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.
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.
This story appears in the December 24, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.