By Stephen R. Galati, Contributing Writer
December 2011

When one thinks of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant programs and the risk of terrorist attacks, the first thought may be that government and public agencies are the primary targets. Although these agencies may hold higher visibility and threat risks, they are certainly not the only viable targets for acts of terrorism. Since the horrific attacks against the United States on September 11th, many nonprofit organizations, such as ones operating religious facilities and places of symbolic value, have become involved with infrastructure-hardening and emergency preparedness activities. The events of the last decade have served as a paradigm change in our collective understanding of national security.

The underlying power of the internet has always been the connection of ideas and people without regard to temporal, physical, social, or other common restraints. Through this communicative ease provided by the internet, crowd-sourcing is becoming a prominent feature in many aspects of our lives. Crowd-sourcing is essentially the enabling of a mass collaboration of individuals to contribute to a task normally reserved for one individual or a set number of individuals. The most prominent example to date is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia open to contributions and edits from anyone who chooses to participate.