Sept. 11, 2001: The Day the Earth Stood Still
2001: Militants from al-Qaida, a network of Sunni jihadists under the nominal leadership of Osama bin Laden, hijack four California-bound commercial airliners and use them to stage suicide attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. Nearly 3,000 people are killed in the most carefully orchestrated attack against U.S. targets since Pearl Harbor.
The fallout from what has become known, simply, as 9/11 continues to reverberate internationally, throughout all spheres of life. In the tech world, 9/11 and President Bush's subsequent declaration of a "war on terror" led to some nice profits in some sectors, especially among businesses involved in communications, surveillance, security and weapons technology.
Probably the most conspicuous tech impact on the average citizen involves the security measures now in place at virtually every major airport on Earth. Almost six years of trial and error, and an improvement in scanning equipment and training, have streamlined the process of screening every single passenger on every single flight, but this technology, like any, is hardly foolproof. It is, however, likely to remain a permanent fixture of airline travel.
More insidious is the intrusion of sophisticated surveillance technology into everyday life. Some of it -- like the Bush administration's controversial domestic spying program -- can be tied directly to 9/11. Under provisions granted by the Patriot Act, the government began actively spying on the communications of its own citizens, including the inspection of cell-phone records and e-mail logs.
Federal law enforcement officials, in the name of ferreting out terrorists (as well as more garden-variety criminals like child molesters and online fraudsters), have also pressured ISPs into providing customer information that allows them to track an individual's whereabouts on the internet. The result of all this has led many Americans, and some of their politicians, to begin questioning how much government intrusion is permissible in the name of homeland security.
Since it led directly to the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, 9/11's impact on military technology has also been profound, but not necessarily to the good. Rather, these conflicts have exposed the limitations of high-tech warfare on battlefields lacking a static front or a concentrated enemy force. If anything, the guerrilla war that followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein's conventional army seems better suited to low-tech ordnance: Roadside bombs and portable rocket launchers, for example, have been used to devastating effect against the Americans and their Iraqi allies.
In the end, though, 9/11's immediate effect on technology probably has had less to do with the development of new surveillance toys and weapons than it has with the mindset of the people using what's already available.
(Source: Various)
Quoted from http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/09/dayintech_0911:
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