The Dark Side Of Tinkering
Crime once took skill, but now it often relies on clever misuse of everyday objects
Now technology can replace artisanship, inside and outside the law. Software can help mimic hard currency and divert electronic funds. Today's safes defeat fingertip manipulation, but their attackers use new types of explosives borrowed from the construction industry.
While some skills may have declined, it's easier than ever to learn others. Knowledge once seeped slowly from one culture or craft to another. Centuries passed before the secrets of silk and porcelain were smuggled from China. Now guild barriers have broken down, and technology helps knowledge spread almost uncontrollably, as the nuclear and chemical manuals found in al Qaeda safe houses in Afghanistan show. The Internet is only one of many channels; technological changes from dry-process photocopying to inexpensive fax and long-distance telephone service have also sped the flow of knowledge.
A would-be arsonist or bomber can easily summon a world of expertise. Ever since a Molotov cocktail appeared on the cover of a leading literary review, information on far more destructive homemade explosives has filled bookshelves and Web pages with titles like The Anarchist Cookbook. Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City fertilizer bomb was just the most horrific of these. Entire publishing companies specialize in taboo knowledge.
Many other criminal methods are simply passed along by word of mouth. The art of grinding up time-release tablets of the prescription painkiller OxyContin has transformed it into the scourge of rural America, "hillbilly heroin," spread rapidly from one abuser to another, producing a chain reaction of addicts who become suppliers.
Or consider auto break-ins. The old method used a special tool called a slim jim that had to be expertly manipulated. The new style required cunning to develop but takes little skill to execute. Small jagged ceramic fragments, for example from broken spark plugs, can shatter side window glass silently when thrown correctly. On the street they're called ninja rocks. Unlike the slim jim, the ninja rock looks like a bit of junk. Only with a string tied to it--as possessed by one unwisely frugal thief in a Southeastern state not long ago--does it become a prosecutable burglary tool.
Such inventiveness also spreads in developing countries. In Borneo, the telephone company was baffled by the theft of 3,500 pay phones. The culprits were fishermen who attached the handsets to powerful batteries; feedback from the microphone to the speaker emitted a tone irresistible to tilapia.
Because deviant ingenuity is so flexible, it is hard to fight without creating new kinds of criminality. Making drivers' licenses secure against photocopying has discouraged casual forgery but stimulated sales of "genuine" documents by a few corrupt license bureau employees. Limiting purchases of spray paint to thwart graffiti writers not only has inconvenienced legitimate shoppers but has helped turn vandals toward the even more damaging tactic of etching subway glass and shop windows with sharp objects and acid.
And banning things because of their potential for terror may also defeat pro-social ingenuity. Consider the total absence of blades on an airplane. In the few cases of throat blockage that cannot be cleared by the Heimlich maneuver, a well-known emergency procedure is to take a sharp knife--a box cutter will do--make a cut an inch below the Adam's apple, and insert a straw or the shell of a ballpoint pen, then breathe. The inventor of this technique was displaying the same talent for improvisation in the service of life that the terrorists were using to spread death. Deviant ingenuity is the dark side of human resourcefulness.
While armed force can deter some threats and electronics may help reduce others, deviant ingenuity remains a moving target. We foresaw many elements of the September 11 attacks, including sleeper cells and the use of aircraft as bombs against landmarks, yet we lacked the wit to see how they could be put together. We have to anticipate the sinister creativity of terrorism. As Milton Glaser, designer of the original World Trade Center graphics and observation deck (as well as the "I Love New York" heart logo), put it, the attack was "a work of the imagination." Only superior imagination can defeat it.
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