Biowarfare for Dummies

[JP]

[h3]         Biowarfare for Dummies        [/h3][a href="http://paulboutin.weblogger.com/"]Paul Boutin[/a]wrote this feature on DIY biochemwomd for a national publication some months back -- but some editorial reshuffling happened, and the story never ran. Paul was willing to shar it, and here it is: [blockquote][img]http://www.boingboing.net/images/abi_394.jpg" align="left" border="0" height="263" width="350"] [br clear="all"]BIOWAR FOR DUMMIES:
[em]How hard is it to build your own weapon of mass destruction? We take a crash course in supervirus engineering to find out. [/em][/p]Anthrax. Smallpox. Ebola. For thriller writers and policy crusaders, biological warfare was a standard what-if scenario long before anyone mailed anthrax to government and media offices in 2001.Pentagon war games like Dark Winter, held just before 9/11, and this year's Atlantic Storm suggested that terrorists could unleash germs with the killing power of a nuclear weapon. [/p]Scientists, though, have always been skeptical. Only massive, state-sponsored programs—not terrorist cells or lone kooks—pose a plausible threat, they say. As the head of the Federation of American Scientists working group on bioweapons put it in a 2002 Los Angeles Times op-ed: "A significant bioterror attack today would require the support of a national program to succeed." [/p]Or not. A few months ago, Roger Brent, a geneticist who runs a California biotech firm, sent me an unpublished paper in which he wrote that genetically engineered bioweapons developed by small teams are a bigger threat than suitcase nukes. [/p]Brent is one of a growing number of researchers who believe that a bioterrorist wouldn't need a team of virologists and state funding. He says advances in DNA-hacking technology have reached the point where an evil lab assistant with the right resources could do thejob. [/p][/blockquote][a href="http://paulboutin.weblogger.com/stories/storyReader$1439"]Link[/a] to full text, with photos. Image above: "The ABI 394 synthesizer. Think of it as an inkjet printer for DNA."

[myname]

Good thing that a National ID card will stop them cold! Or, maybe not...............

[span class="body"]SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Selling national IDs as a necessary tool for fighting terrorism helped supporters ensure the passage of the REAL ID Act, but in reality, the data-enhanced driver's licenses mandated by the law will not likely prevent terrorism, security and policy experts said on Thursday at the RSA Conference.[/p]The REAL ID Act, which became law by a political maneuver attaching it to a critical spending bill, requires that state driver's licenses meet criteria set by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to be effective tools to identify people. For many states, that's a problem, said panelist member Linda Lewis-Pickett, the president and CEO of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.[/p]"The mission creep of the license has really left the DMVs (Departments of Motor Vehicles) back in smoke," she said. "I think each state agency has looked at DMVs as revenue generators--'Come in and pay taxes and give us money.' All of that has changed. They are now the identity management system."[/p]The panel members agreed that a national ID will not be an effective tool to fight terrorism. The cost, which the Citizens Against Government Waste [a href="http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reports_realid" target="_blank"]estimates at $9 billion to $13 billion over 6 years[/a], will be a bad use of taxpayer money, argued panelist Bruce Schneier, a security expert and chief technology officer for Counterpane Internet Security.[/p]"Going back to 9-11, [a href="http://www.securityfocus.com/news/371"]every one of those terrorists had an ID[/a],"he said. "Some of them had forged IDs, some used their real name, and some of them got real IDs with a fake names by bribing a motor-vehicles clerk."[/p][/span]