Urban Exploration Helps Terrorism, Counterterrorism Agency Warns

Urban Exploration Helps Terrorism, Counterterrorism Agency Warns

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/03/urban-exploration-terrorism/

 

    By Spencer Ackerman

    03.19.13

 

Some people are into spelunking through the urban ruins and crevasses of

unfamiliar cities. The National Counterterrorism Center has a term for these

sorts of people: terrorist dupes.

 

"Urban Explorers (UE) - hobbyists who seek illicit access to transportation

and industrial facilities in urban areas - frequently post photographs,

video footage, and diagrams on line [sic] that could be used by terrorists

to remotely identify and surveil potential targets," warns the nation's

premiere all-source center for counterterrorism analysis.

 

You might think that dude climbing across the girders of a suspension bridge

late at night intends to get a good view or to write some graffiti. But the

National Counterterrorism Center can't help but notice the pathway he takes

exposes "security vulnerabilities" inherent in the urban landscape, like

"access to structural components including caissons (the structures that

hours the anchor points of a bridge suspension system)" - all of which a

terrorist would find useful. Spelunking through subway tunnels might alert

terrorists to "electrical, ventilation or signal control rooms." The vantage

point of a rooftop provides a glimpse useful to the "disruption of

communication systems."

 

All of this was part of a one-sheet warning that the National

Counterterrorism Center issued in November and unearthed by our friends at

Public Intelligence. Named in the document are prominent urban-spelunker

websites like Undercity.org and Placehacking.co.uk, which grew out of

urban-geography Ph.D research. Should you observe "suspicious UE activity,"

the Center encourages you to report it to "the nearest State and Major Area

Fusion Center and to the local FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force."

 

A 1993 WIRED magazine piece, "Hacking the Material World," toured the

underground warrens beneath Columbia University, MIT and other major urban

schools. Geek Dad ran a 2008 piece about venturing through an abandoned

monorail system connected to the Toronto Zoo. The pieces contain either

photography of the landscape or details about hidden urban areas, and are

posted online - so by the logic of the National Counterterrorism Center,

WIRED has played into terrorist hands.

 

Urban exploration is not typically the reconnaissance mission of al-Qaida.

While it's not crazy to think that terrorists might be interested in

studying an urban landscape, the vanishingly few cases of domestic terrorism

in the post-9/11 era typically involved shooting up places like Fort Hood or

leaving a would-be car bomb in Times Square, rather than recon from the top

of a bridge or the depths of a subway tunnel. Such tips aren't even a part

of the DIY-terrorism advice column in al-Qaida's English language webzine.

 

Urban explorers probably might not have to feel singled out for long. Wait

until the National Counterterrorism Center learns about the architectural

drawings available for viewing in the nearest university library, or the map

brochures available to tourists at national landmarks.

 

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