Michael Edwards
On Guard: Walker imagines a citizen corps monitoring key facilities.
When Priceline.com founder Jay Walker unveiled the US HomeGuard national defense system earlier this year, critics rolled their eyes. The network of webcams sending images from 47,000 border-crossings, reservoirs, chemical plants, and other critical facilities to 1 million students and stay-at-home moms was, they said, an intrusive, opportunistic, and technically impractical response to 9/11. None of that bothered Walker, who showed his virtual surveillance plan to the Department of Homeland Security and promised that, for $40 million, he would have a test network built and evaluated within four months. If the project ever rolls out nationwide, individual sites would foot the bill for installation. Whatever happens, US HomeGuard's central premise - that hundreds of thousands of stupid webcams and a million Americans could win the war against terrorism - is intriguing.
Wired: Not to be flip, but how could a webcam have prevented 9/11?
Walker: HomeGuard is not going to stop every terrorist attack. It wouldn't stop someone from driving down a public road next to a reservoir and tossing a bag over the fence - obviously the solution is to avoid putting roads near reservoirs or to build higher fences. There's no single way to protect 47,000 different sites and facilities. But our approach is a lot better than the alternative, which is to do nothing.
Better than nothing, yes. But the proposal has sparked some controversy.
Any outside-the-box approach will spark controversy. Some critics have focused on the technology, arguing that our projected reaction time - 30 seconds - would be impossible. Other criticisms were privacy-oriented: Some people have a visceral reaction to cameras. And there are clearly important public-policy issues related to all the webcams out there. But there really is no privacy issue, since HomeGuard will be looking at no-man's zones.
In this economy, are companies really going to shell out for the HomeGuard service? What will it cost a midsize power plant?
Installation is about $50,000 per mile of coverage; a midsize plant might have 3 or 4 miles of fence to cover. So you're talking about no more than $200,000. The ongoing operation costs would be about $5,000 a month - less than a live security patrol - and the service will let companies use onsite manpower more effectively.
Does the future of national security come down to webcams and stay-at-home moms?
I wouldn't say that HomeGuard is the future of national security. Detecting anomalous behavior is no more essential than screening containers at ports or guarding borders - but it's part of the answer. And it has an important societal component: By giving Americans a way to bond together, it gives us the benefit of greater defense and also a greater sense of community.
Is a distributed approach to defense the only feasible response to terrorism?
It's the only overarching theory capable of responding to asymmetric threats. Biology has taught us that when faced with dangers of incredible complexity and enormous variation, we need highly distributed, adaptive systems. Looking at asymmetric threats, whether individual acts of terrorism or mass destruction, no one would argue that centralization is a logical response. No one would suggest building a larger Pentagon.
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