Software Tracks Suspect Cell Phones
A Montreal-based company has developed a software program that can
profile terrorist suspects by tracking their cellular-phone movements.
The firm is now trying to market this technology to U.S. government
agencies.
The system is based on “passive location tracking,”
said Alexandre Legendre, president of Profilium Inc. “Just
the fact that your phone is on means the network knows where you
are.” The company had been marketing the technology in recent
years as a means of broadcasting advertisements to cell phone users
in specific areas.
Using a technique called “geo-profiling,” the software
assigns anonymous identification numbers to cellular phone users
in a given area of the world, and then collects data about movements
and activities. That data can then be used to predict potentially
unlawful activity. The system does not require specific phone numbers
or any other proprietary information owned by the cell phone providers.
According to Legendre, “Geo-profiling can be used to monitor
specific activities, in specific areas at specific times. For example,
what is a person doing at 3 a.m. in the proximity of a nuclear plant?”
Another example of an action that could trigger an alert would be
if a person crosses the U.S.-Canada border 10 times in a given month
at different boarder crossings, Legendre said.
“As users roam within and between mobile networks, Profilium
is able to capture specific movements and convert this raw data
into behavioral profiles that describe their movements in the context
of the real world,” he said.
The tracking system has a 50-meter accuracy, and works indoors,
Legendre said.
He acknowledged that there are inherent privacy questions associated
with this technology that must be resolved. Meanwhile, Profilium
has partnered with Ericcson, Lucent and Siemens, and has plans to
move into the U.S. defense marketplace.
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Chem-Bio Command Center Tested Successfully
A new high-tech command post that monitors every chemical and biological
detector in the Pentagon works as planned, based on a recent test,
officials said.
A chemical defense exercise held in May in the Pentagon courtyard
was the first time the Biological Chemical Joint Operations Center—a
computerized command post stood up in November—participated
in a full-up live drill. That exercise, called “Misty Court,”
had been planned before 9/11, in partnership with Virginia’s
Arlington County Fire Department, which is responsible for responding
to any attacks on the Pentagon. The BCJOC, however, is a new capability,
conceived after the 9/11 attacks.
The exercise showed that the BCJOC works as planned, said Roger
C. Smith, who was the head evaluator of the BCJOC during “Misty
Court.”
The BCJOC is located a few miles from the Pentagon, at the Navy
Annex. About a half-dozen operators monitor the computer screens,
some of which remotely monitor every chemical biological and radiological
detector located in the Pentagon complex.
The center operates around the clock. The staff currently consists
entirely of reservists, in addition to two or three representatives
from Camber Corp., the contractor that manages the BCJOC. Eventually,
the goal is for the BCJOC to be staffed by both active-duty military
and civil servants.
The Pentagon is protected by layers of detectors, located in the
perimeter and other secret areas of the building, as well as in
the HVAC system. If a sensor shows the presence of any agents, the
BCJOC can recommend whether to shut down the air-conditioning and
ventilation systems or increase overpressure, to blow out the contaminated
air.
The exercise with Arlington’s fire department was the first
one that ever tested a Level 3 response, the highest level of alert.
Unlike Level 1 or 2 alerts, Level 3 means that there is a confirmed
presence of a toxic agent and that there are casualties.
In recent months, there have been instances of false alarms at
the Pentagon, when, for example, ordinary pesticides or paint fumes
triggered Level 2 alerts.
In cases of a Level 3 alert, a public-address announcement is broadcast
throughout the Pentagon. A new alert system tested on May 8 involved
an electronic message that popped up on all 20,000 Defense Department
employee computers, overriding whatever software applications they
were working on. This capability was tested successfully, said Smith.
In a Level 3 situation, he explained, a conference call immediately
is established between the Defense Protective Services operations
center, the BCJOC and the Arlington County fire chief, who would
serve as the incident commander during a chemical terrorist event.
— • — • —
Options Debated for NorthCom
Since Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced the creation of
the Northern Command to handle homeland security operations, it
has not been made clear how this command will be staffed, or what
the force mix will be.
Those decisions are not yet finalized, said a senior Pentagon official,
briefing reporters on background. Currently, a so-called “integrated
process team,” is developing options for the force makeup
of Northern Command, the official said.
The team includes representatives from Joint Forces Command, Space
Command, the Joint Staff and the office of the defense secretary.
They are “working their way through this, trying to figure
out what the structure of the headquarters [and the subordinate
organizations] would be like,” the official said.
“Do they need forces assigned, and if so, active reserve
and what mix, for what missions? And that will, I think, begin to
jell probably late summer, early fall, when they’ll have to
come back and give the secretary their recommendations.”
The recommendations need to be ready on time for the command to
begin operation on October 1.
— • — • —
Dealing With ‘Dirty Bomb’ Threats
Speeding up the elimination of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium
is one way to mitigate the “dirty-bomb” threat, experts
said.
Security analysts and policymakers have speculated in recent months
on whether terrorists could get their hands on dirty bombs. These
devices contain nuclear materials, packed with conventional high
explosives. When detonated, it wouldn’t cause a nuclear explosion,
but it would contaminate a large area with toxic radiation. “It
would cause widespread panic, and it would be difficult to clean
it up,” said Rose Gottemoeller, the Clinton administration’s
deputy secretary for defense nuclear non-proliferation at the Department
of Energy.
The dirty bomb was in the headlines this month, after the Justice
Department disclosed an alleged terrorist plot involving nuclear
radiation. An al Qaeda associate, a U.S. citizen named Abdullah
al Muhajir was arrested after authorities learned he might have
been scouting potential dirty-bomb targets in the United States.
Gottemoeller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, said administration officials would benefit from reading
Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government new study, entitled,
“Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate
Action.” The study makes recommendations on how to tackle
the nuclear threat, for example. “We’ve got to mix enhancing
physical protection with trying to speed up disposition or elimination
of highly enriched uranium and plutonium,” she said.
Another problem has to do with the “brain drain” of
nuclear scientists from the former Soviet bloc countries and the
possibility that they might sell their expertise to countries hostile
to the United States, she said.
“We have to accelerate and develop a wider-ranging cooperation
not only with Russia but with our current allies in Europe and with
Japan,” she said.
Peter Huessy, a missile defense expert from the National Defense
University, said that the United States has “a number of critically
important programs to get rid of Russian nuclear material, including
spent-fuel plutonium warheads, which the Bush administration has
proposed to specifically expand and strengthen ... so these materials
don’t fall into the hands of terrorist organizations or rogue
states.”
— • — • —
Securing Nuclear Weapons
The threat of nuclear terrorism is urgent enough that the United
States government ought to be taking immediate steps to address
it, according to a report by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Matthew Bunn, an author of “Securing Nuclear Weapons and
Materials: Seven Steps for Immediate Action,” noted that,
“In all the second guessing about what people knew and should
have done before September 11, it became clear that most of the
warnings were not specific enough to have prevented the action.
Whereas in the nuclear era, we do have information, and we know
where our vulnerabilities are.
“We know that Bin Laden sees the acquiring of weapons of
mass destruction as a religious duty. There is court testimony from
al Qaeda operatives about their efforts to buy highly enriched uranium,
and there is evidence of other attempts to buy nuclear materials
from the former Soviet Union.
“We have made communications intercepts, and we have seized
from Al Qaeda safe houses, crude nuclear weapons designs. This proves
we need to move as fast as we can to secure not only our own nuclear
weapons, and also nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union and
around the world.”
A global policy is needed, said Bunn, “to carry out rapid
security upgrades where the material needs to remain, to help with
decommissioning and getting rid of irradiated material.”
The poster child for this kind of effort is the Research Reactor
that had highly enriched uranium, in the former soviet Republic
of Georgia, Bunn said. At one point, there was so little security
available at this installation that it was learned that personnel
were “guarding the installation with sticks and garden rakes.
Through work with Georgia, Britain, and the United States, a trilateral
effort to remove the material” took place. The U.S. provided
funding, and the British provided the nuclear waste processing plants.
The plan was called Project Auburn Endeavor.
— • — • —
Explosives Detection Technology
The U.S. Navy recently signed a $36 million multi-year contract
to buy 1,400 units of a new hand-held explosive detectors. The systems
would be used aboard ships and at naval installations.
The 7-pound device, called Vapor Tracer, is made by Ion Track,
in Wilmington, Mass. Paul Eisenbraun, a company vice president,
said the technology is based on a so-called “mobility spectrometer.”
A suspect substance is pumped into the vapor detector, to get ionized,
positive or negatively charged, he explained. The system measures
how fast the particles go from one end of the detector to the other.
That is how it differentiates between explosives and non-explosives.
According to Eisenbraun, the system recently was used to detect
a bomb aimed at the U.S. ambassador in Chile, and it was found in
the mail room before it was delivered.