There is a small town in Alaska named Dillingham. It has a population of about 2400 and is very remote. A fishing village, mainly.
The city council and mayor have spent about $220,000 of Homeland Security money to install 60 cameras (with 20 more to come) around the town.
What are the expecting to see?
Total insanity.
Oh! I just realised its a multi-page article and it gets even better! It’s a movie-plot threat scenario!
“Tokyo is that way,” says Thompson, extending his arm to the left. He’s standing near the spot in the harbor where Roberts stood the previous day.
“Russia is about 800 miles that way,” he says, arm extending right.
“Seattle is about 1,200 miles back that way.” He points behind him.
“So if I have the math right, we’re closer to Russia than we are to Seattle.”
Now imagine, he says: What if the bad guys, whoever they are, manage to obtain a nuclear device in Russia, where some weapons are believed to be poorly guarded. They put the device in a container and then hire organized criminals, “maybe Mafiosi,” to arrange a tramp steamer to pick it up. The steamer drops off the container at the Dillingham harbor, complete with forged paperwork to ship it to Seattle. The container is picked up by a barge.
“Ten days later,” the chief says, “the barge pulls into the Port of Seattle.”
Thompson pauses for effect.
“Phoooom,” he says, his hands blooming like a flower.
“Farfetched? My view is we pay people like me to think of the ‘what ifs,’ ” Thompson says.
Bruce Schneier loves to write about movie-plot threat scenarios.
