Learning occurs when we recognize opportunities to learn. BP, Toyota, even Johnson & Johnson, haven’t seemed to learn key lessons of crisis management – first, do everything you can through sound management to avoid a crisis. Then, if one occurs anyway, have a plan to deal with it promptly and credibly.

Steve Lasky, the Publisher/Editor in Chief of Security Technology Executive magazine, notes in the June/July issue that “Even the best products in the best-run companies can be susceptible to a crisis. And even though the crisis can be founded on incorrect information, or it can arise from misuse of a product by a consumer, the way that the news is treated can adversely affect the product in both the short and long term unless the crisis is managed properly and effectively from the outset.”

In short, be prepared. Seek to avoid crises, but if one occurs, be ready to deal with it effectively.

Levy makes an even more basic point: “Use a crisis as the opportunity to reset your moral compass. Morality does matter, and yours will show itself under pressure.”

It’s not that hard: Act in terms of right and wrong. Those choices will be apparent when you’re looking to make them.

Courses on terrorism and homeland security are becoming part of college offerings across the U.S.

Along with the awareness among educators and students that it’s an increasingly dangerous world, the courses are being prompted by  a dozen Centers of Excellence at universities and research centers that were established in the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

“The centers were asked by the feds,” reports National Public Radio, “to increase the nation’s understanding of various aspects of dangerous threats, including explosives, chemical and biological attacks, the behavioral side of evil and other alarm-bell issues.”

Sad that to be pertinent, education is venturing into pernicious areas. But security begins with awareness of potential dangers. So Disaster 101, suggests NPR,  may be coming to a campus near you.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has spent more than $80 million on about 500 body scanning machines and plans to install 1,000 of them at airports by the end of next year. But they’re not getting great reviews.

USA Today reports that the full body scanners are being hit for slowing the movement of passengers through checkpoints, for not being used “strategically” enough, for possibly not detecting given items, and for raising fears of possible health effects on passengers.

TSA denies the assertions, and the queues go on.

A JetBlue passenger ran off barefooted as a TSA officer spotted a gun in his carry-on bag at JFK Airport. The screening process worked, although investigators don’t think a hijacking of the plane was in view.

The would-have-been passenger, Junior Almonte, 30, was charged with gun possession and possession of stolen property after he was apprehended at the airport.

Congratulations to the alert TSA screeners, even though this seems to have been another amateurish situation.

A failed New York subways bomb plot last year  has been tied to an Al Qaeda terrorist conspiracy that planned a similar attack in England, U.S. prosecutors say.

Attorney General Eric Holder has called the New York subway plot  one of the most dangerous since 9/11.

In an indictment unsealed earlier this month, U.S. prosecutors said the charges “underscore the global nature of the terrorist threat we face.”  In other words, Al Qaeda activists may be busy on both sides of the Atlantic. Security no doubt are paying heed.

“See Something, Say Something” has properly caught DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s favor and is about to become emphasized in homeland security tactics.  The public will need to be alert to suspicious packages and other signs of potential terrorism, to “Say Something” in a timely manner. There likely will be far more false alarms than actual incidents, however, and thankfully so.

But security officials in locales across the country can help citizens refine their perception of what’s unusual and deserving of “Saying Something” about. As an indication of how that may unfold, we take you to New York City’s subway system, where “See Something, Say Something” has been getting a pilot run.

In New York, the Metropolitan Transit Authority has an “888″ number to call if passengers on its trains see anything that strikes them as worth a call. Such items include, by the MTA’s listing:

• Be alert to unattended packages.
• Be wary of suspicious behavior.
• Take notice of people in bulky or inappropriate clothing.
• Report exposed wiring or other irregularities.
• Report anyone tampering with surveillance cameras or entering unauthorized areas.
• Learn the basics of safe train evacuation.

Such a list will need to be amended for localities across the country, but it’s worth deciding what should be on it, and helping the public get familiar with appropriate precautions – namely, an easily-at-hand 800 number, or personal reporting stations. This, unfortunately, is a new era for us all. By all means, “See Something, Say Something.”

Bruce Schneier tips us to a lengthy series of articles in the Toronto  Star on how a terrorist plot four years ago to set off bombs in Toronto was uncovered and broken up. Thank you, Bruce, for this lead on the “motley crew” that comprised the Toronto 18.

It’s got to be a great series, for Bruce, of all people, says “there’s lots of stuff in this article I had not read before.”

The Washington Post ran a fascinating July 4 story and photo gallery on how U.S. security officials “work around the clock to protect the nation.”  Security officers anywhere will identify with the strains of the work.

Want to do some reading and thinking about security? How about the notion of creating security through a community of involvement – practitioners joining together to figure out what can make their buildings or systems safer?

Philip J. Palin, a research fellow with the Pace University graduate program in Management for Public Safety and Homeland Security Professionals, proposes on Homeland Security Watch that we at least think about joining together for the common defense.

Anyone remember the air raid wardens in World War II? My father was one. That was as a volunteer. Palin’s grandfather worked for the Soil Erosion Service of the Interior and, later, Agriculture departments during the Dust Bowl years. That was a paid job. But both helped build community and preparedness on their rounds.

In the gulf, Palin suggests, why not get the stakeholders together “to participate, collaborate and deliberate,” the way a community would do it. “For example, as a lease requirement, every party awarded drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico would participate in and partially fund preparedness activities with other drillers, with state and local officials in the region, with the Coast Guard, with federal regulators, and with representatives of all those who share an interest in the common-pool resources of the Gulf of Mexico.”

In cities and suburbs, we might add, why not get people concerned with emergency preparedness and infrastructure security – public and private – together to support each other and enhance public safety?

It’s time, Palin suggests, that Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone ceases to become the defining book of our times. Think about that; better yet, act in favor of community. We have too little social capital left; we need to create more.

People on the streets of midtown Manhattan – and into the city’s uptown and downtown districts as well – are going to be routinely “on camera” in this age of security-centered anti-terrorist measures.

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told the Association for a Better New York this week that about 450 of a planned network of 3,000 cameras have been installed between 30th to 60th streets.

The new cameras feed into the NYPD’s  lower Manhattan security-coordination center, Kelly said. And they are so sensitive “they can zero in on an unattended briefcase or pinpoint suspects by their jacket color,” The New York Post reports.

Big Brother? Maybe, but that’s where due concern over terrorism in a glamor center like New York has been taking us. London, too, has it own similar “ring of steel”.