StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

The question is reliance on technology to solve the issues of counterterrorism.  It could be actually that the question should be the reliance on "what" technology instead.  To an extent, the structure and process of the government selection and filtering process favors the large companies and not the smaller innovative companies.  I can think of three of which I am familiar (companies) that have solutions that could provide solutions if given the opportunity.  But it is not that simple.

Are we then falling into a Technology trap? The question could well be "Is our national obsession with technology causing us to misdirect our terrorism-fighting efforts?"

Technology has become so intertwined with homeland security it would be difficult to name a security program in which technology isn’t the main driver or an important underpinning.

The questions are being asked, "What’s the optimum mix of technology and old-fashioned, feet-on-the-street human intelligence? What is the best way to balance the interests of robust national security and civil liberties?" and "To what extent can technology truly help?" [in fighting terrorists].

Even more so, "terrorists do not depend on sophisticated technology for many types of attacks, noting suicide bombers’ ability to transport explosives without drawing attention to themselves and detonate them with relatively simple technology. That simplicity coupled with the intellectual sophistication of university-educated terrorist leaders makes thwarting terrorism through technology a difficult task, he added.

“It’s going to be very hard for us to find a technology…that will neutralize the threat…”

The answers lie beyond reliance on technology to address or neutralize the threat of terrorism, and it probably lies beyond even the use of the "right" technology.  But then you have to deal with the very real problem of when technology is not implemented as intended.

That is what we may be seeing now in the premature (but late) implementation of the Transportation Workers Identity Card (TWIC).

TWIC effectiveness may be compromised
The Transportation Security Administration’s newly disclosed plan to begin implementation of the Transportation Workers Identification Credential without requiring card readers is running into opposition from a biometric industry representative.

“This is half a TWIC—a glorified Flash Pass,” Walter Hamilton, chairman of the International Biometric Industry Association non-profit trade association, said today. “I’m concerned that the TWIC will not be used in the way it was intended.”

The credential is a card with a microprocessor that uses radio frequency to convey information wirelessly to a card reader. The communication with the reader enables the card to be read and the information verified…

… The FIPS 201 standard presents difficulties in comparison to the card technologies deployed in the TWIC prototype phases, according to Hamilton and others. For one thing, FIPS 201 does not include software to permit secure contactless reading of the biometric information on the proposed TWIC card, Hamilton said. With contactless interfaces, the card can be read wirelessly at a distance. Contact interfaces, such as those used for most ATM cards, require the cards to be inserted into a reader to be read.

“There is no contactless access to the biometrics on the card,” Hamilton said. “Without that, the promise of the TWIC is unfulfilled. You have to be able to bind the person to the credential.” Without the biometric verification, there is nothing to stop people from trading and sharing TWIC cards and assuming false identities, he said…

Seems like something is wrong here.  Like trouble IMO.

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