The Dark Side Of Tinkering
Crime once took skill, but now it often relies on clever misuse of everyday objects
Until September 11 the humble box cutter was the Yankee counterpart of the Swiss Army knife: rugged, versatile, curved for a powerful grip, the master key to our corrugated-clad cornucopia.
We may never know just how this little device became a lever of mass murder. Details of the investigation are still secret, but the utility knives that Mohamed Atta and his accomplices wielded that Tuesday were not necessarily concealed from airport screeners; the blades were well under the 4-inch limit prescribed at the time by the Federal Aviation Administration. Hundreds of law-abiding American technicians and hobbyists probably carried one on board in an attache case or overnighter that morning. Yet the box cutter has taught us the power of criminal redefinition of legitimate technology--what might be called deviant ingenuity.
Once we start to look, we see it everywhere. The box cutter itself had a troubled history before September 11. Unlike proudly sinister switchblades and gravity knives, it could be carried legitimately, as a bona fide tool. Yet some cities banned sales to juveniles in the 1990s after outbreaks of gang mayhem.
The honest screwdriver is a basic part of the criminal repertory, standard in burglary and, in the view of the 1980s New York subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz, even armed robbery. (After shooting the young men he claimed were threatening him with screwdrivers, Goetz in turn disposed of his pistol by breaking it up with one.) A ring of keys can serve as brass knuckles. Even the sports of American childhood have been abused. The baseball bat, long a domestic gangster weapon, has been selling vigorously in lands where bases, balls, and gloves are still rare. In the United States, antisocial kids prime the Super Soaker, a steroidal squirt gun that would otherwise be the height of youthful hilarity, with bleach solution instead of water.
The war on terrorism has turned these annoyances into matters of life and death. It has brought many formerly mundane objects--down to hair spray and nail clippers--under new scrutiny lest they be exploited by public enemies. The conventional view is that advanced technology will save us. Next-generation passenger screeners, for example, may be able to signal even the lethal plastic and ceramic knives that are already available. (And it's about time. Obsidian, a volcanic glass used in Aztec sacrifices, can be flaked sharper than any scalpel.)
Arms race. If only deviant ingenuity were so easy to apprehend. Criminal skills can flourish in societies of ostensibly total surveillance and control, as surprise prison inspections regularly show. Convicts fashion lethal "shanks" from hairbrushes and turn shoelaces into garrotes. And technological trends may be promoting deviant ingenuity faster than they are arming society against it.
To understand why, go back to the 19th century. Serious crime still demanded traditional skills rather than improvisation, and many criminals were gifted enough to have prospered honestly. The 19th-century German goldsmith Reinhold Vasters, who may or may not have intended forgery, was so masterly that some of his pseudo-Renaissance jewelry is still displayed in major museums. Bank-note counterfeiters might be adept engravers. Safecrackers could have locksmithing skills.
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