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 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
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MAY 24, 2004
Homeland Security's Missing Link The U.S. is spending plenty on tech, but it could spare far more. Even more important is cohesive planning and implementation Workers used to take the day off for Chinese New Year at the Hong Kong International Terminals (HIT), the flagship outpost of shipping giant Hutchison Port Holdings in the former British protectorate. Now with the U.S. economy bubbling again and the global shipping business on the rebound, the busiest freight terminal in the busiest port on Earth goes full-tilt 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. From wrinkle-free pants to portable DVD players, the Hong Kong seaport moves 560,000 truckloads of merchandise to the U.S. each year. Starting in May, 2004, every single truck bringing a load to HIT will be screened for radioactive material and suspicious cargo using a new portable scanner built by Science Applications International. In the past, time constraints prevented 100% coverage. Older scanners required two to three minutes to accomplish their task. The new version takes only 10 seconds to scope out a truck, from front bumper to tailpipe -- a delay that's barely noticeable at HIT, where trucks have to make a hairpin turn to enter the terminal queue. Called a VACIS (vehicle and cargo inspection system), the device also combines two formerly separate scanning techniques. Gamma rays look for suspicious images, while radiation detection tracks radioactive signatures. MISPLACED PRIORITIES. Installing enough scanners to bring 100% screening capability to U.S. shipments traversing the world's 60 largest ports would cost $500 million to $600 million, less than the cost of a week's operations in Iraq. Extending the program to cover air cargo and other key means for moving goods would cost several billion more. Yet such a capability could provide far better visibility into U.S. transportation systems and their vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks. "When you have no system of tracking things, then you end up with a crisis of confidence and a Draconian response if something goes wrong," says Steven Flynn, a transportation security expert with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. "If you can at least identify where something came from with certainty, we won't have to shut down the Ambassador Bridge from Toronto because a box blew up in Long Beach." Sounds great. But Flynn and a growing chorus of critics say the Bush Administration has misplaced priorities in the war on terror, choosing to emphasize boots in the desert over far more economical and effective technology solutions to prevent terror closer to home. The federal government has spent only hundreds of millions on cargo protection and a fraction of that on VACIS programs. Even in instances where the Homeland Security Dept. has indicated that it'll pour big bucks into new programs, critics wonder if those efforts are part of a cohesive whole. "I don't think we're much safer as a result of technology," says James Lewis, director of technology policy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington (D.C.) think tank. "We have tons of gadgets and pilot projects, but we haven't tied them together for real intelligence." BIG QUESTIONS. Witness the $15 billion U.S.-VISIT program, an effort to identify foreign visitors as they enter America via land, sea, or air, and to track their whereabouts inside the country. Homeland Security is expected to assign the contract for the program, which will meld biometrics with cutting-edge computer networks, to one of three contractors within the next few months. However, the program is raising more questions than it answers. Namely: How will that information be shared among law-enforcement bodies, from the FBI down to the local gumshoes? And how will U.S.-VISIT tie into other government networks that still don't talk to each other, such as the highly isolated systems at the State Dept.? "If the system is able to combine the watchlist and disperse the information to the appropriate agencies, it's good. If it's just compiling information, it's a waste of money," says Representative John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the Aviation subcommittee of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee. So far, Homeland Security hasn't revealed the exact specifications of the project, but even in existing efforts, top-to-bottom sharing has proven problematic. At the same time, critics fear that intelligence efforts may go awry by a growing reliance on technology to do analysis work still better suited to humans.
BW MALL
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