Bogus Company Obtains Nuclear License

i_like_spam writes "As reported in the NY Times, undercover investigators from the Government Accountability Office set up a bogus company and received a license to purchase dirty-bomb nuclear materials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The GAO's investigation shows that the security measures put in place after 911 are not sufficient for protecting the American people." From the article: "Given that terrorists have expressed an interest in obtaining nuclear material, the Congress and the American people expect licensing programs for these materials to be secure, said Gregory D. Kutz, an investigator at the accountability office, in testimony prepared for the hearing."

Law not sufficient

[schabot]

The GAO's investigation shows that the security measures put in place after 911 are not sufficient for protecting the American people.

When are people going to get this. The laws existing before (insert grand public hysteria event here) were sufficient. There is a difference between needing to increase the strength of the laws, thereby weakening civil liberties, and properly and thoroughly enforcing the laws which are already in place.

Where have they been?

[Bootle]

I'm curious where these GAO guys have been for the past SEVEN YEARS

Obvious solution

[Werrismys]

Just bomb and invade the nucler regulatory commission and proclaim problem solved, once and for all. Once and for all!

Have you RTFAed?

[mi]

Slashdot editor has not:

The bomb the investigators could have built would not have caused widespread damage or even high-level contamination. But it still could have had serious consequences, particularly economic ones, in any city where it was set off.

We always complain about government making lives (and business) harder for no reason. Well, getting "interviewed" by the commission, or having to submit pictures of the office and the list of employees to obtain such insignificant quantity of radioactive material could well be argued to be unduly burdensome.

Note, that the "serious consequences" are acknowledged by the article to be largely "economic" ones. Well, having to verify every such application would, likely, have much more of an economic impact. The article laments, that the bogus receiver of the license "had no offices, Internet site or employees. Its only asset was a postal box." So? Do we really want "having an office" to become a requirement for anything?..

Re:Law not sufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading the article I can tell you that the GAO guys are blowing this way out of proportion. The amount of Americium and Cesium that would be obtained in one of the moisture density devices is so small that you would need THOUSANDS, maybe hundreds of thousands of them to make any kind of 'dirty bomb'. The amount of Americium in one analyzer is about the size of a pin head, barely visible to the human eye. This is the same Americium that is in normal smoke detectors all around the country, in every home in every state. Millions of people have them, maybe we should all panic that terrorists will invade our homes and make dirty bombs out of our smoke detectors??

The reality of it is that I can take Americium and hold it in my hands. It's an alpha emission radioactive isotope, meaning the first layer of dead skin on my hands would be enough to block the radioactivity.

This is a scare article, designed to make the Bush administration look incompetent.

They forgot to mention that actually making the bomb EXPLODE would involve an entire process that would probably have sent off flags from other governmental agencies. They don't mention it because they were never going to build a bomb, and besides it looks 'scary' that the Nuclear Regulatory Committee allowed the license to potential terrorists rather than the Department of Agriculture allowing the purchase of a ton of fertilizer.

Why don't they publish an article on how you are being RADIATED every time you fly in an airplane? Or how about every time you go to the airport, you get NUKED by the metal detector!! Oh my we should ban all RADIATION it's going to be made into DIRTY BOMBS by terrorists and the Bush/Republicans/White Male Americans who are complicit since they caused 9/11!!!!!!eleven1!12!

Please...

Re:Law not sufficient

[Notquitecajun]

Somewhat true. I actually think that existing laws may have been TOO cumbersome for effective law enforcement, ie the lack of ability for communication between the CIA and domestic law enforcement. The problem with DHS is that it tries to do the job that COULD be done with effective communication between the FBI, CIA, NSA, and military.

Re:Where have they been?

[toleraen]

Check the news much? They've been there, all over the place [google.com] actually. They're there as advisers and auditors, not to police everything the USG does. Even the Comptroller General was on the Colbert Report not too long ago.

medical and waste from other countries

[circletimessquare]

doesn't matter if they plug this particular loophole. there a few others: radioactive waste and medical equipment. doesn't have to be from this country, ship it in in a lead lined cargo container. oh, we inspect all of those, right?

take a white van, pack it with TNT and strontium-90 [epa.gov] from radiotherapy equipment [cancerhelp.org.uk] or nuclear waste/ nuclear plant parts [epa.gov] and set it off in times square. doesn't have to cause a lot of damage. the real "bomb" is the psychological and economic bomb: no one will want to go to midtown manhattan anymore

after the explosion which would kill a half dozen people and shatter some windows (nothing, right?), you'd have reporters walking around with geiger counters, and talking about the half-life of strontium-90 [wikipedia.org] (28 years). 5.5 years after 9/11, we are still talking about the air quality issue [google.com] of the particles of concrete and steel and diesel fuel and aluminum and asbestos. that's all washed away by now. but radioactive contamination doesn't work that way. it sticks around for decades

in other words, you can kill a bunch of people. ok, they are gone, done for. case closed. people grieve, people move on. psychologically, it's cut and dry. but you can do another kind of bomb, something more sinister and insidious: you can damage a society more by introducing a permanent nagging environmental degradation in the form of low level radiation. this is far more damaging economically and psychologically. it's scandalous, it's a permanent nag in your head, not something you get over. and that's the whole point of terrorism: the instilling of terror. terrorists can't kill us all, but they can influence our thinking. to paraphrase stalin ("a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic"): the endless fretting over a nonquantifiable and continuous degradation to your health for years is perhaps more terrorizing than outright killing someone

that's why a dirty bomb is so nasty a concept, and why we should worry about it

Not quite a stop at Walmart

[palemantle]

The undercover operation involved an application from a fake construction company
the investigators, using commercially available equipment, were able to modify it easily
With that forged document, the auditors approached two industrial equipment companies to arrange to buy dozens of portable moisture density gauges

If some terrorists were really keen on getting their hands on some americium-241 and cesium-137, I reckon they might just choose to try and ... steal the stuff instead. Possibly easier and "safer" too.

Re:medical and waste from other countries

[i.r.id10t]

*snip* the real "bomb" is the psychological and economic bomb *snip*

QFT. The insane long lines, the stupid restrictions, etc. involved with air travel these days simply indicate that the terrorists have won. They no longer need to actually attack to distrup the lives of hundreds of thousands, the mere mention of the possibility of an attack or even a new attack vector is enough...

you don't get it

[circletimessquare]

fear isn't a neocon invention. setting off a dirty bomb doesn't have to kill a lot of people. in fact, if a dirty bomb killed one person, it would be more terrifying than a regular bomb that killed 1,000 people. a regular bomb: the dead people are gone. it's over. history. you can grive and put it behind you. but a dirty bomb causes a permanent nagging psychological degradation for decades, a permanent worry about nonquantifiable health effects. in other words, it terrorizes more effectively. set one off in midtown manhattan, and you would have reporters walking around with geiger counters talking about the half life of strontium 90 (30 years)

6 years after 9/11 we still have front page news stories about the air quality degradation of downtown manhattan in the weeks after 9/11. then epa chief whitman testifying last month [app.com], michale moore taking 9/11 rescue workers to cuba [app.com]. a son of one of the workers who died from that went to the state of the union address [wikipedia.org] ...in january 2007. this is 5.5 years later

catch my drift yet?

the people killed on 9/11 are dead and buried. almost 3,000 of them. even the dust from the event is all washed away. and yet the air quality issue lives on, and continues to involve us 6 years later. how many died from the dust? definitely or not? a dozen? a dirty bomb wouldn't have to kill a single person. at the moment of the explosion or ever from the radioactivity

it's all psychological, which is the whole point of terrorism in the first place

now imagine the ongoing media and societal handwringing that would go on with radioactive contamination. no matter how minimal. even if no one died. this is called terrorism. this is called fear. to paraphrase stalin ("a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic"): the endless fretting over a nebulous, low grade continuous degradation to your health, for years, is a more effective terrorist tool than outright killing thousands of people in one sudden event that is then permanently over. radioactive contaimination is not uddenly over. even if the contamination is tiny and insignificant scientifically, you are not thinking about human psychology and how fear works

furthermore, i would like to add that if you are a liberal, and you downplay the effects of terrorism and hype the effects of government abuses, you fail. and if you are a conservative, and you downplay the effects of government abuses, and hype the effects of terrorism, you fail

the only intellectual and morally honest position is to worry about BOTH terrorism and government abuses. to downplay one or the other is intellectually dishonest, and means you are just another lousy biased partisan. terrorism is real and dangerous. government abuses are real and dangerous. anyone who sits there and tries to argue against simple human fear of either government abuses or terrorism has instantly achieved a state of losing the argument and missing the point

Re:The GAO Application

[cayenne8]

"Actually those immigration forms foreigners have to fill out upon entering the US are not that far off from your questionaire."

That's only if you are foolish enough to try to come in by air or sea.

If you just come run across our southern border....there are no questionaire or questions asked. You won't be fingerprinted, or cataloged or have a background check.

And you won't get sent home either if you get caught.

Frankly, I don't know why anyone bothers with coming directly into the US by land or sea if the screening methods bothers them.