Defense, Homeland officials seek bids on security devices

Homeland Security and Defense department officials on a Friday panel discussed the development and acquisition of transportation security technologies.

Jeffrey David, a deputy Defense director for anti-terrorism technology, announced that the Homeland Security Technical Support Working Group has issued a new call for ideas on explosives-detection equipment.

The solicitation is posted on a working group Web site. The department is seeking devices for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear countermeasures. Such requests generally get a large response, with the last one generating about 12,000 submissions. Of the thousands of one-page bids, only a few ultimately will be funded. The bid request contains 50 requirements, including that proposals include a secure, authenticated mobile-communications system and an improved mass-transit surveillance and early-warning system.

David said cybersecurity is important to every agency. "Almost everyone's worried about that, and should be," he said. "It's a serious problem." But he said the biggest goal of the agency is to find a technology that can detect bombs and other threats from a distance.

Sergio Magistri, president and CEO of InVision Technologies, described his company's detection equipment, which is ubiquitous in airports. He said his company's goal of the future is to develop detection equipment that is not seen by those it is scanning.

Lyle Malotky, chief scientific adviser at the Transportation Security Administration's Office of Security Technology, also named distant, transparent detection as a top goal of his office's Atlantic City, N.J.-based laboratory. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been given the task of identifying scientific endeavors that have the greatest possibility of solving the distance problem.

The Atlantic City lab has invested about $250 million in research in recent years, Malotky said. Still, he predicted that the development of new technologies would be slow. "I would expect [it] to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary," he said.

He also noted barriers such as privacy issues. A full-body scanner, for example, can show gender-specific body parts, which the public may not be ready for, he said. "The real obstacle to deployment of this technology is the privacy issue."

The lab has about 70 scientists and engineers, he said, but he could not predict how it would work with scientists and engineers of Homeland Security's science and technology directorate. "What's going to happen under Homeland Security is very much up in the air," Malotky said.

He said after the panel discussion that his lab would be "a child organization to what's going to be happening" at Homeland Security.

At an earlier session, Deborah Wince-Smith, president of the Council on Competitiveness, said one vulnerability that could lead to requirements is software patching.

Randall Kroszner, member of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, said the White House prefers that the private sector take the lead on security measures, but if it does not, steps will have to be mandated.

David Wyss, chief economist at Standard and Poor's, said it is difficult to apply cost-benefit analysis to security because it is based on the probabilities of a terrorist attack.