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security beat
December 2006
Homeland Security tussles with GAO over radiation portals
Reported by Stew Magnuson
 A Department of Homeland Security official said he was confident that the next generation of portals designed to find nuclear materials in shipping containers will work despite a withering Government Accountability Office report questioning performance data and their high price tags.
“The department really doesn’t like to struggle with GAO in public,” Howard Reichel, assistant director for systems development and acquisition at DHS’ Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, said at an Institute for Defense and Government Advancement border management conference.
However, he went on to do just that.
“We tested them every which way under the sun. We tested them with easy things. We tested them with hopelessly hard things that no device could ever find. We tested devices that worked very well. We tested devices that were broken half the time during the test.”
The tests were conducted on seven systems that ultimately weren’t chosen, he said.
DHS awarded contracts to three vendors, Raytheon Co., Thermo Electron Corp. and Canberra Industries Inc.
When looking at the performance of the three selected systems on amounts of nuclear material that would actually pose a threat to security, they were 95 percent effective, he said.
“Believe me, I showed [those results] to GAO,” he added.
Congressional appropriators called for the report after the first generation of portals showed high false alarm rates. The detectors could not distinguish between naturally occurring radiation found in such items as kitty litter and potentially harmful nuclear material.
The report also pointed out that the second generation of portals, which should be able to sort out harmful radiation from the benign, will cost $377,000 apiece — much higher than the maligned first-generation portals, which cost $55,000.
The House and Senate appropriations committees made funding of the next generation portals contingent upon solid performance data.
Reichel said production units will be tested extensively beginning in January.
When asked if the credibility of the recently formed DNDO was at stake, he said, “The department is on the hook, of course, with the appropriations bill to produce [results.] I have confidence that we will pass.”
Unmanned aerial vehicles will be used sparingly and in “tactical situations” to patrol U.S. borders as the new SBInet system of systems is rolled out, according to the program’s manager.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Kirk Evans said an aerial drone randomly patrolling the border looking for illegal migrants or smugglers is an inefficient way to use such assets.
Instead, they could be used during peak times in high traffic areas, in deep valleys, above arroyos, where it is hard to spot trespassers, or in cases when a fast response is needed, such as vehicle incursions.
If “they’re moving fairly rapidly and if you’re not going to be able to close in on that vehicle on time, put a UAV on it,” Evans said at an Institute for Defense and Government Advancement conference.
Customs and Border Protection in October began flying a new MQ-9 Predator B drone. Its first drone crashed in the Arizona desert earlier in the year.
Boeing Corp. won the coveted SBInet contract with a proposal that relies heavily on sensors mounted on ground-based towers rather than aerial assets.
Boeing will have until June 8, at the latest, to prove it can deploy its concept on a 28-mile-long stretch in the Tucson, Ariz., sector. The first phase will serve as a way to learn lessons for the rest of the project, Evans said. It will include nine mobile radar towers, two command and control centers and a new radio system for Border Patrol agents.
Determining the right mix of agents, technology and infrastructure for the wildly diverse terrains found on different stretches of the southern and northern borders will require what Evans called “border calculus.”
Key will be locating the “vanishing points,” an invisible line or place where transgressors can safely blend into the local population, and capture is nearly impossible. In some urban areas, that may be a supermarket just a few hundred yards past a fence. In remote spots, it could be a country road 20 miles past the border. Each case will require a different mix of technology, manpower and infrastructure, he said.
One unknown quantity in the so-called “border calculus” is the recently passed bill requiring the establishment of a 700-mile fence along the southern border.
Evans said his office will negotiate with Congress for flexibility. “Fencing alone doesn’t give you border control anywhere,” he insisted.
“We will be very resistant to putting in a fence without a sensor suite with it,” he added.
While services such as the Army and Marines have had difficulties attracting recruits as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on, that’s not the case at the Coast Guard.
The service met 101 percent of its recruiting goals for active duty enlisted personnel for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. The Coast Guard exceeded its goal of 3,950, attracting an extra 42 members.
“Interest in the Coast Guard is high,” said Capt. Steven E. Vanderplas, the head of the recruiting command. The highly visible role the service played in Hurricane Katrina “vividly” illustrated that the “Coast Guard is an exciting, relevant career choice for America’s youth,” he said.
The service, however, fell 5 percent short of its goal of attracting active duty and reserve commissioned officers, filling 317 of its 334 slots.
Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen told reporters at the National Defense Industrial Association Coast Guard conference that he has been continuously amazed at the high caliber of new recruits. The current generation of enlistees is more technically adept than those of his generation.
Recruits wanting to join the service hoping to avoid combat zones should know that the Coast Guard does serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom. However, getting assigned there is competitive, Coast Guard personnel have told National Defense. If a member re-enlists during deployment, the signing bonus is free of federal income taxes.
Researchers working on grants from the National Science Foundation are exploring revolutionary ways to screen passengers at airports.
“What we are typically doing is screening for capabilities,” said Richard Donovan, a professor of engineering at Montana Tech in Butte. “We are developing a new approach that really is screening for intent.”
Screeners look for capabilities in the form of knives, gels or liquids or box cutters. Screening for intent is looking for behaviors that are anomalous, he said. The university is developing an autonomous sensor network that uses artificial intelligence algorithms to classify the activities of people as they approach or move about an airport.
Mark Frank, a researcher at the University of Buffalo’s communications department, is using computer vision algorithms to automatically identify deception and other behaviors that a terrorist might subtly display. There are cultural differences in the ways emotions manifest themselves on the face. However, physiological responses to emotions such as fear are universal.
The Buffalo team is made up of both computer scientists and behavioral scientists.
“We believe behavioral clues can be an important layer — not the end-all and be-all by any stretch — but just another layer of security that will hopefully facilitate the adequacy and accuracy of … decision-making,” Frank said.
NSF is also funding a grant at the University of West Virginia’s computer science and electrical engineering department that is investigating ways to automatically identify a person through biometrics.
The system might be a kiosk where sensors can read height, scan a face, and if there are high-resolution cameras, iris patterns. The concept is called “biometric fusion,” said Arun Ross, a professor at the department.
Key to creating such a system will be catching cheaters. For example, a contact lens or fake finger could be used to trick the sensors. Researchers are working on “liveness detection sensors” to solve that problem, he said.
While the recently signed Port Security Improvement Act of 2006 has numerous provisions for inspecting inbound shipping containers, a Rand Corp. report suggests that ferries and cruise ships are easier and more likely terrorist targets.
“Maritime Terrorism: Threat, Consequences and Liability” examined the likelihood and impact of scenarios involving container and passenger ships. Its conclusion: while a nuclear weapon detonated in a U.S. port would have the greatest impact on human life and the economy, attacks on cruise ships and ferries would be relatively easy to carry out with conventional explosives or biological agents.
“Cruise ships in many ways resemble hotels, which terrorists have attacked in the past,” Henry Willis, a Rand researcher and co-author of the report, said at a congressional briefing.
Ferries are particularly vulnerable because of the speed in which companies must board passengers, cargo and vehicles. All may contain hidden explosives. This leaves little time for inspection. Because of modern hull design, it would be difficult to use an improvised explosive device to sink a cruise or container ship, but cars parked in ferries tend to sit low on the water, he said.
“Attacks on ferries are easy to execute, have the potential to kill many people, are likely to capture significant media attention and can be exploited to visibly demonstrate a terrorists group’s salience,” the report said.
The February 2004 bombing of the Super Ferry 14 in the Philippines cost the perpetrators about $300 in explosives. The attack killed 116 and wounded more than 300, the report noted.
The port security act called for a plan to be in place by April 2007 to inspect passengers and vehicles bound for the United States aboard ferries. This would mostly affect U.S.-Canadian crossings.
Please email your comments to SMagnuson@ndia.org
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