Boston bombing reveals a new American maturity toward insecurity

The investigation into Aum Shinrikyo, amid intense media scrutiny, revealed how authorities had allowed followers of an apocalyptic cult to develop and stockpile sarin and other weapons of mass destruction. Revelations that the cult, registered as a religious legal entity, had been behind a string of other crimes, including a 1994 sarin attack on the northern town of Matsumoto in which eight people died, prompted a debate on how to reconcile constitutionally guaranteed religious freedoms with the safety of an increasingly nervous public.

A special surveillance law, passed in 2000, allows the police to monitor the activities of offshoots of Aum Shinrikyo, but some worry about the group's isolation.

"Human relations are weak in Japan, and that can act as a breeding ground for cults and new religions," says Yoshihide Sakurai, a professor at Hokkaido University who specializes in cults and new religions.

"There are people we don't understand, who may not think the same way the rest of society does or share our ideas about their purpose in life. There is no exchange between mainstream society and these groups, and that's where the danger lies."

Lockdown: a terror 'success'?

The Boston bombing case underscores that point. Cosmopolitan Cambridge, Mass., would hardly seem to be a breeding ground for cultural isolation and hatred. But according to reports and court documents, Mr. Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, masterminded their own terrorist plot with help from online videos while living there. It is a post-9/11 parable of American extremism, as terror networks such as Al Qaeda are increasingly eclipsed by self-radicalized "lone wolves" who often operate independently.

"Patterns of extremism evolved after 9/11," says Peter Romaniuk, a terrorism researcher at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "These guys don't need to attend an Al Qaeda training camp anymore."

For a police department seeking to find potential terrorists, he adds, "that makes the task extremely difficult."

Since 9/11, the New York Police Department has been a leader in counterterrorism. But its experience shows the challenges of trying to keep up with the constant mutations of extremism. In the early years after 9/11, the department was lauded for reaching out to communities that had members that might become radicalized. "NYPD won a lot of commendation," Professor Romaniuk says.

But as terrorism became harder to track, the NYPD turned to more invasive tactics. An Associated Press investigation detailed programs that profiled Muslims, tracking where they ate, prayed, and worked, even if they were not suspected of being a threat.

"There is a very fine line between trying to prevent people from becoming extremists and engaging in surveillance activities," says Romaniuk.

Even Boston has not been held above criticism for its decisions in the marathon bombing investigation. The decision to shut down much of the metropolitan area as authorities searched for Tsarnaev was a mistake, says Professor Elzo, the Spanish sociologist. "Never could these terrorists have imagined they would have been so 'successful': an entire city paralyzed to hunt them and the entire world tuned in to see it unfold," he says. "What an amazing motivation for future terrorists."

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