"Homeland security technology" is now part of the national lexicon. It lacks the panache of the old "trust-but-verify" edict, but it is still attracting plenty of admirers.
The demand for security technologies has escalated since the Sept. 11 attacks, and there's no slowdown in sight. The new Department of Homeland Security is projected to spend about $2 billion this year to build its technology infrastructure, with much of that money flowing into systems for data mining and information analysis, personnel identification and mapping, plus the assorted X-ray machines and sniffing dogs.
These technologies are either already at work or soon will be among the nation's ports, where the federal government is concentrating its first efforts to ensure cargo security.
Here is a sampling of what to expect:
-- Data Mining. A fancy term for software that sifts through databases and correlates the findings with something else. Customs does this every day with its electronic customs-clearance systems, and it does it well enough to be a serious contender to become the backbone of the entire homeland security technology initiative. Other uses would be for risk assessment and disaster recovery.
-- Biometrics. The dowdy identification card gets a makeover. Biometrics identifiers encode information about an individual's own biology, such as a voice print or the iris of the eye, to identify someone. The Coast Guard will require all waterfront personnel to carry a biometrics identification card as soon as one becomes feasible, and law enforcement is considering using it for identifying people who cross into the country.
Unlike data mining, biometrics is feasible but not yet mature. Scanning somebody's eyeball at the Canadian border is a nifty way to pass the time, but it's meaningless unless the information is matched to a name and address in a database. A scan still takes minutes, not seconds, to perform, making it impractical at congested border crossings.
-- Scanning/Imaging. X-rays or a variation thereof. An innovation on this frontier is American Science and Engineering Inc.'s "backscatter" technology to detect organic material, such as people or drugs, in high resolution, that would otherwise slip through standard X-ray machines.
-- Geospatial. "The Eye in the Sky," more conventionally known as satellite mapping, or remote sensing. Satellites have been photographing the earth for decades but with the purpose of gauging environmental destruction or foreign military activity. Now the Department of Transportation is assessing its use in photographing ports, terminals and other transportation hubs to peruse a wider geographic area than what's available through aircraft photography.
-- WMS Detection. The "Weapons of Mass Destruction" acronym refers to nuclear, chemical or biological weapons such as a nuclear "dirty bomb" that would contaminate a large city with radiation, trigger a strategic chemical spill, or unleash a deadly disease such as smallpox or anthrax. Understandably, finding and deactivating such weapons has been the military's job. That experience is being applied to ports and cargo-moving equipment instead of old Soviet warheads.
The people developing these technologies aren't always the usual suspects. The quest for homeland security technology is teaming unusual players who otherwise wouldn't have crossed paths. Experienced transport hands are sharing this space with experts on satellite mapping, and the country's national laboratories are cultivating knowledge in intermodal chassis equipment to complement their expertise in nuclear energy.
For example, Carl D'Emilio, president of Advent Inc., in New Providence, N.J., was born into the transportation business. His father was an associate of containerization pioneer Malcom McLean. "Every job I had growing up was with Maher Terminals or with a shipping line," he recalled.
In 1995 D'Emilio and his brother Mike founded Advent to develop transportation software. Their first cash cow was putting reference manuals online, which later evolved into full-scale applications development.
After Sept. 11 D'Emilio turned his attention to security with the intention of writing a white paper about the needs of the maritime industry. Instead the company wound up inventing its first piece of hardware, the Advent Sentry. The portable device attaches to the container crane's spreader bar and detects radiation levels. He is working closely with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which has responsibility for vetting homeland port technologies, to prove the technical worthiness of the tool.
Though D'Emilio isn't an engineer, his background in transportation led him to the conclusion that his company could make a unique contribution to the technology pool. "I was frustrated to see companies putting forth existing products and saying it's for security. Nobody was approaching it with a clean slate to see what was actually good," he said.
D'Emilio was surprised to find himself dealing with the Livermore National Laboratory. He is impressed with the lab's knowledge and zeal for learning the cargo business, but he's less sanguine about other initiatives.
"My biggest frustration is actually with Customs. The C-TPAT and CSI initiative are providing a false sense of security," he said. "They're saying that if you're a C-TPAT company then you're a safe company, but what's to stop someone from slipping $100,000 into someone's pocket overseas to get them to slip something into the box? That's why we need something more."
That something could be right above your head.
Satellite imagery to record port activities has a legitimate role in homeland security, said Ray Williamson, a professor at George Washington University who is part of a team of researchers who are evaluating remote sensing for transportation uses.
"Space-based systems give the transportation professional a new tool to use in those cases where you don't need the sharpness of detail that aircraft photography or digital cameras provide," Williamson said. Satellites can capture six to nine miles of space in one image. "Put that together in a mosaic and it gives you a tremendous tool to use quickly" for its ability to record the position of a moving object or person, or observe landmarks, he said. It would be particularly useful for emergency medical personnel who need to know what's in the immediate area when responding to a crisis, Williamson said.
The satellite data would be fed into Geographic Information System (GIS) software, which would then translate the information into a useful, visual tool for transportation planning.
The cost of obtaining satellite data is still undetermined for port purposes, so "it pays for transportation professionals to do a cost-benefit analysis of satellite data vs. aircraft data," Williamson cautioned.
But nothing's perfect, even in the high-tech world of satellite mapping, Williamson conceded. "If it's a cloudy day, then you're out of luck."
