Homeland Security chief seeks better liability protection for companies
Program created in 2002 has been dogged by complaints that application process is too onerous.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday that his department wants to improve its implementation of a 2002 law meant to speed development and availability of anti-WMD and other antiterrorism technology.
The Support Antiterrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies (SAFETY) Act was intended to spur development by limiting companies' liability against lawsuits related to antiterrorism products' use. However, the program has been dogged by complaints that the application process is too onerous and the Homeland Security Department is too slow to approve eligible products for the act's protections.
In a speech in Washington, Chertoff told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the SAFETY Act is "a resource and an opportunity for us that we have not fully succeeded in exploiting, and I want to tell you here today we are very committed to fully exploiting that."
"If we are to really embrace the kind of technological solutions and services solutions which are out there in the marketplace, we need to be able to afford actors a real opportunity to present those without the fear of undue litigation and unduly high transaction costs that come out of the possibility of lawsuits," Chertoff said.
"I know that there have been issues with the application process. We have addressed some of those," the secretary said. "We're looking more comprehensively at what we can do to make the SAFETY Act program efficient and hospitable, to do the job that Congress intended it to do - which is to create limited liability protection and some safe harbor for those entities that are creating the homeland security solutions of the 21st century - and doing it in a way that's careful but also efficient and embraces the new technology as opposed to pushing it away by setting unduly high barriers."
Among the 14 products listed on a Homeland Security Web site as being fully certified under the SAFETY Act are a Science Applications International Corp. tool to screen vehicles for weapons of mass destruction and other weapons or threats, and a Northrop Grumman biological agent-detection device intended for use in post offices.