Buzzby

Widespread Radioactivity Monitoring Is Confirmed
Matthew L. Wald | New York Times | 12/24/2005

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The F.B.I. and the Energy Department have conducted thousands of searches for radioactive materials at private sites around the country in the last three years, government officials confirmed on Friday.

The existence of the search program was disclosed on Thursday by U.S. News & World Report, on its Web site. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, government agencies have disclosed that they have installed radiation-detection equipment at ports, subway stations and other public locations, but extensive surreptitious monitoring of private property has not been publicly known.

The federal government has given thousands of radiation alarms, worn like cellphones on the belt, to police and fire departments in major cities.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, Brian Roehrkasse, confirmed that law enforcement personnel were conducting "passive operations in publicly accessible areas to detect the presence of radiological materials, in a manner that protects U.S. constitutional rights."

(BuzzNote: This is about as intrusive as driving by a building to see if the lights are on. A person has no expectation of privacy in the radiation leaking out of a building, whether it be visible light, infrared, or gamma rays. Radiation leakage is not a form of "communication" protected under the Fourth Amendment.)

U.S. News, citing people it did not name, said many of the sites that federal agents had monitored were mosques or the homes or businesses of Muslims, and the report set off a dispute between a Muslim group here and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

(BuzzNote: Let's face reality. The terrorist threat has come from Islamist Fundamentalist groups. Their activities are not likely to be taking place at a Catholic Church. An investigator needs to look for evidence where that evidence is most likely to be found.)

The group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement: "This disturbing revelation, coupled with recent reports of domestic surveillance without warrant, could lead to the perception that we are no longer a nation ruled by law, but instead one in which fear trumps constitutional rights. (BuzzNote: Attempting to connect this to the President's warrantless phone taps is a stretch. Your communications are protected by the Fourth Amendment. Random electromagnetic radiation coming from a building is not.) All Americans should be concerned about the apparent trend toward a two-tiered system of justice, with full rights for most citizens, and another diminished set of rights for Muslims."

But John Miller, an assistant director of the F.B.I., said in a statement that his agency "does not target any group based on ethnicity, political or religious belief."

(BuzzNote: All Muslims aren't terrorists but all the recent terrorists have been Muslims. Where do they expect the FBI to look for them, if not where Muslims live and hang out? If I were a Muslim I'd welcome this non-intrusive attempt to ferret out these bad apples in my community and to protect me from whatever plot they might be cooking up.)

"When intelligence information suggests a threat to public safety, particularly involving weapons of mass destruction," the statement said, "investigators will go where the intelligence information takes them."

Mr. Miller said the bureau was "disappointed at the conclusions" reached by the Muslim group. He added that F.B.I. agents would work through the holiday weekend to catch whoever set off a bomb on Tuesday that damaged the door of a mosque near Cincinnati.

According to a federal official who would not allow his name to be used, the investigators have visited hundreds of sites in Washington, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas and Seattle on multiple occasions, as well other locations for high-profile events like the Super Bowl. The surveillance was conducted outdoors, and no warrants were needed or sought, the official said, speaking on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss classified programs.

"If you can go drive a car into the parking lot near the shopping mall, we can go there," he said. "It's nothing intrusive. We're not searching into a particular building, just sniffing the air in the area."

Federal officials have expressed anxiety about two radiological threats. One is a "dirty bomb," a conventional explosive that would spread a radioactive material. Such an attack would be unlikely to kill anyone with radiation, but it could contaminate streets, buildings or other public places. The materials that would be used are highly radioactive and might be detected from some distance, experts say.

The other threat is that someone would try to detonate a nuclear bomb. Bomb fuel, either enriched uranium or plutonium, is much harder to detect, because its radiation signature is weak, physicists say. But it is also much harder to obtain.

At least some of the surveillance was by the Nuclear Emergency Support Team, part of the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration, which leads the American effort to secure nuclear materials around the world.

__________________