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 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
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MAY 13, 2003
The State of Homeland Security [Page 3 of 3] PRIVACY CONCERNS. Increasingly, though, homeland security initiatives have run afoul of civil libertarians. Screening procedures for immigration processes and air-travel passengers that involve deep background checks against large databases and, in the case of immigration, biometric identification, have raised particular ire. Critics say the powerful new databases add little to security since the authorities could easily have tracked the 9/11 terrorists with existing means but failed to do so for because of a stifling bureaucracy and poor police work. "Efforts by federal agencies to incorporate computerized travel records into government dossiers have created an urgent need for comprehensive federal travel-data privacy legislation modeled on the data-privacy laws in Canada and Europe," says Edward Hasbrouck, author of a travel book series titled The Practical Nomad and a vocal critic of the Transportation Safety Administration's new iteration of the Computer Assisted Passenger Screening System, dubbed CAPPS II (see BW Online, 3/27/03, "Putting the Blinders Back on Big Brother"). Congress so far has expressed its own misgivings with the current balance between security and privacy by refusing to pass a new, more intrusive version of the U.S. Patriot Act, key parts of which are scheduled to expire in 2005. Meantime, the hype over the ability of technology to improve homeland security continues to outrun its achievements. Most projects using truly advanced technology remain in the pilot phase -- even though they offer insights into a new era when much of the drudge work that now depends on humans -- and that suffers from human error -- will be automated. At North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego, the military has installed a computer-driven system from Atlanta company VistaScape that uses data culled from images grabbed by high-quality video cameras to create a virtual visual perimeter around ships. JUST THE BEGINNING. This could ultimately replace sailors with binoculars scanning the horizon. Designed to prevent a repeat of the USS Cole attack where a small boat laden with explosives blew a hole in the side of a Navy destroyer anchored in Yemen, the VistaScape system can spot small craft as far as 4 kilometers out and relay their exact coordinates to officers on watch. "The software doesn't blink," claims Glenn McGonnigle, VistaScape's CEO. Both critics and boosters of homeland security efforts to date agree that the journey toward better security is just beginning. Seattle's Sarten recalls a conversation she had recently with a Chinese shipping official. He explained that in many parts of the Middle Kingdom, the first stage of logistics involves bringing products to a small truck on a horse-drawn cart. That small truck is driven to meet a small train. The small train is then moved to meet a larger train carrying standard containers that, finally, make it onto the ship. Sarten's point? Even if U.S. inspectors look at the final step of the delivery process, they'll miss the previous four. "You can put a good seal on a bad cargo, and all that means is that you have put a good seal on something you don't want to allow into the U.S., anyway," she says. SIMPLE STEPS. In other words, basic intelligence and legwork still remain the key factors driving enhanced security. "What has worked well is good old-fashioned police work. Investigating terrorist networks has resulted in arrests. Interdicting terrorist funding has worked. Rolling up terrorist networks, both at home and abroad, has made us all safe," says Bruce Schneier, a security expert and publisher of the Crypto-Gram cyber-security newsletter. In that respect, despite big failings and perhaps a lack of vision, the Bush Administration has enhanced safety by boosting security staffing and taking basic but previously overlooked steps to ensure better coordination among agencies and between the private and public sectors. The TOPOFF2 exercise running the week of May 12 is an example of that. Sure, it's a bit of a cakewalk. But it'll help get homeland security responders and planners ready for more rigorous tests later. After all, getting in the right frame of mind is half the security battle.
 By Alex Salkever, Technology editor for BusinessWeek Online Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
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