After 9/11 the F.B.I. asked the nation's largest scuba diver certification organizations to turn over the records of all divers certified since 1998.
This is now done on an annual basis.
Didn't know that the bureau's got a file on you, eh?
Not to worry.
With the mess they've made of their new computer system, they'll never be able to locate anything anyhow. But I digress.
This interesting wrinkle regarding scuba divers was buried in last Wednesday's New York Times story by Eric Lipton about the extension of the Coast Guard's domestic law-enforcement mission into the undersea arena.
Among the Coast Guard's new tools is a powerful air gun that sends a nonlethal impulse into a diver to force him or her to the surface by causing extreme discomfort.
The underwater weapon is called a "nonlethal interdiction acoustic impulse" device.
It uses high pressure pulses of air or water to send shock waves through the water.
Jeff Nadler, vice president of PADI Americas, the world's largest diver certification organization, asked, "What is the impact of high-frequency sonar on an individual who is diving? At this point, we don't know."
Coast Guard officials said they were confident the equipment would not harm human or aquatic life.
Here's a link to the Times story.
Article comments
1 - Aaman
The FBI email system was breached this weekend - discussion on /.
2 - RJ
And I thought JAWS made people afraid of the water...
3 - SFC SKI
Let's put it this way, if the FBI had been a little more interested in just who had earned pilots' licenses from 1998 on, 9/11 might not have happened.
Anyone who reads the papers should no that intelligence gathering is a challenge, but the bigger challenge is analyzing all that raw data into a valid usable intelligence report. Imagine having an "inbox" the size of a large warehouse, with more stuff being dumped off by the truckload every hour, and at the other end, you. I don't worry about this database, unless a lot of manpower is put on it, it will just be a big electronic dump like a lot of other databases.
THe acoustic gun sounds pretty cool. Remember, most divers hang around ships that have already been sunk, and most Coasties are charged with patrolling harbor areas where divers are already prohibited.
4 - swingingpuss
I have a simple solution make us all wear radio tags and dog collars. That way the government would be saving time and money or better still tattoo numbers on our wrists as was done to the Jews on the concentration camps.
5 - SFC SKI
Yeah, that's a rational response.
Point is, when you have a threat who has used available means to strike a vulnerable target, you have to look not only at the vulnerabilites and how to minimize them, you have to at the threats capabilites, and the means and resources he might use to strike.
We knew about carbombs, and we knew about mines, but until the USS Cole, no one had taken the carbomb idea to sea, do you get my point? You have to be forward thinking and "game" out all the strategies involved, then put measures in place to counteract them.
Let's examine my completely uninformed positon using the example in the post.
You have a waterborne threat, you can counteract that by:
a) not let anyone boat or swim or dive
b) confiscate all SCUBA related equipment
c) look at SCUBA certified people, bounce that list off of other lists, and see if there are names that raise a flag.
d) Station agents in dive shops and harbors throughout the US, and have them suit up and follow each diver as they dive, (at least you'd have a dive buddy)
6 - Steve S
I don't worry about this database, unless a lot of manpower is put on it, it will just be a big electronic dump like a lot of other databases.
Then why do it? Sounds like just more government waste, if it's not going to be efficient. If it's put to use, and you make a good point with the pilots license analogy, then where should it stop? Should people with an interest in rock climbing, bridge diving, sky divers, etc. all be given to databases?
I want to be safe, I think we should find some way that the FBI can know if someone like Mohammed Atta is getting trained to fly here, but how much do we give of ourselves to government databases to accomplish that?
7 - SFC SKI
No, Steve, it is because when you need the info, it is there. The idea that there will be a team of people doing nothing but rooting out the details of every SCUBA certified person on that list is absurd.
Case in point, hundreds of documents were removed from the house of a person arrested in connection to terror in 1991. Most of the documents were not really analyzed until 1996. Unfortunately, the documents had details regarding the bombing of the WTC, scheduled for 1992/1993. All because the FBI did not have enough analysts to devote a team to that one suspects effects. It is not like this person was the only person brought in by the FBI in that year, either.
If you read the trials of the FBI, as with a lot of other national agencies, it is that while priorities, challenges, and focuses change on a near daily basis, manpower remains a constant, and you do what you have with what you have. Very few FBI agents have the MAytag repairman lifestyle of waiting until their specific case comes up, they have plenty of work every day, at least that's what I have read.
8 - Dipndive
Well my oppinion is - with amount of devices and cameras and credit card anf paytolls and etc. etc. etc.... Who cares at this point if PADI' DB was surrendered to FBI. With this success FBI could request all credit card info on scuba diving related expenses and gain this info regardless. There is so many ways to track all sorts of info, statistics etc... At the end we are all about statisitcs - how many prople visited my blog, from where, browsers, resolutions, computers.. etc.. So nothing to worry about it. If anybody conern about tattoing number on the wrist. You already have one - SS, CC, IMEI on your phone - you name it. :-)
Good Article though.
Thank you
Oleksiy