U.S. Nearing Deal on Way to Track Foreign Visitors

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

U.S. Nearing Deal on Way to Track Foreign Visitors

May 24, 2004
 By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JOHN MARKOFF





WASHINGTON, May 22 - The Department of Homeland Security is
on the verge of awarding the biggest contract in its young
history for an elaborate system that could cost as much as
$15 billion and employ a network of databases to track
visitors to the United States long before they arrive.

The contract, which will probably be awarded in coming days
to one of three final bidders, is already generating
considerable interest as federal officials try to improve
significantly their ability to monitor those who enter at
more than 300 border-crossing checkpoints by land, sea and
air, where they are going and whether they pose a terrorist
threat.

But with that interest have come questions - both
logistical and philosophical - from Congressional
investigators and outside experts. Will a company based
outside the United States, in Bermuda, get the
megacontract? How much will it end up costing? What about
the privacy concerns of foreign visitors? And most
critical, for all the high-end concepts and higher
expectations, can the system really work?

Interviews with government officials, experts and the three
companies vying for the contract - Accenture, Computer
Sciences and Lockheed Martin - reveal new details and
potential complications about a project that all agree is
daunting in its complexity, cost and national security
importance.

The program, known as US-Visit and rooted partly in a
Pentagon concept developed after the terrorist attacks of
2001, seeks to supplant the nation's physical borders with
what officials call virtual borders. Such borders employ
networks of computer databases and biometric sensors for
identification at sites abroad where people seek visas to
the United States.

With a virtual border in place, the actual border guard
will become the last point of defense, rather than the
first, because each visitor will have already been screened
using a global web of databases.

Visitors arriving at checkpoints, including those at the
Mexican and Canadian borders, will face "real-time
identification" - instantaneous authentication to confirm
that they are who they say they are. American officials
will, at least in theory, be able to track them inside the
United States and determine if they leave the country on
time.

Officials say they will be able, for instance, to determine
whether a visitor who overstays a visa has come in contact
with the police, but privacy advocates say they worry that
the new system could give the federal government far
broader power to monitor the whereabouts of visitors by
tapping into credit card information or similar databases.
The system would tie together about 20 federal databases
with information on the more than 300 million foreign
visitors each year.

The bidders agree that the Department of Homeland Security
has given them unusually wide latitude in determining the
best strategy for securing American borders without unduly
encumbering tourism and commerce.

Whoever wins the contract will be asked to develop a
standard for identifying visitors using a variety of
possible tools - from photographs and fingerprints, already
used at some airports on a limited basis since January, to
techniques like iris scanning, facial recognition and
radio-frequency chips for reading passports or identifying
vehicles.

"Each of these technologies have strengths and weaknesses,"
Paul Cofoni, president of Computer Sciences' federal
sector, said of the biometric alternatives. "I don't know
that any one will be used exclusively."

Virtual borders is a high-concept plan, building on ideas
that have been tried since the terrorist attacks of 2001.

But homeland security officials say making the system work
on a practical level is integral to protecting the United
States from terrorist attacks in the decades to come. "This
is hugely important for the security of our country and for
the wise use of our limited resources," Asa Hutchinson,
under secretary for border security, said in an interview.
"We're talking here about a comprehensive approach to
border security."

But the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of
Congress, concluded in a report in September that "the
program is a very risky endeavor," given its enormous scope
and complexity. "The missed entry of one person who poses a
threat to the United States could have severe
consequences," the report said.

An update issued by the accounting office earlier this
month found that while homeland security officials had made
some headway in meeting investigators' concerns about
management and oversight problems, the progress "has been
slow." The update said major questions remained about the
project's cost and viability. "I don't think there's any
less concern today," Randolph Hite, who wrote the reports,
said in an interview.

"This program is going to get more and more complex as time
goes on, and you can't count on human heroes bailing you
out to ensure that the system works," Mr. Hite said. With
the program to be phased in over a decade, he said, "the
question you have to ask is: What value are we getting for
these initial increments, and is it worth it?"

Indeed, the costs are enormous, and Congressional
investigators said they did not believe officials had a
clear handle on the financing. The bid request set a
maximum of $10 billion, but the accounting office found
that some of the cost estimates were outdated and the final
price tag - when financing from agencies like the State
Department is considered - could reach $15 billion by 2014.


The idea of virtual borders originated in 2002 with a group
of researchers at the National Defense University's Center
for Technology and National Security Policy. The group, led
by Hans Binnendijk, the center's director, was trying to
find new ways to secure the nation's shipping containers.

"We got interested in this soon after 9/11 as a fairly
obvious problem," he said.

The group wrote an article discussing the need to inspect
cargo long before it arrived in United States harbors. They
then briefed a range of government agencies.

The virtual border is similar to the idea of an air traffic
control center, officials note. In this case, the system
would allow homeland security officials to monitor travel
on a national level, shifting resources and responding as
necessary.

The air traffic control analogy is significant in part
because Computer Sciences and Lockheed Martin have
traditionally been the nation's two largest contractors for
the Federal Aviation Agency in the development and
maintenance of the nation's air traffic control system.

The air traffic control parallel worries some executives.
More than $500 million and 15 years were squandered on the
effort to modernize the nation's aging air traffic system
beginning in the late 1980's and a prime contractor was
I.B.M.'s Federal Systems Division, now part of Lockheed
Martin.

Another problem the system faces is the potential inability
to get access to all needed data from foreign countries and
from the United States' own intelligence community. Experts
agree that no matter how good the technology, the system
will rely on timely and accurate information about the
histories and profiles of those entering the country to
detect possible terrorists. It will have no direct impact
on illegal immigrants.

The system will lead to a broad interconnection of federal
databases, ranging from intelligence to law enforcement as
well as routine commercial data.

Officials say they will work to ensure that the privacy of
foreigners is protected and that the system will not be
used to profile travelers, but civil libertarians say they
are nonetheless alarmed that databases could be used to
monitor both foreign visitors and American citizens, and
they have already challenged it in court.

Yet another issue irking some lawmakers is the fact that
Accenture is incorporated in Bermuda.

"I don't want to see the Department of Homeland Security
outsourcing its business to a Bermudan company," said
Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who has
pushed to close a loophole allowing foreign bidders on
federal contracts.

Federal officials say they are satisfied that Accenture,
which has about 25,000 employees in the United States and
less than a dozen in Bermuda, meets the definition of a
United States company and is eligible for the contract.

Accenture, for its part, sees the issue as irrelevant.


Jim McAvoy, an Accenture spokesman, said, "The real
question is: Should the federal government be forced to
select an inferior bid because the bidder is incorporated
in the U.S.?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/24/politics/24VISI.html? 
ex=1086431119&ei=1&en=e68b5a8704ec77c1

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