of new equipment and technology is the best way to protect New York’s nine million residents.
But the news isn’t all good. And as is usually the case with the “war on terror,” the weak link is the quality of the technology we rely on to alert authorities to serious threats.
A New York City Police Department helicopter equipped with what the manufacturer describes as an “ultra-sensitive” radiation detector whipped through the skies over Lower Manhattan recently.
The helicopter was hunting block by block around Wall Street for a black SUV containing the components of a homemade radiological “dirty bomb.” But the training exercise failed to detect a deliberately planted chunk of radioactive cesium-137.
That material, if dispersed by an explosive, could paralyze the nation’s financial nerve center with a deadly cloud of radiation. After failing to find the planted radioactive materials, police operators blamed technical glitches and the pilot turned back to a West Side landing pad.
The exercise followed a secret concerted search for radioactive materials in Manhattan by hundreds of local, state and federal officers before the city’s New Year’s Eve celebration. Last August, New York authorities briefly increased their “dirty bomb” detection efforts after a Web site that monitors jihadist Internet sites reported a dirty-bomb threat, which was subsequently discredited.
“We have to take these threats seriously because New York is at the top of al-Qaeda’s target list, and we are the last line of defense,” Richard A. Falkenrath, NYPD’s deputy commissioner for counterterrorism, told reporters at the Washington Post.
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