Zenergy International Inc. (ZENG)

[Pennypicks]

Old News - GPS radiation detector "needed"

Interesting reading
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20030418/ai_n14547919

Bay Area officials try to devise terror response
Oakland Tribune, Apr 18, 2003 by Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
E-mail Print Link Despite Washington's easing of the terror threat to prewar levels, U.S. intelligence analysts judged before the war that al-Qaida was planning a massive attack, aimed at American symbols, large-scale casualties and a blow to the economy.

Yet Northern California's top FBI agent said the intelligence, which mentioned the invasion of Iraq as a potential trigger, lacked key specifics of targets and timing that could guide federal law enforcement in frustrating such an attack.

"This was hard intelligence. This was credible intelligence," San Francisco FBI Special Agent in Charge Mark J. Mershon said Thursday at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "The sad part of this was none of this intelligence was actionable."

"We feel like we're looking down the barrel of a gun," Mershon told a conference of California anti-terror officials, "We don't know where it's coming from. We don't know when."

As cities and states complain of spiraling costs in the war on terror -- estimated roughly at $500 million ayear in deficit-plagued California -- Mershon's message was a sobering reminder that terrorists are hard to predict and insensitive to the bureaucratic wrangling among localities, states and the Bush administration.

On Thursday, Rep. Ellen Tauscher led 250 Bay Area anti-terror managers -- from first responders and state emergency coordinators to National Guard officers and defense scientists -- in sizing up threats and ways to tackle them as a region.



One answer -- a nifty, if bulky combination cell phone/PDA/GPS/ radiation detector -- could be swarming over U.S. cities in a couple of years. It's the latest brainchild of Livermore astrophysicists and nuclear-detection engineers looking for a way to hunt down "dirty bombs" and nuclear weapons while providing useful high-tech tools such as always-on e-mail.

Livermore's Simon Labov, director of the lab's new radiation detection center, sees RadNet phones in the hands of police, firefighters and U.S. Customs agents. One day, though, Labov imagines the gizmos will be built into taxis, rental cars and trucks.

U.S. ports and borders, most major subways and several U.S. cities already are equipped with crude radiation detectors that look like pagers.

"But those pagers can't tell someone who's had radiation treatment from a nuclear weapon," Labov said. "This instrument can."

The portable gadget can be programmed to ignore ordinary radiation sources -- the potassium-40 in tomatoes and human beings or the americium-241 in smoke detectors -- and identify close-by radioactive substances. It can beep a warning and prod the owner to call the feds or e-mail the radiation signature to a preset government address, complete with GPS coordinates.

Repeatedly Thursday, California officials noted that local and state authorities, not the federal government, are answering the call on terror threats.

"The American people are going to dial 911, and it does not ring in Washington," Tauscher said at her third Homeland Security Conference.

A centrist, pro-defense Democrat, Tauscher has been among California's most persistent voices in lobbying for federal domestic- security spending, a matter she describes as both preparedness and a shot in the arm for the region's ailing tech economy. She was a prime mover behind House legislation that created the new Department of Homeland Security.

"I think we're ahead of the curve, but we still have a ways to go," Tauscher said. "We need to think of a way to get the pipeline open and get everyone to stand at the end of the pipeline and have some accountability."

At Livermore lab Thursday, Californians criticized Washington for a miserly, one-size-fits-all approach.

State homeland-security director George Vinson complained that Midwestern states are accorded as much money for defending against terrorists as target-rich cities on the coasts. Meanwhile, Washington to date has disallowed the spending of federal money on overtime, the leading cost of domestic security in California.

Contact Ian Hoffman at href="<a href="<a href="mailto:[e-mail]"" target="_blank"mailto:[e-mail]"</a target="_blank"<a href="mailto:[e-mail]</a" target="_blank"mailto:[e-mail]</a</a ">[e-mail] .

"The fear is we're going to jam so much money down the pipelines that we're going to lose some effectiveness," Vinson said. "We're not going to do that. ... We want to spend the money wisely but we really need them to trust us."

Local officials left little doubt as to their solution.

"Keep that money coming," one woman said, tugging on Tauscher's arm during a break.

Few were willing to say publicly that the Bay Area is prepared for a terrorist attack. Mershon talked of confidence in his agency's "very aggressive, forward" stance.

But, he repeated, "the threat is still very real, it's long term and it's not very visible."

Contact Ian Hoffman at href="<a href="<a href="mailto:[e-mail]"" target="_blank"mailto:[e-mail]"</a target="_blank"<a href="mailto:[e-mail]</a" target="_blank"mailto:[e-mail]</a</a ">[e-mail] .

c2003 ANG Newspapers. Cannot be used or repurposed without prior written permission.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

12Next »