This week, the color-coded 'terror alert' level was raised to orange, or high, the focus of today's lead story by Peter Grier in The Christian Science Monitor. Tom Ridge, Homeland Security Director, stated that intelligence detected terrorists' threats of use of aircraft, and intent to "find gaps in our security posture that could be exploited."

Where are the gaps? There are several. For example, TSA reported in October that there are 5 airports that are not going to meet the deadline of Dec 31 2003 to have 100 percent of all luggage screened electronically. There simply is not enough time to produce, install and integrate the screening procedures and technology.

Testimony from Cathleen Berrick, Directory, Homeland Security and Justice, in a GAO report further outlines some of these security gaps.

Impediments to closing these gaps can be grouped into three categories: funding, accountability and implementation of enhanced screening.

Securing funding and ensuring these costs are controlled is paramount. The funding issues are formidable: the testimony reflects that the Dept of Homeland Security has appropriated $3.7 billion for aviation security in 2004. $1.8 billion is for passenger screening and $1.4 is for baggage screening. ATSA created a 'passenger security fee' to help offset these costs but it is not enough: this will only generate about $1.7 billion in 04.

Another problem is that the focus has of course been on passengers and their baggage but not nearly enough of the cargo is being screened.

Under the accountability umbrella: recertification and performance tests for the screeners are recommended.

Lastly, that these screening systems are quite large, and take up a lot of space. They also have to be configured so they will work with the baggage handling systems, integrating equipment w/the preexisting baggage handling requires major facility modifications.

In a December 12 Monitor article, Alexandra Marks writes about the Alliance for the New Humanity, a group recently formed by celebrities and politicians as an umbrella organization to help human rights and peace organizations fund their projects.

The task is formidable. According to Project Ploughshares' Armed Conflict Report 2003, by the end of 2002 there were 37 conflicts underway worldwide. These conflicts were all civil wars taking place in 29 countries, and the regions most affected were Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. (For more on global conflicts and risks, go to Federation of American Scientists' website, The World at War and Country Indicators for Foreign Policy, run by Carleton University in Canada.)

Progress

There is hope, of course. Project Ploughshares reports that in the 15-year period from 1988 to 2002, 35 conflicts died out.

To reach out to others around the world talking about solutions try the Dialogue Webpage for Conflicts Worldwide, sponsored by the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. Its goal, it says, is to "contribute to the improvement of mutual understanding between opposing sides of conflict throughout the world."

There has been speculation in recent days that those committing terrorist acts on larger and more violent scales may have been timing them for Sundays, and the subsequent media coverage. For more background on international terrorism, the Liblog recommends the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, an Israel-based think tank. A click on the International Terrorism tab will bring visitors to a series of databases on terrorist incidents, where a custom search can be conducted by organization, method used, date range, or number of casualties. While there is a concentration of organizations in the Middle East, there are also profiles of other groups based in Europe, Latin America, and other parts of the world. It also offers statistics on the Arab-Israeli conflict that are updated monthly.

A more extensive and recently updated resource is the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. In conjuction with the RAND corporation, there are a series of databases where you can download statistics or generate graphs about terror incidents by country, region, or date range.