In October 2001, the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act gave federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies expanded powers to conduct searches and detain individuals suspected of planning terrorist attacks. This law has been criticized, however, for going too far in taking away the civil liberties and privacy of American citizens.

Tightening Export Controls
Given the "dual-use dilemma" described in Chapter 4 and the rapid diffusion of legitimate pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries around the world, strengthened export controls can buy time but do not offer a long-term solution to the problem of biological weapons proliferation. Accordingly, export controls should be seen as just one of a group of policy tools for preventing the terrorist acquisition of biological weapons.

Strengthening Biosecurity Measures
Another approach to preventing bioterrorism is to improve the security of research laboratories and culture collections that possess or work with dangerous pathogens. In 2002, Congress passed legislation to regulate the possession and transfer of pathogens and toxins on a list of "select agents" of bioterrorism concern.

Under the new regulations, laboratories throughout the United States that possess select agents are required to register with the federal government, and all scientists working with them must undergo an FBI security check. Further, the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 specifies certain categories of "restricted persons" who are denied access to select agents altogether, such as citizens of countries on the State Department's list of states that sponsor terrorism.

Although the United States has tightened its domestic controls on who is granted access to dangerous pathogens, such materials are still widely available overseas. In addition to the large number of foreign laboratories that store pathogens such as Bacillus anthracis under insecure conditions, many of the roughly 500 culture collections worldwide that sell these materials for scientific or industrial research are not well regulated.

During the late 1980s, for example, Iraqi government scientists ordered virulent strains of Bacillus anthracis and other pathogens from a culture collection in the United States, supposedly for peaceful public health research. Although the shipments were properly approved by the U.S. Department of Commerce, they found their way into the Iraqi biological warfare program. This example suggests the need for internationally agreed upon restrictions on who is given access to dangerous pathogens, as well as negotiated global standards for ensuring the physical security and biosafety of microbial culture collections.

Reducing the Vulnerability of Buildings
Certain high-profile targets, such as federal buildings, could be made less vulnerable to bioterrorist attack by ensuring that their air intakes are not easily accessible from the street or the roof, and by installing high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters in the ventilation systems to remove infectious microbes from the circulating air.