Illusions and Perceptions
By Tomer Benito
Awhile ago I visited a major transportation hub on the East Coast and delivered
a seminar to the local security force. It wasn’t the conventional security
force, but merely a police squad containing guns, badges, and uniforms—American
Pride. I discussed issues about their security protocol, a collection of
orders and recommendations that nobody really reads and more than that -
implements.
One of the subjects that caught my attention in their protocol was the following: “When
discovering an object that is obviously a bomb, it is a requirement to evacuate
the area.”
I read it over and over again, searching for images and photos. Due to the
absence of visualization, I grabbed one of the officers in the squad and
asked, “Can you tell me what a bomb looks like?”
The officer looked at me with startled eyes and asked. “What?” he
replied, not quite determining how he should answer the question..
I gave him a plain sheet of paper and pen and said, “Draw me a bomb.”
He looked at me with a stare normally seen in small kids who did something
wrong. His stare changed to acquiescence when he realized that I was serious.
He thought for awhile and then drew something that looked like five tubes
arranged together, a round circle with a dial in the middle of the sheet,
and curly lines on the edges of the tubes. Apparently satisfied with his
artwork, the officer handed the drawing back to me with a grin.
Like a father examining his son’s first art piece, I studied the drawing.
After a moment that took almost an eternity, my hand became numb and my patience
ran out. I couldn’t determine what he drew, so without insulting his
artistic skills, I asked, “What is it?”
“
It’s a bomb!” the officer said firmly with a hint of surprise
for my poor recognition. “Dynamite sticks,” he said and pointed
towards the tubes. “A clock,” he continued with the interpretation
and rotated his finger around the circle in the middle of the page. “And
wires,” he concluded gesturing toward the curly lines he drew.
I smiled in understanding and asked, “Which one is the blue wire and
which one is the red?”
“
That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?” he smiled
back.
“
From where did you get this image?” I inquired. When he didn’t
respond, I tried a different angle. “Have you ever seen such a bomb
in reality?” I asked.
The officer replied promptly, “Not in reality, but in a lot of movies.” That
was exactly the answer I was expecting.
I turned the sheet over and sketched out my own drawing (I was good at this
when I was young). I drew a metal cylinder (emphasizing attention to the
shiny surface) with a big square in the middle of it. I drew four shapes
in the form of a digital clock. “The numbers are in red,” I informed
the officer. “And it counts down, of course,” I added. He nodded. “Do
you think this is also a bomb?” I asked.
“
Yes, I do,” the officer nodded in agreement.
“ So, does it matter what year the movie you saw was filmed?”
The officer looked puzzled. “What are you saying?” he asked.
I asked him this question in reply, “I’m saying that television
has changed our perspective entirely. If you were the terrorist, how would
your bomb look – say, something a child would recognize as a bomb,
or something that nobody would suspect – something that would stay
in place long enough for the execution of an explosion?”
“
It makes sense that it would be something that people are used to seeing,” the
officer answered after a few seconds of deliberation.
“
So what does a bomb look like?” I asked again.
“
Like anything innocent,” he concluded.
The media changes our perspective towards things that are commonly known.
Did you ever pay attention to the weapons the bad guys on TV series and movies
hold? The type of weapon is almost always an AK-47. Avtomat Kalashnikova
was invented in 1947 by Viktor Timofeevich Kalashnikov. It is easy to infer
by its name that it’s a Russian-made rifle. Unfortunately, the Middle
Eastern terrorists used this rifle in the 1970s. Some of them even drew the
silhouette of this weapon on their flags. Although its existence is very
rare in the US, the movie industry places it constantly in the hands of the
bad guys. So are we always expecting to see them use a Russian-made weapon?
Because if someone holds an M-16, he must be an undercover good guy – he
can’t be a terrorist, right?
Special agent Jack Bauer of the Emmy Award winning TV series ‘24’ is
another great example of the perception we lose. We count on our agencies
to provide us with an up-to-date picture of the bad guy down to the current
haircut or unshaved beard. In reality, as we all know, it doesn’t work
that way. We watch on TV how the powerful closed circuit cameras zoom-in
on the bad guy’s face and within a split second, there is a match between
the bad guy and the intelligence profile we have on him. In reality, the
algorithmic systems cannot do this great a job, and it takes much more than
a CCTV camera to find a match. Instead of looking for the facial features
match, we should look at the behavioral pattern, and we can find our bad
guy because of what he does and not who he is.
Let’s take the wanted “bad guy” for instance. When he knows
that he is hunted, he won’t be exposed to us. He knows that we have
cameras, and law enforcement has been given his description. I asked my bomb-drawing
officer what he would have done if he was the bad guy, and he replied that
he would disguise himself, not necessarily with a wig, but probably with
a hat and sunglasses. “Would you avoid the security cameras and law
enforcement personal?” I asked him.
“
Of course I would. I’d keep my head down and walk away as fast as I
could without raising suspicion,” he replied.
All of a sudden, we are not looking for the exact same man anymore. We
are looking for the suspicious behavior. A man who is walking into
a public area
with his head down and a pair of sunglasses that covers half of his face
could possibly be someone who was just dumped by his girlfriend. He could
also be our bad guy. The way to determine this is by engaging him in conversation
about anything. If he runs away – we have a logical reason to believe
that he has something to hide…
Another aspect that is seen vastly on TV and movies is the super-computer
that pin points everything. A phone call conversation from one man to another
becomes the lead to a large scale hunt and an apprehension of a sleeper
cell on American soil. Hilarious!!! If you were the terrorist, would you
say over
a phone call conversation “I’m going to blow up a place”?
And if you won’t, what are the codes you use? What are the ones NSA
uses to feed those super-computers?
I can make an analogy for the business world – the fish and the fishing
rod.
If I provide you with one fish – you’ll eat, but you won’t
survive without me.
If I provide you with a fishing rod and teach you how to fish – you
won’t need me to survive.
I grew up with a TV commercial on how to identify suspicious objects. It
was a commercial for kids in the early 1980s. It showed a shopping bag
beneath a bus station bench. The narrator said, “A suspicious object is one
that is not in its natural place, and that nobody knows to whom it belongs.” The
image changed to a few other abandoned briefcases, a shoebox, and a plastic
container near a playground. The narrator instructed that we shouldn’t
have to determine whether the object was threatening or not but just to evacuate
the area and to inform the police. Talk about kids’ empowerment!
I have a lot to say about television, but one of the worst things it does
to us (except for numbing our minds, selling sex in every context, and
promoting violent values), is change our perspective towards what matters
the most.
I wonder where Jack Bauer and CTU will be during the next terrorist strike.
Tomer Benito
Counter Terrorism Specialist
