ABCNews.com September 26, 2002
Slow Going for High-Tech Security
By Paul Eng
Sept. 26 - Within weeks of Sept. 11, 2001, various technology companies came out in full force, touting advanced screening systems that may help safeguard the United States from future terrorist attacks.
So-called biometric systems - setups that key in on a person's unique bodily features such as face and fingertips - would sort terrorists from innocent travelers. Advanced X-ray machines would spot dangerous weapons such as explosives or nuclear weapons whether they were hidden on a person or buried within a shipping container full of stuff.
Unfortunately as many security companies, government agencies, and security analysts note, such technologies haven't come to fruition within the past year. Nor, are they likely to be seen anytime soon.
"Within the next five years, things are going to change dramatically," says Johnathan Tal, president of Homeland Security Research Corp. in San Jose, Calif. "But not by the end of this year."
That's because the challenges to getting new security technologies in place are still legion. And the most difficult, says Tal, is trying to get government to respond to the new technologies as quickly as the industry can make them.
"There is a lot of good technology that could be applied to [homeland security] use," says Tal. But, "I think the government has not quite developed the mechanism to respond. It has to interface with the [tech] industry and that's sorely lacking."
Limited Testing
During the past year, for example, only a handful of companies have been able to put their systems through limited and isolated tests at airports. And the results of such tests are still being examined.
Viisage Technologies, a maker of facial recognition systems in Littleton, Mass, has been testing its security setup at Logan International airport since last November. The system is designed to screen passengers and airport employees by scanning their faces and comparing the digital images to a database of photos stored in a computer.
In the trial run at Logan, a certain number of airport employees were used as "suspects." And according to Cameron Queeno, chief marketing director for Viisage, the tests were pretty successful. "Our results showed that it picked up the [suspects] 90% of the time," he says.
But those results have yet to be verified by the Transportation Security Administration, the division of the Department of Transportation established last November to develop and implement improved anti-terrorism security systems and practices.
Cooperation Needed
And without the active involvement of the TSA and other federal government agencies such as the FBI, developing and deploying accurate biometric security systems nationwide would be difficult, if not impossible.
For one, security companies say that the TSA or some official agency has to be responsible for establishing, maintaining and sharing an "official" terrorist database.
"One of the issues of any biometric technology is that you have to have a robust database, says Iain Drummond, president and chief executive officer of Imagis Technologies, Inc., another biometric software developer in Vancouver, Canada. In facial recognition systems, for example, some official agency must release to each system the collection of terrorists' faces to match against. "If you don't have that, you're screwed."
More importantly, the TSA needs to establish the so-called infrastructure - the communications network and standards - by which biometric systems can share information nationwide.
"You have to [install the systems in] all the airports around the nation," says Drummond who notes that some of the 9/11 terrorists started their suicide trips at a small airport in Bangor, Maine. "If you don't, there's a chink in the armor."
Bringing Airports Up to Speed
At the Homeland Security Tech Expo held last week in Arlington, Va., Dept. of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta acknowledged that the TSA was working "to examine the possibility" of developing biometrics and other technologies to help secure the nation from terrorist attacks. But analysts doubt that anything will develop quickly.
John Pike, director of online military research firm GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Va., notes that the TSA already has a full plate.
For example, the TSA still has the challenge of bringing every airport in the nation up to speed with federally-trained personnel and explosive-detecting X-ray machines by the end of the year. And while the TSA is on track to deliver the required federal screeners to all 429 commercial airports by Nov. 19, TSA director James Loy says that 20 to 35 airports will not have the approriate bomb-detecting machines installed by year-end.
"It's turned out that the first order of baggage and passenger inspection is taking longer [than expected]," says Pike. "Until they have got those squared away, it will be hard for them to focus on all the other stuff."
© Copyright 2002 ABCNews.com
