The Congressional Research Service published a new report last week looking at the Coast Guard’s Deepwater acquisition program:
It’s a useful overview of the Deepwater program, which has been subject to a growing amount of media and watchdog scrutiny in recent weeks.
The full HLS Watch collection of CRS reports is available here.
The Department of Homeland Security issued an advance notice of rulemaking for chemical facility security regulations last week, published on Thursday in the Federal Register. These regulations follow the loose mandate set forth in Sec. 550 of the FY 2007 DHS appropriations bill, following blocked efforts to pass comprehensive chemical security legislation earlier in 2006 - a process followed closely, as loyal readers know, on this site. Comments on the regulations are due no later than February 7, 2007.
I’ve read through the full document, and while there are some solid sections of it (for example, the sections on risk assessment and vulnerability analysis), there are a number of aspects of the draft regulations that are troublesome. I find four key flaws with the draft regs:
1. Excessive deference. The regulations have a very obsequious and overly legalistic tone, bending over backward to provide the chemical facilities with means to contest decisions, and provide for a drawn-out mediation process before penalties might be used. This type of deference might be acceptable in non-security contexts, but it seems misplaced when the topic is a critical homeland security vulnerability.
2. Inspection process. The draft regulations state that DHS will only conduct inspections during regular business hours and will provide at least 24-hour notice of an incoming inspection. From a security perspective, this is ludicrous. Terrorists could attack a chemical facility at any hour of the day, and in fact might be more likely to attack some facilities at night, if the adjacent area has a larger nighttime population than a daytime population. And giving advance notice of inspections is an invitation for scofflaw plants to cover up poor execution of their security plans. Instead, DHS should be employing an “any place, any time” approach to inspections.
3. State law preemption. DHS interprets Sec. 550 as giving them the mandate to block the enforcement of state laws (such as the one on the books in New Jersey) on chemical facility security, a provision that has already earned a strident rebuke from Sen. Collins. Throughout the debate over the past year, I’ve argued that states should be allowed to set tougher regulations consistent with principles of federalism, and I believe it’s a mistake for DHS to block their ability to do so.
4. “Chemical Terrorism-Vulnerability Information”. A long section of the draft regs discusses DHS’s decision to create a new category of “sensitive-but-unclassified” information: Chemical Terrorism-Vulnerability Information (CVI). At a broader level, the last thing that DHS needs to do right now is to create a new category of SBU information; as the GAO has exhaustively analyzed, the proliferation of SBU categories has inhibited effective information-sharing within the federal government. Reading the draft regs, I worry also that this section would inhibit the ability of local law enforcement and response officials to learn about security at chemical facilities within their jurisdiction. This would be unfortunate, since these are the officials who will be on the scene before the feds if an attack occurred.
Overall, these draft regs confirm my earlier concerns that the language in the final appropriations bill would turn out to be insufficient. Congress needs to step up to the plate again in the 110th Congress on this issue, building off of the earlier proposals that passed the two homeland security committees. And concerned citizens can submit comments at regulations.gov (docket # DHS-2006-0073) by the Feb. 7th deadline.
DHS Asst. Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker spoke at a forum at CSIS yesterday, and defended the recently-criticized Automated Targeting System, as noted in this GCN story and this Reuters piece:
The U.S. Automated Targeting System, or ATS, a computerized program that collects personal data on travelers and retains it for up to 40 years, has come under fire in recent weeks from rights activists who say it violates privacy laws and a congressional-funding ban.
But Stewart Baker, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said the system’s critics are either “paranoid” or don’t understand that ATS assigns risk ratings only to cargo.
“We have risk scores for cargo,” Baker told a forum hosted by the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
“I don’t think that we’re scoring human beings, and we’re certainly not keeping score on them,” he said. “We do an assessment of people when we look at the data. But that could vary from flight to flight, day to day.”
I’ve maintained since this story started to break in early November that the concerns about this program have been overstated by its recent critics, and I’m glad to see DHS finally pushing back and defending the program. There needs to be more clarity about how ATS-P works and how information is saved and stored within it, but it clearly has a valid role within the broader border and traveler entry system, and is worthy of a vigorous defense.
Update (12/21): Here are Baker’s remarks from the CSIS event.
Update (12/29): The full transcript from the CSIS event is available here.
The DHS Privacy and Data Integrity Advisory Committee has released several interesting documents within the last week, including a report entitled “The Use of Commercial Data” and the transcript of its September advisory committee meeting: Part 1, Part 2. The latter documents transcribe interesting discussion at this meeting on issues related to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the Office of Screening Coordination at DHS, and progress on establishing an effective traveler redress system.
The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security released a very informative report yesterday that surveys the major management challenges currently facing DHS. The report contains a number of interesting sections and pieces of information, including:
Overall, a useful and informative report about the challenges still facing DHS. I think it shows that DHS has been making progress on some key challenges, but that there is still has room for improvement in many critical areas.
For media coverage of the report, see this Federal Times story and this GovExec piece.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey issued a press release today summarizing the recommendations of a port security taskforce that they’ve convened over the past year. The key recommendations:
It’s unclear whether these recommendations are part of a larger task force report; if so, I don’t see it yet on the PANYNJ website. But I’ll post an updated link if one appears.
Update (1/4/07): Here’s the full task force report.
A few months ago, Heritage Foundation scholar Jim Carafano wrote a memo proposing the need for the government to develop a “national air security strategy,” similar to the National Strategy for Maritime Security. Around that same time, the White House issued a still-classified directive (HSPD-16 / NSPD-47) on aviation security, about which few details are publicly known.
Consistent with this recommendation and directive, the federal government seems to be developing a National Strategy for Aviation Security. A Google search of this phrase reveals a link to the entry page for a TSA webboard where there is a menu option titled “National Strategy for Aviation Security.” The Google search also reveals a couple of other references to the Strategy, i.e. the program for an aviation conference in Oregon, within which one of the speakers’ bios references it.
The development of this Strategy prompts a number of questions. Is it still under development, or has it been finished and quietly disseminated inside the federal government? Are there plans to make it public, or will this be like the frequently-panned National Strategy for Transportation Security, which was a classified document and never published? Which non-governmental stakeholders have been consulted in the development of this Strategy?
Hopefully we’ll see a public version of this National Strategy in the next year, following the model of the National Strategy for Maritime Security, which has served its purpose since publication as a useful reference strategy for all maritime security stakeholders.
The Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management’s latest issue (Vol. 3, Issue 4) is now online. The full-length articles within it are:
There are also a number of book reviews and shorter pieces in the issue.
New on YouTube, a Daily Show oldie-but-goodie on homeland security technology:
Enjoy.
As noted here previously, DHS announced the launch of the Secure Freight Initiative on December 7th. But UPI seems to think that this project has a different name:
The U.S. Departments of Homeland Security and Energy have launched a new Senior Freight Initiative to boost port security.
Or could this be some distinct new initiative by DHS? Are the elderly going to inspect cargo? Or is DHS now planning to inspect them? What does the AARP think about this? 
Last month Ohio State University professor John Mueller published the book “Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them.” The book expands upon his article in Foreign Affairs earlier this fall entitled “Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?” (which I reviewed in this post). Mueller has taken these arguments on the road recently, with an appearance on The Daily Show (Part 1, Part 2) in October and a policy event at the Cato Institute earlier this week.
The book makes three main arguments: (a) the terrorist threat is overstated today, (b) we’re exacerbating the threat by believing that it’s serious, and (c) there is now a “terrorism industry” that has a vested interest in maintaining public alarm.
These are all topics that are worthy of debate. You can read my earlier critique of (a) in this post on his Foreign Affairs piece. I partially agree partially with (b); it is imperative that our leaders avoid fearmongering, and that we take steps to make our society more resilient to avoid adverse secondary effects from disruption. And I think (c) uses a cheap epithet to make a blanket ad hominem criticism of anyone who believes that the terrorist threat is serious and consequential.
But unfortunately, Mueller undermines the basis for this debate by using false and misleading examples and statistics in numerous places in the book. For starters, take the opening paragraphs of his Introduction:
Upon discovering that Weeki Wachee Springs, his Florida roadside water park, had been included on the Department of Homeland Security’s list of over 80,000 potential terrorist targets, its marketing and promotion manager, John Athanason, turned reflective. “I can’t imagine bin Laden trying to blow up the mermaids,” he mused, “but with terrorists, who knows what they’re thinking. I don’t want to think like a terrorist, but what if the terrorists try to poison the water at Weeki Wachee Springs?”
Whatever his imaginings, however, he went on to report that his enterprise had quickly and creatively risen to the occasion - or seized the opportunity. They were working to get a chunk of the counterterrorism funds allocated to the region by the well-endowed, anxiety-provoking, ever-watchful Department of Homeland Security.
Which is the greater threat: terrorism, or our reaction against it? The Weeki Wachee experience illustrates the problem.
This sounds terrible, right? Another example of people being opportunistic and unjustly trying to grab that homeland security cash?
Not really. Unlike John Mueller, I wrote earlier this week to John Athanason, the manager of Weeki Wachee who is quoted in the passage above. This was the first that he had heard about his inclusion in this book. Athanason quickly wrote back to me and clarified the story (emphasis his):
You don’t see anywhere in the press about the park getting money for the “terrorism threat”, because the attraction was never intended to get any money.
In the state of Florida, each and every county had one request given to them by Homeland Security. Within your county, where would the most likely target occur in the event of a terrorist attack? Within Hernando County, our attraction was listed by our local authorities because we have a venue that attracts a large number of people at any given time. We did not pursue any money, nor did we ever apply for any money. All communication went directly to the local authorities to see what supplies they would need to assist them in any crisis, if one were to happen. We have never received any amount of money from Homeland Security.
The reality is the exact opposite of what Mueller reports in his book. The actions of Athanason and the Florida officials were appropriate across the board. I’m surprised that Mueller or someone from Simon & Schuster didn’t double-check this story, especially given the fact that it kicks off the book, and is mentioned repeatedly later in the book and in his remarks as the paragon of homeland security waste. This is just plain shoddy.
And so it goes throughout the book and in his public remarks. For example:
I could go on, but you get the point. This book is wrong in its key points and misleading in its details. It paints a falsely benign picture of the terrorism threat - a viewpoint which could lull us into a dangerous sense of complacency were it to be increasingly accepted. We need to overcome our fears, live resolutely, and build a culture of preparedness and resilience into our societies, but we should not for a minute become complacent about the real and persistent threats that we face.
Below is a list of homeland security policy events in the DC area next week (as well as the occasional listing outside of DC). This will be the last such events list in 2006. Please note that many events require prior invitations and/or RSVPs.
12/18: National Press Club event with White House Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend on “Preparing for a Pandemic: The National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza.” National Press club, 529 14th St NW, 10am.
12/18: CSIS event on “Avian and Pandemic Influenza: Bamako Conference Briefing.” 1800 K St NW, 2pm.
12/19: CSIS event with DHS Asst. Secretary Stewart Baker on “Terrorist Screening and Privacy Issues.” 1800 K St NW, 11am.
12/19: National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee meeting. 1615 H St, NW, 1pm.
12/20: Washington Foreign Press Center briefing with DHS Acting Asst. Sec. for International Affairs Paul Rosenzweig on “”Review of 2006 for the Department of Homeland Security and Priorities for 2007.” 14th and F St NW, 4pm.
(Please e-mail me if you have suggestions about additions to this list for this week, or future weeks).
The New York Times reported today that DHS, in an elaborate tribute to Jean-Paul Sartre, is planning to scuttle the “exit” portion of the US-VISIT program, based on the belief that developing such a system is technologically infeasible and would cost too much to implement. This represents a 180 degree turn from a report in mid-November which suggested that DHS was moving forward within the exit portion of US-VISIT. From the NYT story:
Domestic security officials, who have allocated $1.7 billion since the 2003 fiscal year to track arrivals and departures, argue that creating the program with the existing technology would be prohibitively expensive.
They say it would require additional employees, new buildings and roads at border crossings, and would probably hamper the vital flow of commerce across those borders.
….Efforts to determine whether visitors actually leave have faltered. Departure monitoring would help officials hunt for foreigners who have not left, if necessary. Domestic security officials say, however, it would be too expensive to conduct fingerprint or facial recognition scans for land departures. Officials have experimented with less costly technologies, including a system that would monitor by radio data embedded in a travel form carried by foreigners as they depart by foot or in vehicles.
Tests of that technology, Radio Frequency Identification, found a high failure rate. At one border point, the system correctly identified 14 percent of the 166 vehicles carrying the embedded documents, the General Accountability Office reported.
DHS’s decision to not move forward on an exit system is criticized by members of Congress from both parties in the NYT piece, in large measure due to the fact that it’s already been ten years since Congress created the legislative mandate for an entry-exit system.
As I noted in my previous post on the exit system, I think the develop of an exit system is a critical part of a border security strategy, and I’m concerned by the idea of scuttling this activity. To be sure, there are real challenges with this in terms of the land border infrastructure (e.g. very few exit “lanes” at major border checkpoints today, creating the need for significant amounts of construction), but many of the other technology issues should be feasible; for example, why did DHS’s RFID test only work 10% of the time when RFID-based EZPASS works with nearly 100% reliability?
For more info, you can read the GAO report on US-VISIT that is mentioned in the story at this link.
The homeland security strategy advisory firm Civitas Group LLC released a report this week entitled “The Homeland Security Market: Essential Dynamics and Trends”, updating a 2004 report on the same topic (full disclosure: I was a co-author of that earlier paper). The new report contains some valuable insight into the state of the homeland security market, in particular the section from pages 8-11 on “dominant market characteristics,” which outlines nine top-level issues that people need to understand about the homeland security market. As with the earlier version of the report, I think that it’s an objective and sober take on the homeland security market, in contrast with other reports of this ilk that forecast multi-gazillions of dollars of DHS spending in the coming years.
TSA held a press conference this morning to release a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) for rail security regulations. The complete draft regs are available at this link, and will be open for comment for the next 60 days. The press release describes the major measures within the regs:
The proposed rule is part of a package of new security measures that will require freight rail carriers to ensure 100 percent positive hand-off of Toxic Inhalation Hazard (TIH) materials, establish security protocols for custody transfers of TIH rail cars in the high threat urban areas, and appoint a rail security coordinator to share information with the federal government, as well as formalizing the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) freight and passenger rail inspection authority.
This AP story and this NYT piece discuss the draft regs and offer some initial reactions to them from Capitol Hill.
At first glance, the portions of the NPRM that deal with hazardous materials on freight rail look solid; this is a high-risk segment of the broader rail environment, and safeguards on the security and chain of custody of hazmat rail cars is needed, going beyond what has generally been a relatively solid effort to date by the freight rail industry. But the NPRM essentially punts the ball on the topic of passenger rail, beyond establishing some vague reporting requirements. While it’s true that passenger rail security is inherently difficult in comparison with aviation security, given the open nature of rail and transit systems, I would have expected more of a discussion of these passenger issues in the regs.
Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the creation today of a new Select Intelligence Oversight Panel within the House Committee on Appropriations, the role of which would be to bridge the gap between intelligence oversight and authorization at the HPSCI and intelligence spending, which is largely controlled today by the Subcommittee on Defense of House Committee on Appropriations. This change is part of the incoming Congress’s efforts to implement the 9/11 Commission Report recommendations, and is specifically responsive to Recommendation #33 in the 9/11 Commission Report (see pages 20-21 here). It runs counter to a Washington Post story from November which suggested that reorganization of intelligence authorities was unlikely to take place in the House, given opposition to the idea among House appropriators.
The Congressional Research Service released a new report recently looking at the agenda for emergency communications legislation in the next Congress, for now publicly available only here at Homeland Security Watch:
This site’s complete collection of CRS reports is available here. And hopefully posts such as this one will soon be obsolete.
I just returned from a speech that Sec. Chertoff gave this morning at George Washington University, where he reviewed the Department of Homeland Security’s accomplishments for 2006 and its goals for the next two years. Overall, it was an impressive and very solid speech, one that demonstrated the extent to which he has become stronger in his role as Secretary, particularly over the last six months.
The first part of the speech centered around three “transformative experiences” in the first two years of his tenure at DHS: (1) the increased political spotlight on immigration issues (which led to his reassertion of the need for a temporary worker program); (2) the disrupted UK aviation plot in August 2006 (and TSA’s response); and (3) Hurricane Katrina, which he acknowledged showed that the nation was “not prepared for a major catastrophe.”
He then discussed the Department’s goals and priorities for the next two years, following nearly the same top-level framework outlined two months ago in remarks by DHS Asst. Secretary Al Martinez-Fonts and identifying the following five priorities:
1. Protecting the nation against dangerous people
2. Protecting the nation against dangerous “things”
3. Securing the nation’s critical assets
4. Strengthening response capabilities
5. Making DHS into a more integrated, unified department.
In his discussion of priority #1, he offered a vigorous rebuttal to the recent criticisms of the Automated Targeting System, describing it as an important security tool in the border entry system, noting that 500,000 people were denied entry in 2005 as a result of such border security screening (which I assume refers to visa denials as well as physical denials at Points-of-Entry). And he defended it as constitutional and privacy-protecting, and argued that it was consistent with the 9/11 Commission recommendations and Congressional mandates in the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2002. His description of it made it sound like a “link analysis” system, and not a “pattern analysis” system. This distinction is important; whereas the latter type has largely been discredited as a data mining tool for counterterrorism, the former type can be effective if used with well-verified threat data as a starting point.
The rest of the speech contained a handful of interesting factoids for those who follow homeland security issues:
â— DHS will be issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for interim chemical security regulations “within a few weeks.”
â— DHS will release draft rail security regulations at an event tomorrow (Dec. 15th).
â— DHS has spent a total of $380 million on state/local intelligence fusion centers to date.
â— The Department is currently conducting a survey of 75 high-threat regions to identify interoperability gaps in their communications systems, and will work to close these gaps by the end of 2008, prioritizing homeland security grant funds for this task.
â— DHS will work in the next two years to develop a “joint path” for career development at DHS, one that facilitates the ability of employees to work across the respective agencies within the Department and be rewarded for such cross-agency career progression, in a manner similar to DOD’s drive toward “jointness” over the last twenty years.
Sec. Chertoff concluded his remarks by describing his “lessons learned” over the past two years. He talked about how he has consistently stressed the principles of risk management, cost-benefit analysis, and the need to make difficult choices and prioritize resources. He talked about the challenge of striking the right balance between doing too little and doing too much, criticizing the recently-aired notion that the terrorist threat is somehow “Overblown” and “rather limited.” And he concluded by professing his sense of personal responsibility for the job, describing how he understands that he will need to look into the eyes of victims’ relatives if another attack occurs, and tell them that DHS had done everything that it could.
Overall, a very good speech, and a solid agenda for the next two years. As always, the difficult challenges are in implementation, but a principled and consistent strategic perspective is a necessary starting point for implementing change.
Update (12/14): The AP wire story from the event.
Update 2 (12/14): Chertoff’s full remarks are now available here. And this one-pager from DHS provides more detail on the “five priorities” discussed above.
This story sounds like something out of an ancient Incan ritual:
If terrorists ever unleashed a biological weapon, unusual molecules normally found in the blood of llamas could quickly help warn of the attack, scientists now report.
Researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington and their colleagues experimented with antibodies, which act as the red flags and magic bullets of the body’s personal defense arsenal.
….The researchers generated more than a billion kinds of antibody binding regions in the laboratory based on genes taken from small blood samples from llamas. After testing their antibodies against various biological threats, the researchers found they could within days successfully identify antibodies targeting cholera toxin, a smallpox virus surrogate and ricin, among other known menaces.
The article should be appearing here in the next day or so.
The Trust for America’s Health released an annual report yesterday on the nation’s public health preparedness, giving each of the 50 states grades on their level of preparedness. Oklahoma and Kansas come away with the highest grade, and the four states tied for the lowest ranking are California, Iowa, Maryland, and New Jersey. The complete report is available here.
Back in May of this year, a subcommittee of the DHS Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee released a draft report entitled “The Use of RFID for Human Identification.” That paper prompted a minor controversy within DHS, given the extent to which it questioned the Department’s use of RFID in homeland security programs and applications.
After several months of re-writing, a final version of the paper was approved by the Privacy Committee at its meeting last week. It’s not yet on the DHS website, but the RFID Journal has a copy, which you can download at this link and read about in this article. The article provides a useful discussion of the differences between the first draft and the final draft.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s mass roundup of 1,282 illegal alien workers at six Swift & Co. meatpacking plans around the country yesterday has been a headline story today around the country. The Des Moines Register and the Salt Lake Tribune provide local perspective on the story, and DHS issued a press release and held a press conference with Sec. Chertoff and ICE Asst. Secretary Julie Myers to explain the Department’s actions. The latter documents focus on the ‘identity theft’ dimension of these raids, noting that 65 of the people arrested for immigration violations were also charged with identity theft-related infractions. And in his remarks, Sec. Chertoff focused on the administration’s continued desire to create a Temporary Worker Program, something which could potentially mitigate the need for such raids.
Overall, I think these arrests were warranted; without aggressive worksite enforcement, companies will face undue temptations to employ illegal workers, creating a race to the bottom in certain sectors of the economy. The tactics used were exceedingly dramatic - the law enforcement of “shock and awe” - but if that has a deterrent effect on similar scofflaws, then it’s perhaps warranted. However, I am concerned about the way in which some American citizens of Hispanic origin were treated during these raids, as recounted in the aforementioned Salt Lake Tribune story. And it’s undoubtedly true that the need for these types of raids would decrease with the creation of a Temporary Worker Program.
The National Governors Association and the National Council of State Legislatures and the ACLU both issued press releases yesterday praising legislation introduced late last week by Sen. Akaka and Sen. Sununu (S. 4117) that would repeal Title II of the Real ID Act and restore Sec. 7212 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, language that established drivers license standards but was superceded by the REAL ID Act when the latter was attached to a wartime supplemental bill in March 2005.
This legislation is likely to reemerge early in the 110th Congress, perhaps as part of broader efforts to pass legislation that implements the 9/11 Commission recommendation. As I discuss on page 11 of the policy memo that I issued last week, Recommendation #18 from the 9/11 Commission on “secure identification” can be tackled either by providing new funding to accelerate the implementation of REAL ID as is, or alternatively, by revisiting its provisions in a way that accelerates efforts to strengthen ID standards.
Update (12/15): A good overview of this legislation at Information Week.
Federal Times had a story yesterday that surveyed the one piece of homeland security-related legislation to emerge from the lame duck session of Congress this past month: the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (S. 3678). From the article:
In its final days, the 109th Congress passed a bill creating a new $1 billion agency to fight bioterror threats.
Called the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), it will fund research into cures for infectious diseases and other biological threats, a field that has drawn limited research from pharmaceutical companies due to its low profit potential. The new agency, to be located in the Health and Human Services Department, is intended to centralize federal efforts against bioterrorism.
The legislation updates the Project Bioshield Act of 2004 (S.15), with the objective of making it easier to fund mid-stage research that bridges the gap between existing biodefense capabilities and long-term biodefense R&D.
The final bill also makes HHS the lead federal agency for medical response in emergencies, taking the National Disaster Medical System out of FEMA and bringing it over to HHS.
This story in Government Health IT provides additional info on the legislation, and the industry association BIO comments on the passage of the legislation in this press release.
In June 2006 I wrote about a plan in Texas to put up live Internet webcams on the Texas-Mexico border as a border security tool. Washington Technology reports today that Texas has completed its initial pilot of this technology:
Texas’ month-long experiment with border surveillance Web cameras is being touted as a success with 221,000 people participating via the Internet, state officials said.
The Texas Border Watch Test Site operated for a month, closing on Dec. 3. During the experiment, live video feeds from border surveillance cameras in Texas were made available on a Web site. Subscribers registered to view the footage and report suspicious activity.
During the month, 221,562 subscribers visited the Web site and viewed footage 27 million times, generating more than 13,000 emails, according to an update on the Texas Border Watch test project.
“Some wrote to alert law enforcement officials to suspicious activity, others to recommend improvements to the Web site or offer other comments. Many of the recommendations for improvements to the Web site were incorporated during the test period,†the Web site said.
Given these results, Texas should move forward and deploy this on a wider basis. And this is something that other border states should look into as well.
The report that I released last Friday analyzing the implications of the 9/11 Commission recommendations in terms of the agenda for the 110th Congress received media attention yesterday in this story at GovExec. You can download the full report at this link.
The operations research journal Interfaces is publishing an entire issue of homeland security-related articles this month, and highlighted one of the articles in it in a press release in mid-November. That article, entitled “How Effective is Security Screening of Airline Passengers?” attempts to answer a question that has long bedeviled TSA and other aviation screening agencies: what is more effective, risk-based screening or random screening?
The authors, Susan Martonosi at Harvey Mudd and Arnold Barnett at MIT, build a model that includes variables for primary screening effectiveness, secondary screening effectiveness, % of passengers elected for random screening, the effectiveness of the prescreening system, and the terrorists’ deterrence threshold. They test the model several times using different assumptions for these variables, and get results for a range of scenarios that suggest that neither risk-based secondary screening nor random secondary screening is inherently better than the other:
As this simple mathematical model suggests, neither side has made a persuasive case about the effectiveness of airport passenger-profiling systems. Supporters of such systems have focused mostly on the ability of the algorithm to identify terrorists (C), an ability they may well overestimate. They say little about screening effectiveness of both low-risk passengers and selectees (p1) and (p2), yet these effectiveness parameters are crucial to the overall success rate of the system. Skeptics may have given insufficient weight to deterrence (Ï„), because of which, the selection and screening system might prevent attacks even though it falls well short of perfect. Probing the system, as we have seen, could sometimes prevent a terrorist act rather than ensure its success.
They conclude the article by suggesting that improving the baseline screening for all passengers might be a better investment than improving prescreening or secondary screening. Overall, a good article, and a useful exercise in trying to analyze an issue too often guided by intuition or emotion. You can see the descriptions of some of the other articles in this issue of Interfaces at this link.
The Cato Institute published a paper yesterday entitled “Effective Counterterrorism and the Limited Role of Predictive Data Mining” by Cato’s Jim Harper (whose book Identity Crisis I reviewed here last month) and fellow IBMer/blogger Jeff Jonas. The paper argues against the value of pattern-based predictive data mining as a tool for counterterrorism, instead favoring tools that investigate links among and outward from known suspects, using intelligence and detection tools within a more robust information-sharing environment.
This seems to be an emerging consensus viewpoint about predictive data mining; indeed, as the National Journal reported recently, a recent procurement document admitted the challenges that the US government has faced in developing reliable predictive models for counterterrorism applications. There is still a value in using predictiving modeling in limited security applications - e.g. looking for trends among cleared government personnel that would suggest counterintelligence activity (as mentioned in this post) - but in general, other forms of data analysis are more suited for counterterrorism.
Overall, a solid piece. For more on this topic, I would again recommend Mary DeRosa’s Data Mining and Data Analysis for Counterterrorism.
