Executive Summary

On December 26, 2000, a small plane piloted by Mohammed Atta stalled on the runway at Miami International Airport. Atta (alleged ringleader of the September 11 attacks) and his companion (another future hijacker) simply abandoned the plane on the runway -- on one of the busiest travel days of the year -- and walked to the terminal to rent a car. On May 28, 2001, a criminal warrant was issued for Atta's arrest in Broward County, Fla., after he failed to appear in court for a traffic violation. On July 5, Atta was pulled over for speeding in Palm Beach County, Fla.; the officer ran a search on Atta and found no outstanding warrants. After a trip to Spain in which he allegedly met with co-conspirators, Atta entered the United States for the last time on July 19, despite the above incidents and despite the fact that he was on a terrorist "watch list."

One of the most painful things about examining the events leading up to the September 11 hijackings is realizing just how close the terrorists were to having their plot disrupted. Fifteen years ago, stopping terrorism relied on old-fashioned tools: strict physical security at vulnerable facilities, intelligence gathering by government agents, vigilance on the part of all citizens, and a sense of community in which we all do what we can to protect each other. These are all still very important. At the dawn of the 21st century, however, we have a powerful new weapon: technology. The information technology revolution that transformed our economy has also given us the tools, infrastructure, and commercial capabilities to make domestic defense easier, less expensive, and more effective, making all Americans safer. If we had had advanced IT tools in place prior to September 11, it is almost certain that some of the terrorists would have been detained, and possibly some of the plots would have been foiled.

Technology has revolutionized the economy with dramatic productivity improvements and an array of new communications and information processing tools. We must bring that same revolution to domestic defense, to gain maximum security and public confidence with minimum investment. The IT revolution has given us many tools -- wireless data networks, encryption, powerful miniature computer chips, the global Internet, data mining software, and many more -- that weren't available for domestic security just a few years ago. Now that we have these tools, it is time to roll them out to make our nation safer. In doing so, we can also expect many significant side benefits; just as technology investments during the Cold War had spinoff effects that helped start the New Economy, many of the investments to develop and deploy technologies for modernizing and upgrading our law enforcement and public service capabilities will result in significant economic, health, and public safety benefits.

The purpose of this issue brief is not to provide a comprehensive blueprint of how technology alone can solve the terrorism problem -- it can't -- nor is it to suggest that every domestic defense challenge has a technology answer. There are many pieces of our domestic security system that work well now, others for which low-tech solutions are less expensive but just as effective, and still others in which technology can never replace the judgment and experience of a person. The purpose of this brief, rather, is to stimulate thinking about how technology can take domestic defense from its old economy model -- bureaucratic, hierarchical and compartmentalized, and labor-intensive -- and transform it to a New Economy model -- flexible, networked, and automated. Among the ways technology can help find terrorists before they strike are:

• improved data sharing, combining criminal records and intelligence information from a variety of federal, state, and local agencies that can be accessed wirelessly to identify wanted criminals and suspected terrorists when they encounter law enforcement or attempt to enter secure facilities.
• "smart ID cards" with biometric identifiers, adding chips containing thumbprint scans or other biometric data to driver's licenses, as well as standardized security features for preventing forgery and fraud;
• "smart visas" and improved border security, placing biometric information on visas to identify visitors, keep track of their entry and exit, and confirm compliance with the terms of their entry, and protecting unguarded stretches of the borders;
• digital surveillance, extending longstanding principles of law enforcement and surveillance to the Internet by permitting surveillance of email and other electronic data while preserving traditional safeguards on searches by government agents; and
• face recognition technology that can detect known terrorists as they move through crowds at vulnerable events such as the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Blueprint Keywords: Extra State Security

Shane Ham is the senior policy analyst for the Progressive Policy Institutes Technology & New Economy Project. Robert Atkinson is vice president of the Progressive Policy Institute and director of the Technology & New Economy Project.