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Intelligence is surest
shield against terror

THE ISSUE Dozens were killed and hundreds injured in a terrorist attack in London.

THE terrorist attack that British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been saying for nearly four years was "inevitable" in his country finally tore mercilessly through London. The British remain resilient, realizing that the battlefront extends to a variety of venues throughout the free world.

The United States and other countries initiated extensive precautions following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America to prevent future hijackings of commercial airlines to be used as weapons, but they have not been enough.

Since then, bombs have killed 202 people in nightclubs on the Indonesian island of Bali, 62 people -- including four suicide bombers -- at two synagogues, the British Consulate and a London-based bank in Istanbul, Turkey, and 191 commuters at train stations in Madrid.

Ground transportation has become a favorite target of terrorists, who are not confronted with the same level of searches and screening that has been installed at airports. Such measures would be impractical at mass transportation sites. Sea ports are another vulnerability.

Yesterday's attack occurred coincidentally the day after London was selected to host the 2012 Olympic Games. Its timing as G-8 leaders gathered in Gleneagles, Scotland, was almost certainly not just coincidence; such attacks are not planned overnight, and British police and security forces could have been presumed to be focusing on Scotland.

While spotting terrorists boarding trains or buses might be next to impossible because of the enormous ridership, random searches and the use of bomb-sniffing dogs could be expanded. Good intelligence and sharing of information about plans of al-Qaida and its numerous affiliated cells throughout the world should be given the highest priority.

British police and counterterrorism officials say they had no clue from the swarms of intelligence gathered in the days leading up to the attack that it might have been forthcoming. The country's threat level had even been reduced from the highest level in early June.

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New law helps fight
airborne spam

THE ISSUE The governor signed into law an expansion of counties' authority to ban aerial signs.

FACED with intrusive banners dragged behind airplanes visible from the islands, Governor Lingle has signed into law a bill that would expand counties' authority to ground them. The new law will be added to ammunition aimed at a lawsuit against bans on aerial signs, but federal legislation might be needed to permanently keep the banners on the ground.

The legislation was prompted by the plans of California-based Center for Bio-Ethical Reform Inc. to display an image of an aborted fetus on banners 50 feet high and 100 feet long in the skies over Waikiki. A city ordinance bans such airborne billboards, but the antiabortion group claims the city has no jurisdiction over airspace.

When the City Council passed the ordinance in 1997, a Federal Aviation Administration handbook said planes flying lower than 1,000 feet must "understand and obey" local and state bans of such fly-overs. After the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the city's authority to impose such a ban, the FAA deleted the deference clause from its handbook.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra still upheld the city's spam-in-the-sky ban last November, and the case is now on appeal to the 9th Circuit. He asserted that the ban "serves legitimate needs, including minimization of distractions for passersby, and preservation of the natural beauty of Oahu's environment."

The new law aims at authorizing counties to prohibit displays in airspace or waters beyond county boundaries if they are visible from any public place. According to the Outdoor Circle, it also would disallow aerial displayers from departing from an airport on Molokai, where aerial displays are allowed, and towing their spam-in-the-sky to the skies above other islands.

Key questions to be addressed in the court appeal are whether the counties' reach beyond their boundaries exceeds their legal jurisdiction and whether their reach to skies above and within the counties usurps that of the FAA.

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