"Who are those Guys?" I should have remembered. INTEL DUMP
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Update to note on FedEx's anti-terrorism efforts
A number of readers have written me to remind me of the police forces created during the late 19th Century within most major railroad companies. Originally, these forces were created to police the rail lines against Indian tribes, bandits, and other hazards. Today, they continue in this law enforcement role, although against other threats. Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Rail is one example of a railroad company with its own police force, and one reader writes that these police take an active role in making sure the rail lines stay safe.
Our facilities are crawling with these folks - they carry guns, have arrest power, and nationwide jurisdiction. The police forces of the various railroads cooperate with each other and law enforcement to a great extent, and could definitely provide a model as to how other types of companies could implement the same thing, though I think the railroads possess of lot of maturity in handling the power that comes with it due to their length of experience.
Railroads are just one part of America's critical infrastructure, however. The anthrax attacks showed just how vulnerable our country can be to a small strike against one aspect of its infrastructure -- in that case, the public postal system. Financial institutions, railroads, water treatment plants, power plants and distribution networks, and other parts of America's infrastructure all need to be hardened against the threat of terrorism. The paradox of anti-terrorism planning is "the more you protect the hard targets, the more vulnerable you make the soft targets." If we harden our airports and public sites against terrorism, we will simply make our private sites more attractive as targets. America depends on its infrastructure, and most of its infrastructure is private, not public. Thus, we need to encourage more companies to be proactive like the railroads and FedEx, and to think about how they can protect themselves.
Update II: Several readers were kind enough to write me about an incident in 1994 where one of FedEx's planes was hijacked and nearly crashed into its main hub in Memphis. I'm sure I read the news of this incident back then, but it had totally left my mind until now. No wonder FedEx takes anti-terrorism seriously. My real hope is that there's cross-talk between the logistics and airline people at FedEx and the law enforcement people on the Memphis FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). The FBI holds some of the best legal and investigative minds in the world, but they're not subject-matter experts on everything.
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