(Article information from FCW.com)

The Department of Homeland Security has a strategy in mind to quickly add remote video surveillance camera systems at the border between the United States and Canada. According to a spokesperson from the department's Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, 90 systems could be added to the 235 surveillance systems already along the US borders with Mexico and Canada to help detect illegal movements of goods, weapons and people.

Furthermore, DHS issued a notice saying it intended use existing General Service Administration schedules to buy the technology. The cameras will be used in conjunction with that 14,000 sensors buried in the ground.

The surveillance systems can help detect smuggling day or night. When a sensor goes off, a camera can be remotely pointed in its direction, allowing border patrol workers to see what is happening.

DHS is working to close many of the gaps along U.S. borders. In another recent border initiative, the department announced an agreement April 9 to enhance security for rail service coming into the United States from Canada.

The agreement detailed how goods being transported by rail will be targeted and screened and gave guidelines for collecting advance electronic manifest information before shipments cross the U.S. border. Canadian rail authorities also are planning to install imaging and radiation-detection equipment at seven border crossings.

When President George W. Bush and President Vicente Fox met in Monterrey, Mexico on March 22, 2002, they endorsed a Border Partnership accord that was signed by Santiago Creel, Secretary of Governance, and Colin Powell, Secretary of State. This accord was accompanied by a 22-point plan that outlined actions that would be taken to create a "smart border" for the 21st century which would help to secure flow of people and goods and the development of a secure and sufficient infrastructure necessary to facilitate the growing trade between Mexico and the United States, to promote legitimate travel across the border, and to protect against crime and terrorism. The two nations have formed a bilateral steering committee and developed an infrastructure protection framework. The governments have also established sector-focused working groups in the areas of energy, telecommunications, transportation, dams, public health, and agriculture. These groups are tasked with identifying critical infrastructures with trans-border implications; developing protection priorities; and taking compatible steps to eliminate or mitigate vulnerabilities each country has in its own territory.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Energy have formally transferred a shipment of refurbished radiological detection equipment to the Los Angeles Fire Department Hazardous Waste Unit, the Los Angeles Port Authority and the San Francisco Health Department. The equipment, with a replacement value of approximately $60,000, is being provided to these emergency responder agencies under a DHS/DOE pilot project called the Homeland Defense Equipment Reuse (HDER) Program.

Los Angeles and San Francisco are the sixth and seventh cities that have received radiological detection equipment through the HDER partnership. Other cities that have received the equipment include Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Detroit.

The goal of the HDER Program is to provide surplus radiological detection instrumentation and other homeland security related equipment to state and local emergency first responder agencies nationwide to enhance their domestic preparedness capabilities. The agreement is part of the United States Administration's effort to enhance the equipment and training available to emergency responders.

A variety of equipment to measure the presence of radiation is being made available through the HDER Program. The equipment, which comes from Energy Department sites across the nation, is evaluated and refurbished by radiation equipment specialists at DOE's Office of Assets Utilization, National Center of Excellence for Materials Recycling in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The Department of Homeland Security's Office for Domestic Preparedness (ODP) works with established contacts in each state to identify appropriate users in their local emergency responder communities, and the Department of Energy delivers the equipment to these jurisdictions at no cost.

To date, the HDER program has redeployed over 1,500 radiological detection instruments valued over $700,000 to first responder communities throughout major metropolitan areas of the United States.

Four faculty members at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) have won federal funding of more than $625,000 for research efforts designed to improve face recognition technology, a potentially important tool in the government's war on terrorism.

The award was made by the United States Department of Defense and the Technical Support Working Group, the multi-agency federal task force whose goal is to develop and improve technology for combating terrorism. UTD's research proposal was one of less than 50 selected for funding by the agencies out of a total of some 12,500 proposals to strengthen the nation's security in the wake of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, according to university officials.

Face recognition technology is viewed by some as a possible boon to law enforcement because of the prospect of detecting and identifying criminals and other suspects through surveillance by video cameras and other means of crowds at airports, border crossings and other public venues. Through the use of cameras and sophisticated computer hardware and software, the face of an individual, either alone or in a crowd, can be compared with images stored in a database of persons deemed to be a threat and, in theory, matches can be made between the two. However, the technology has come under fire for several reasons, including its lack of reliability.

The UTD research to improve such systems will be conducted in two parallel efforts by faculty members in two of the university's schools:
*Dr. Haim Schweitzer and Dr. Klaus Truemper of the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science will develop more efficient algorithms for detecting faces in images and video.
*Dr. Alice O'Toole and Dr. Hervé Abdi of the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences will create benchmarks against which the performance of face recognition computer systems can be assessed.

Schweitzer and Truemper will apply new techniques they have developed, utilizing computational logic, which they believe will help compute facial features in images much faster than is currently possible. The pair's project will investigate how these techniques can be used to accelerate both the data collection and system run time, as well as its accuracy.

O'Toole and Abdi will create a means of evaluating the performance of a wide variety of face recognition systems against the performance of human subjects under similar conditions. The pair will undertake a series of experiments to evaluate how humans match the identities of people under a variety of "photometric inconsistencies" - changes in viewpoint direction, illumination and image distance. The measure of human performance will serve as a guide to the performance required by automated systems in order to compete with the accuracy levels of humans.

The two projects are expected to be completed in the next 18 months.

As the nation enters a new phase in the war against terrorism, universities across the country are aiding in the protection of the homeland through research, study of security-related issues, and the development of new technologies.

In order to coordinate information related to homeland security for the University of Houston community, a task force has been formed that comprises representatives from all UH colleges and several departments, including safety and security, communications and the administration. Student representatives also will be included.

The federal government encourages state universities to have such information-coordinating mechanisms in place, said Arthur Vailas, vice president for research at UH and chair of the committee.

One of the first actions of the task force was to develop an informational UH Homeland Security Web site, http://www.research.uh.edu/UHHSec/index.htm, which contains links to state and federal agencies involved in the homeland security effort, research funding opportunities, workshops and training opportunities, news outlets and resources for journalists. Questions also can be sent to the task force via the Web.

Campus emergency preparedness is a prominent element on the Web site. The Web site will be updated as new information is gathered from campus sources regarding current UH research projects and other information related to homeland security.

According to information provided by the United States Department of Homeland Security, the department's Science and Technology directorate is tasked with researching and organizing the scientific, engineering and technological resources of the United States and leveraging these existing resources into technological tools to help protect the homeland. Universities, the private sector and the federal laboratories will be important DHS partners in this endeavor.

Areas the DHS is focusing on include: finding ways to prevent chemical and biological attacks on the U.S., including developing sensor and detection systems; developing capabilities to detect and deter attacks on information systems and critical infrastructure; and developing tools and technology to protect America's waterways and oceans.

IDPartners is organizing an online security trade show and conference from May 12-15, 2003. Expected speakers include Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister of Israel and R. James Woolsey, the former CIA director. There is a $100 registration fee that can be waived with early registration. For more information or to register, please see www.tatevent.com.