Terrorists To Look Western: A Little Obvious For Intel, Don’t You Think?

March 31 2008 by The Systemic Analyst.

The CIA chief, Michael Hayden, has reportedly told NBC that terrorists are using “operatives that…wouldn’t attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles  with you.” In other words, the new terrorist will look as Western as any citizen of North America. This should have been expected, particularly after the U.S. began using racial profiling as a border security measure; the next logical step in facilitating the crossing of potential terrorists at borders would be to use people who would never cause a red flag to be raised.

As with previous statements by CIA representatives regarding the vulnerability of power grids in North America, I’m left wondering at the quality of intelligence that they choose to share with the public. It’s as if the organization has been stockpiling the most obvious vulnerabilities or threat adaptations to security measures for release some 4 to 5  years after the bit of ‘intelligence,’ (if something so elementary can even be called that,) should have been news. Is the CIA trying to give the illusion that it is informing the public? Any thinking person should have been able to surmise this change in tactic for moving operatives across borders years ago.

It all comes back to the fundamental problem of using identity as the basis for security measures. Sure, keeping track of law abiding citizens is facilitated by identity management on a national scale; to such people the idea of abusing the system is outside their realm of contemplation. Preventing threats, such as terrorists, from crossing borders with identity based security measures isn’t so likely. In order to stop such a person from passing through a border check point, one would have to be aware that the target in fact poses a threat. Thus, only if the person is known to have committed a crime and can be firmly linked to the identity under which that crime was committed will such a suspect be apprehended.

Of course, an alert and well-trained border guard could detect slight peculiarities in a subject’s behaviour that might tip the agent off, thus escalating the case in the required 60-seconds or less. Our growing penchant for throwing technology at security problems, however, is making this scenario less and less likely all the time as we opt for automated kiosks to scan passports, manned by travellers far from the prying eyes of such adept officials.

Terrorists, and indeed organized criminals, understand how the system works.  In fact, it is generally accepted that such threats are already steps ahead of the security industry - particularly in the use of technology. Organized crime rings have readily adopted advanced technology, just as any other business has, greatly improving the efficiency of their operations. College ICT students have become prime candidates for working with such criminal organizations, particularly in regions where legitimate jobs  in the field are few or compensation is poor. If there is a way to forge hi-tech identity documents, I’m pretty sure that organized crime rings have already figured it out.

It isn’t the technological nature of enhanced identity-based national security measures which presents terrorists and mobsters with an opportunity to breach the walls of Fortress America, however; it’s the inherent flaws of the traditional system. Knowing that the system is designed to detect identifiable threats, i.e. known criminals or people who fit set profiles - for which there is none available for a terrorist - why would any well-organized crime ring send anyone across a border that would raise alarm? They wouldn’t. As a result, look for middle-class, Caucasian North Americans disgruntled by a lack of options, crumbling economy and perhaps with the scars of some distant war to bear as a far more likely candidate for terrorism in the coming years.

All of this, of course, is to say nothing of the other ways in which identity-based border security measures can be breached, which advanced technological solutions have failed to address. Such tactics include bribing a corrupt official to issue a legitimate albeit false identity, establishing an official identity using supporting documents issued to a target but linked to a deceased citizen, and operating under a legitimate identity issued by another state for the purposes of espionage or terrorism.

It makes me wonder what the point of the Chief’s statement are. On one hand, if reading between the lines, Mr. Hayden has admitted that our current identity-based approaches won’t be sufficient for the changing tactics of terrorists. On the other hand, taking his statements at face value, the fact that we know terrorists understand how the system can be breached easily will likely only result in ever-more enhanced traditional security measures; measures that although already evidently not effective for preventive purposes, will undoubtedly come into more widespread use. Indeed, the middle class Caucasian might just have been given a new reason to be screened and monitored, even more than before. 

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