Trust and terror: the vulnerability of complex socio‐technical systems

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Notes

It is worth noting that during the 1990s a militant, far right wing, occasionally terrorist groundswell, the ‘Patriot movement’, arose in the American heartland. The Bush Administration choice of the term ‘PATRIOT’ for legislation to limit the liberties of citizens seems to pay homage to this segment of the Republican Party's political base.

Typical of the widespread crackdown on immigrants of Middle Eastern descent is the story of Ansar Mahmood, a Pakistani citizen living and working as a pizza delivery man in Hudson, New York. Mr Mahmood made the mistake of asking a guard at the local reservoir to take his photograph with the lake in the background and was arrested for suspicious behavior. Later charged and convicted of minor violations of immigration law, he is (at this writing) now subject to deportation, a step strongly protested by many citizens in upstate New York (see Elan, 2003).

The draft text of the proposed law can be found at: http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Terrorism_militias/patriot2draft.html.

A more intelligent response, in my view, would be to award Mr Heatwole a Presidential Medal of Honor and a long term research grant in the ‘Social Deconstruction of Technology’. His peaceful inquiries revealed holes in airport security systems that skilled professionals using hundreds of millions of dollars and the latest electronics failed to identify.