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http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/15/magazine/15CELL.html?tntemail0

Cell-Tower Anthrax-Detection Network, The

By BRUCE STERLING

ellphones were sometimes called ''wingless angels'' after the tragedies of Sept. 11. They helped save trapped people and quickly reunited disaster survivors. They enabled the captive uprising that kept a fourth hijacked plane from attacking Congress or the White House, thus saving America's political leadership from the fate of the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

In 2002 came the ''SensorNet'' proposal, the first coherent plan to transform the American cellphone system into an organized, state-supported bulwark of homeland security.

The scheme is simple. The United States has some 30,000 cell-phone towers coast to coast. By no coincidence, these towers are grouped around the densest population centers, usually in the tallest points around. Cellphone towers therefore make ideal platforms for anthrax sensors, which sniff the wind for dangerous spores. In biowarfare, early warning strongly favors the defenders. An attack that is quickly detected and identified can be snuffed out before it becomes a raging plague.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, once a stalwart of cold war nuclear-bomb research, is the home of the SensorNet effort. Scientists at Oak Ridge were already engaged in a five-year, $45-million project to develop an early-warning air sensor to detect biological and chemical attacks: the Block II Chem-Bio Mass Spectrometer. Similar sensors for detecting radiological exposure already exist.

Under SensorNet, such units would be strapped to cellphone towers, where they would get solid physical support and cheap, dependable electric power. Linked together, these sensors might become an instant national alarm system -- for a mere $2 billion or so.

Of course, there are a number of airborne threats to American health and safety that are caused not by Al Qaeda but by Americans themselves: vehicle exhaust, factory emissions and cigarette smoke. SensorNet could keep an eye on those as well. For its investment, then, the American public might harness today's bleak paranoia and provide a genuine and long-lasting improvement in public health and the cleanliness of American cities.

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