Is The TSA Up To The Technology Task?

Nov 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By MICHAEL FICKES

The magnitude of the technology system being deployed in support of the nation's new air-travel security system defies comprehension, and observers are openly wondering if the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has taken on too much.

Overall, the technology system the TSA is developing aims to protect the nation's 429 commercial airports. Approximately 2 million passengers use U.S. airports daily, and in the course of a year, more than 900 million passengers pass through them, checking more than 1 billion bags in the process.

The TSA is building a technology system designed to secure all of this traffic with the help of 30,000-plus passenger screeners and 22,000-plus baggage screeners, all of whom will be hired and classified as federal employees of the TSA.

The screening tasks will require X-ray, metal detection, and explosive detection technology to assess passengers and baggage moving through the system. To date, public attention has focused largely on passenger and baggage screening and the installation deadlines mandated by Congress. But the TSA's technological initiatives go far beyond passenger and baggage screening systems.

The TSA Technology Plan

As a new government organization, the TSA's first task was to create itself. Part of that task involved building a technology system that connects TSA desktop computers with each other and with the airports. These systems must access databases that are currently under construction; thus facilitating and coordinating the TSA's work with airport and airline executives, managers and employees. Unisys Corp., McLean, Va., is designing and installing the system under a seven-year, $1 billion managed services contract. “Our role is the IT infrastructure: the WAN, LAN, desktops and telecommunications,” says Thomas Conaway, Unisys managing principal for national defense and Homeland security. “We also have a role in deploying applications that will ride on the infrastructure.”

At some point, the applications using the IT infrastructure may store and distribute data from access control and closed circuit television (CCTV) systems installed in individual airports.

Two major technological initiatives concern the Transportation Worker Identification Card (TWIC) system, which will use smart cards holding some form of biometric technology to control employee access to secure areas. TWIC may eventually extend to the TSA's “trusted traveler” program, which would provide similar cards for travelers submitting to background checks to expedite the airport security process.

The TSA has also started a 20-airport pilot study designed to test security procedures and technologies that will better protect airport perimeters and provide new forms of access control within them. Technologies fueling this effort may include motion detection, biometrics and CCTV. According to TSA officials, the biometric systems deployed in this pilot will differ from those deployed with TWIC. In this case, biometric access control will aim to ensure that passengers purchasing tickets and checking in are the same passengers that board the airplanes.

The TSA has also undertaken a largely secret effort called the second generation Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System or CAPPS II, which involves a computerized profiling system capable of using artificial intelligence to collect information about individual passengers. The system flags individuals assessed to have violent intentions.

Congress mandated all of these technology initiatives along with passenger and baggage screening in the Aviation Security Act (ASA) of 2001, which passed on October 11, 2001.

Looming Deadlines

Deadlines already loom for passenger and baggage screening systems, with one arriving in mid-November. The ASA stipulates that airports deploy federal screeners and upgraded systems to check passengers by Nov. 19. All federal baggage screeners and explosive detection systems must be in place by Dec. 31.

As of Oct. 1, the TSA had deployed federal screeners in just 142 of 439 airports. Twelve airports had hired both passenger and baggage screeners; 129 airports had brought on passenger screeners only; and one airport had signed on baggage screeners only. Lockheed Martin Mission Systems of Clarksburg, Md., holds a $350 million TSA contract for the Secure Airport Security Rollout — the passenger screening system. “Our job is to survey the airports, develop designs for checkpoints and lanes, review the designs with TSA and the airports, and do all the construction and conversion work,” says Tim Bradley, who directs the program for Lockheed.

Passenger screening technology includes X-ray machines for carry-on items, magnetometer gates and wands for metal detection, supplemental X-ray machines for items such as shoes, and electronic trace detectors (ETDs), for follow-up checks on bags failing to pass the X-Ray screen. Lockheed's work includes evaluating the equipment and replacing older systems with upgrades approved by the TSA.

Lockheed is also making provisions to manage data collected by these machines and to accommodate surveillance devices that may eventually be added to the passenger checkpoints.

With only about one-third of the nation's 429 airports covered as of October 1, will Lockheed meet its November 19, 2002, deadline? “Yes,” says Randy Null, associate undersecretary for technology with the TSA. “The indications right now are that in terms of federalization of the work force and implementation of processes at those checkpoints, we're in pretty good shape. In terms of redesigning or building new lanes (at checkpoints), some of that work will probably continue after Nov. 19, but that is work above and beyond what the mandate requires. It will relate more to efficiency and customer service.”

Baggage screening represents a more daunting challenge. The Washington, D.C., based Homeland Security Services division of The Boeing Company is handling this effort under a $508 million contract with the TSA. Baggage screening technology includes two types of equipment: explosive detection systems (EDS) and explosive trace detection (ETD) systems. Mini-van-sized EDS equipment employs sophisticated CAT-scan technology capable of determining what the contents of a bag are made of and whether it is explosive. ETD machines evaluate trace materials and identify bags that have had contact with explosive materials. According to Elliot Brenner, a spokesperson for Boeing, the company is also investigating the development of a tracking system capable of detecting patterns of incidents related to baggage passing through the system.

All but a handful of airports will undergo two phases of baggage screening technology implementation. The current effort aims to meet the December 31 deadline by installing systems wherever space can be found. By and large, the first phase will place baggage-screening equipment in airport lobbies adjacent to airline ticketing counters.

Boston's Logan International Airport is one exception to this. According to Null, Logan will install its baggage screening system “in-line” or behind the ticketing counters in the airport's main baggage handling areas. The system will require more than three dozen EDS machines and a number of ETD machines. “Boston stepped up and committed funds on their own for this installation and will complete their in-line system by the end of the year,” Null says.

Eventually, most airports will remove systems from their lobbies and replace them with in-line systems, but that will happen after the Dec. 31 deadline.

Observers question whether the baggage-screening deadline can be met. Null, however, is optimistic: “In some cases, we may have to do some level of mitigation, through canines, portable ETDs or some other method to meet the requirement for 100 percent screening.”

Industry to the TSA: Stick with screening

Some airport and airline professionals believe that the TSA should restrict its focus. “The airports want the TSA to focus on passenger screening and baggage screening,” says Ian Redhead, vice president of airport facilities and services with the Airports Council International NA, in Washington, D.C. “But the TSA's mandate is so general that they are looking at a lot of things like perimeter security and law enforcement issues. We're saying forget this other stuff. Focus on baggage and passenger screening.”

John Becker, director of airport business development with Tyco Security Business Partners, also contends that the TSA is working on too many projects at once. As the former director of security at O'Hare International Airport, Becker questions the TWIC initiative in particular.

“When I was at O'Hare, I was spending about $80,000 a year to badge employees with cards that cost $1.13,” Becker says. “TWIC will cost about $15 each. That means badging employees at O'Hare will cost $750,000. Why give this card to O'Hare employees when 97 percent of them will never set foot in another airport besides O'Hare? Why not give TWIC to federal government employees and aircrews that travel from airport to airport?

“Now biometrics and the registered traveler program are coming down the road, yet the TSA is still struggling with its initial assignments,” Becker continues. “I think we have to step back and assess the size of this job.”

Null concedes that the scale of the technology task before the TSA is enormous. But the nature of the work may make it possible for the TSA to manage a number of initiatives at once.

“Passenger and baggage screening aren't so much technology tasks as deployment and logistics tasks,” he says. “Our challenges involve finding ways to deploy and integrate technologies in environments that range from brand new airports to airports that are very old and don't have an infrastructure that can accept them.

“Some airports are spacious and easy to configure, and we can do this quickly,” he continues. “For other airports, the work could take six to nine months.”

Public challenges

Of course, the TSA's work involves more than airport security and technology. The new organization also labors in an intense political atmosphere. At the end of September, for example, House lawmakers released a Department of Transportation budget proposal for fiscal 2003, which began on October 1. The proposal included a $5.1 billion TSA allotment. While $5.1 billion will buy a lot of technology, the proposal fell $200 million short of the TSA's request.

Upon being notified of the proposal, the TSA imposed a hiring freeze and issued a news release asserting that “it is premature to say whether we will or won't meet deadlines” set for the end of 2002.

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