[Infowarrior] - A report card on anti-terror technology

Thu Sep 7 08:23:47 EDT 2006

A report card on anti-terror technology

By Declan McCullagh
http://news.com.com/A+report+card+on+anti-terror+technology/2100-1028_3-6113
064.html

Story last modified Thu Sep 07 05:10:36 PDT 2006

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Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon, the federal government's record of adopting anti-terrorism
technologies has been mixed.

Puffers, chemical scanners and biometrics devices are appearing in airports.
Radio-frequency chips are being inserted in U.S. passports. The U.S. Army
has developed machine-gun toting robots for deployment in Iraq.

But the FBI is still struggling with computer systems that are at least half
a decade out of date, Homeland Security is having similar problems with
inspections of shipping containers, and it's hardly clear that RFID-equipped
passports are any safer from duplication by an identity thief or
enterprising member of al-Qaida.

CNET News.com has compiled a list of 10 technologies, five that should be
adopted more speedily to help in homeland security efforts--and five that
raise at least some privacy and security concerns. Read on for the details.

In need of support
1. Going wireless: Ever since cameras on cell phones became popular a few
years ago, millions of Americans have zapped grainy snapshots back and forth
wirelessly. Now the chronologically backward folks at the FBI finally are
entering the 21st century too.

An FBI pilot program launched last month in Washington, D.C., and New York
City is designed to outfit field agents with wireless technology. They'll be
able to take digital photos of a suspect, upload the images to a broadband
wireless-enabled laptop, and e-mail it off to other on-the-go agents. They,
in turn, can view the suspect's image--complete with that day's garb and
haircut length--on a BlackBerry handheld device.

This is hardly a novel idea, of course. But it's still a useful upgrade to
the FBI's existing technology, says Frederick Brink, who's in charge of the
special operations division at the FBI's New York City field office.

For the hundreds of agents now trying out the mobile technology, "they don't
necessarily have to use a telephone or call in, they can access this
information directly in the course of their normal duties," Brink said. The
FBI's central information technology outfit would like to expand the
so-called "mobility pilot program" to every FBI field office, but it has not
set a timetable. As for success stories from the unwired FBI set, Brink said
to check back in a month or two. But for now, he said, "the feedback is
already very, very positive. In general terms, the agents love this
capability."

2. Better search technology: The private sector has been years ahead of the
FBI not just in wireless technology, but also in search. Internet search
engines have been around since Archie in 1990, followed by the original
Wandex, a Web search tool developed in 1993 at MIT.

The FBI finally got a rudimentary Web-based search tool in 2004 in the form
of its Investigative Data Warehouse, or IDW. It lets users (more than 13,000
people have been approved so far) to use a single Web-based front end to
comb about 650 million records--ranging from intelligence wires to terrorist
watch lists to no-fly lists--across multiple government agencies, including
the State Department and Homeland Security. Agents say it acts as a
"one-stop shop" for wide-ranging information that takes an average of three
seconds to five seconds to return results.

Unfortunately, the IDW's records aren't updated in real time. Instead, the
system relies on copies of documents that must be "affirmatively uploaded
into the warehouse" by participating agencies, according to an 2005
auditor's report. Depending on who's in control of the data, that can happen
anywhere from daily to weekly to monthly to quarterly--although in an
emergency situation, updates can be sped up to hourly, FBI Chief Information
Officer Zal Azmi told reporters last week.

"Right now, we don't have that Google-like search capacity to go (directly)
into databases of different agencies," Azmi acknowledged. Because
"timeliness of the data is critical to us in our mission," he added, a
real-time "portal" is the goal, but it is "a long way from being
completed...at least a couple more years."

3. Inspecting cargo containers: Could terrorists smuggle a nuclear,
biological or radiological explosive device into the U.S. by hiding it in a
cargo container? There's reason to think so: 11 million cargo containers
arrive at U.S. seaports each year, and only a small percentage are
physically inspected by Homeland Security agents (click for PDF).

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, part of Homeland Security, does have a
computerized modeling system that's supposed to help identify which cargo
containers should be inspected based on intelligence from sources including
the CIA. It's called the Automated Targeting System, or ATS, and has been
deemed a failure by government auditors in a report this year (click for
PDF). They concluded that Homeland Security "has not yet put key controls in
place to provide reasonable assurance that ATS is effective at targeting
oceangoing cargo containers with the highest risk of containing smuggled
weapons of mass destruction."

Fixing ATS would be a good first step. So would making greater use of
noninvasive methods of scanning containers and preventing unions from
derailing security methods. The West Coast longshoreman's union prohibits
its members from driving through gamma ray scanners, even though Homeland
Security officers do it routinely and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has
approved the low exposure level. Union leaders won't allow union members to
drive through even more promising systems using neutron-based detectors
either.

4. Smarter translation software: Intelligence agencies around the world
continue to face a shortage of speakers of Arabic and other languages often
associated with terrorist groups. Translation can also be time-consuming. To
this end, Language Weaver has developed machine translation tools that can
dynamically translate Arabic, Russian, Chinese and 10 other languages into
English. In its sales presentations, the company has its software produce an
English transcript of an Al-Jazeera broadcast while the broadcast is airing.

"It used to be finding a needle in a haystack; now it's trying to find a
needle in a haystack in a field of haystacks," Language Weaver CEO Bryce
Benjamin told CNET News.com in an earlier interview. "There is a lot of
focus on getting automated tools." Language Weaver has received funding from
the CIA-funded venture capital firm In-Q-Tel.

But more obscure languages like Pashtu and Somali are still unavailable for
automated translations, which is why the federal government is working on
its own internal projects. One of those the Defense Department's Language
and Speech Exploitation Resources program, or LASER. It's designed to
provide intelligence analysts and the military with speech transcription and
translation capabilities. (Similar government-funded efforts are called
Babylon, a portable device, and the Effective, Affordable, Reusable
Speech-to-Text project.)

5. Faster chemical detection: The possibility of chemical attacks by
terrorists has federal officials running scared, with some justification.
The Aum Shinrikyo attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995 using sarin
gas--which killed 12 people and injured more than 5,000 people--showed that
it's possible. The attack would have been deadlier if the group had been
more skilled.

In open-air environments like city streets, the threat of a chemical attack
is not as severe. Winds are unpredictable and, coupled with rising air
currents, can quickly disperse a chemical agent unless a larger quantity is
used.

But in subways, train stations and airports, the threat of a chemical attack
is higher. In an article published in Time magazine in June, author Run
Suskind reported that a terrorist cell had planned a hydrogen cyanide attack
on New York City subways but inexplicably called it off with just a few
weeks to go.

Hazmat teams at local police departments historically have used colorimetric
tubes, which are designed to detect specific gases such as ammonia or
chlorine. A pump is used to draw air samples through the tubes.

The problem, though, is that many chemicals can be used as weapons, and
standard-issue colorimetric tubes will detect relatively few. "Many modern
detection devices used by Hazmat teams have not been thoroughly tested for
their utility and reliability to detect" chemical weapons, a panel organized
under the National Research Council concluded.

Detection technology, however, is advancing. The SAFESITE detector, for
instance, can electronically detect the difference between nerve agents,
blister agents, and toxic gases such as chlorine, hydrogen cyanide, and
hydrogen chloride. And an article this year in the journal Analytical
Chemistry describes how to use photoionization mass spectrometry to detect
chemical warfare agents. That takes about 45 seconds--far speedier than the
traditional way of performing mass spectrometry that can take an hour or
more.

Raising privacy concerns
1. Omnipresent cameras: Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, surveillance
cameras began growing even faster than the Department of Homeland Security's
budget. In one of their more "alarming cases" in 2004, volunteers from the
New York Civil Liberties Union counted 600 cameras in Manhattan's Chinatown
alone--up from 13 in 1998.

Police claim say they're useful for fighting, if not preventing,
terrorism--footage from London's extensive closed-circuit surveillance
system helped to identify suspects from the July 2005 bombings on its subway
system. Another argument is that cameras do double duty when nabbing drug
dealers and thieves.

Yet evidence suggests that surveillance cameras have limited use in crime
prevention. For one thing, they seem to cause crime to shift to locations
not near cameras: violent crime in Britain has risen as cameras have
multiplied. Police may use controllable cameras to ogle attractive women.
And if face-recognition software is linked to the cameras, police can
effectively compile dossiers on Americans' movements whenever they're in
public places.

In Washington, D.C., the City Council handed more than $2.3 million last
month for installation of four dozen new surveillance cameras to the city's
existing CCTV network after a spate of 14 homicides in a two-week span in
July.

It hasn't been uniformly applauded. "This is like a modern-day jail now,"
one resident of a newly surveilled apartment complex told the Washington
City Paper, a local alternative newsweekly.

2. Registered traveler: Air travelers are gradually separating into a
two-class hierarchy, at least for people who haven't opted out of the system
in favor of flying to their destination in a small plane.

The masses sit through irksome lines at security checkpoints. But people who
pay $80 a year and submit a wealth of personal information (including
fingerprint and iris scans) to the government, and clear a background check
conducted by the Transportation Security Administration, can sail through
airport security.

It's run by a private company called Verified Identity Pass and has been
operational since July 2005 at some airports. Last week, the company
announced it would expand its registered traveler program to British Airways
Terminal 7 at John F. Kennedy International Airport this fall.

Melissa Ngo, an attorney at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in
Washington, D.C., says: "Bad guys who don't have previous ties to terrorism
can pass the background check and then fast-track through airport security.
If certain security procedures work to reduce crime, then they should be
applied to everyone, not just to those who can't or won't pay $80 per year
for travel convenience."

3. Backscatter X-rays: Comic books in the 1950s promised to sell "X-Ray"
specs that could see through clothing.

Now that not-terribly accurate promise is approaching reality, thanks to a
technology called backscatter X-rays. Its proponents say it's better at
detecting weapons in carry-on luggage. But privacy advocates say it can show
body contours that are so exact it amounts to a "virtual strip search." It's
already being used in some airports.

"Keeping the radiation dose low enough to skim the skin's surface means that
backscatter cannot detect weapons hidden in body folds, which would be found
during a physical inspection," says Ngo of EPIC. "It's unfortunate that
Homeland Security money is being spent on backscatter even though the
government complains it doesn't have enough money to screen all carry-on and
checked baggage and air cargo."

The best way might be to let passengers decide: Some airlines could use
backscatter X-ray technology if they chose, and some would use pat-down
techniques. But instead, the TSA and local governments tend to set
one-size-fits-all rules. (For its part, the TSA says backscatter technology
is being used with a privacy algorithm to "eliminate much of the detail
shown in the images of the individual while still being effective.")

4. "Brain fingerprinting": Lawrence Farwell invented what he calls "brain
fingerprinting," which tries to measure whether the mind recognizes familiar
stimuli such as words or photographs.

It relies on the discovery that an electrical signal known as P300 tends to
be emitted from a brain about three-tenths of a second after it recognizes a
familiar stimulus. The idea is that a murderer's brain will emit P300 if
he's shown the victim's face or the crime scene. (The CIA gave Farwell about
$1 million in research expenses.)

Farwell created a company called Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories to
commercialize the case, and has met with some success in law enforcement
circles. An article this year on Officer.com says the "technology has the
potential to be applicable in an overwhelming number of cases."

One judge in Iowa has ruled that the technique is admissible. The Iowa
Supreme Court subsequently said in 2003 that Farwell's testing of the brain
of Terry Harrington, a convicted murderer, showed "that Harrington's brain
did not contain information about (the) murder. On the other hand, Dr.
Farwell testified, testing did confirm that (the murderer's) brain contained
information consistent with his alibi." The Supreme Court granted Harrington
a new trial--but based on the fact that the police withheld evidence, not
because of the brain fingerprinting.

Does it really work? FBI agents who worked with Farwell think so. At least
one judge was sufficiently credulous.

But a government report includes an important caution from J. Peter
Rosenfeld of Northwestern University's psychology department who has done
extensive research into P300. First, Rosenfeld says, there has been a lack
of peer-reviewed studies. The report adds: "Rosenfeld does not believe that
the developer had done the extensive validation of the test items for field
use...Rosenfeld questioned the developer's claim of a 100 percent accuracy
rate. For example, he raised concerns regarding whether the developer
omitted inconclusive results from the totals."

5. DNA dragnets: In the last few years, as DNA testing kits have become
cheaper, police have begun to engage in widescale testing of criminal
suspects.

In one case scheduled to be heard by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
on Thursday, police in Baton Rouge, La., demanded that 1,200 men provide DNA
samples without seeking a court order. Shannon Kohler refused to provide a
DNA sample. Police retaliated by naming Kohler as a suspect in a rape-murder
case and sought a search warrant. He was eventually cleared.

Kohler is not alone. When a DNA dragnet is set up, police tend to view
anyone who won't voluntarily participate as a suspect. It's also not clear
what happens to the DNA sample--will it be destroyed when the investigation
is over, or kept on file forever?

DNA dragnets have nabbed the wrong suspects before. In Miami, a man was
incorrectly charged with rape. In Kansas, the "BTK Killer" was located
through traditional police work--even though 1,300 men were tested in the
DNA dragnet. Their DNA samples were kept on file.

CNET News.com's Anne Broache and Michael Kanellos contributed to this
report.