Stephen Konieczka | 12.02.2003 22:40

Mr. Ridge's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is moving forward with steady, unobstructed progress to build a national intelligence gathering system. And San Diego's Congressional representatives and defense contractors want to roll it out here.

Note from the author: Since Dec. I’ve attempted to have this article published in several periodicals. Each one has reject it. Therefore much of the information is stale as I’m unprepared financially to follow up on the progress of the San Diego Regional Network for Homeland Security. I hope, however, that what is contained below is of use to the public of San Diego County.

SK, Chicago, 12 Feb 2003

While Congress may bring an early demise to Mr. Poindexter's program of Total Information Awareness, Mr. Ridge's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is moving forward with steady, unobstructed progress to build a national intelligence gathering system.

Contrary to White House assertions the DHS has an agenda for domestic intelligence gathering. Laid out in White House documents, the president's 2003 budget, congressional testimony and the Homeland Security Act is a sweeping charge to collect information on domestic and transnational activities from personal travel to hospital visits to shipping logs. Already monitoring technologies are being fielded while others are conceptualized and built.

In San Diego County, Cali. a collation of military, political, commercial and academic interests has taken steps to aid the administration's call for a "national research and development enterprise for homeland security comparable…to that which has supported the national security community for more than fifty years." Collectively known as the San Diego Regional Network for Homeland Security (RNHS) members are imagining, developing, producing and marketing components for the DHS's surveillance systems and other homeland security goals. The RNHS also wants the San Diego region to be designated a national test bed where technologies can be integrated and road tested in hopes of national implementation. If the RNHS becomes America's homeland security test bed San Diego County's land, air, water, and people will be the nation's most monitored. But only for a short time. Soon enough it'll come home to us all.

Real-time TIA

A June 2002 White House report on the Department of Homeland Security states that it "will not become a domestic intelligence agency". However a few pages above the document reports how the DHS will develop "continental" systems to pull together information from the entire federal government, other organizations and public sources and how DHS will "be a full partner and consumer of all intelligence-generating agencies". Congress established the DHS's Directorate of Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection to "access, receive, and analyze law enforcement information, intelligence information, and other information" from all levels of government and the private sector.

Public and private health databases will be monitored by the DHS through a "national public health data surveillance system". The DHS will also construct a network of air sniffing sensors to detect and report the release of pathogens. Recent reports tell us this is well underway.

The department will ensure information is shared between "databases of border management, law enforcement, and [the] intelligence community" in the U.S. and abroad. And develop an automated biometric based visa system to track foreign visitors. While the Coast Guard, a formal member of the national foreign intelligence community and now part of the DHS, will conduct surveillance and reconnaissance on all vessels, cargo, and people "well beyond our…traditional borders."

To ensure that these systems "work seamlessly together" at the federal, state, and local level as well as with the private sector the President proposed to establish the Information Integration Office within the Commerce Department.

Available through this network will be a massive amount of information organized in tiers for security purposes. Local firefighters and EMTs may be able to access medical records but not more sensitive information such as police data. Federal agents or others with clearance could review FBI, CIA, INS, and other agency's files.

It's not possible to detail the total cost of these networks but more than $2 billion in 2003 alone is a fair estimate.

The 2003 budget requested $379 million to create a national system linking emergency medical personnel with public health officials and to help state and local providers obtain the equipment necessary to use such a system. Additionally $392 million will be used to improve communication capabilities for bioterrorism responders.

To double the number of INS agents and inspectors at the northern border and to integrate information systems within the U.S. and across borders $5.3 billion requested. Another $2.9 billon would go to the Coast Guard with some funds used to develop mechanism that will track "all vessels operating in the maritime domain." $380 million was requested to build the visa system and support other border activities.

An additional $722 million was requested to improve information-sharing within the federal government and between it and other jurisdictions. The funds will be used to ensure that federal agencies have access to information throughout the federal government.

In total this amounts to nearly a $2 billion investment in security technology dedicated to domestic information collection and distribution, excluding the funds to INS and the Coast Guard which are not itemized in the budget proposal or other documents.

According to the White House this "massive infusion of Federal resources" is merely "the down payment".

These funds will be used by a nearly unaccountable federal bureaucracy with a workforce the size of Worcester, Mass., many of whom hold police powers, to compose the world largest, most advanced and diverse surveillance apparatus.

The official focus or "emphasis" of this unprecedented system will be terrorism and terrorist related activities. "Terrorism", however, means one thing to the public and quite another thing to the government.
In U.S. Code terrorism is defined as "violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State" perpetrated in an effort to influence government policy. Non-permitted marches to oppose government policy or other "violent" or "dangerous" acts of civil disobedience can be defined as acts of terrorism. While it's unlikely that Americans will be charged under such statues legitimacy is given to investigations.

To be sure that the DHS doesn't violate privacy laws during its surveillance Congress created the DHS Privacy Officer. The Privacy Officer will be appointed by the Secretary of Homeland Security and tasked with ensuring DHS does "not erode, privacy protections relating to the use, collection, and disclosure of personal information" as defined in the Privacy Act of 1974. To satisfy the Privacy Act the department will need to prove that information about an individual is "relevant and necessary" to a department or agency. Determining "relevant and necessary" conditions for surveillance will be a matter of opinion given the board scope of "terrorism" and unresolved questions concerning the breadth of "homeland security".

The term "homeland security" was not defined by the Homeland Security Act of 2002. A House bill introduced in March of 2001defined homeland security as "the protection of the territory, critical infrastructures, and citizens…from the threat or use of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, cyber, or conventional weapons by military or other means". That bill was never reported from committee.
Over at the National War College (NWC) students are not told what homeland security is but informed of various positions on the issue and challenged to define it: "Some definitions range from ballistic missile defense to the war on drugs and illegal immigration. Others use a very narrow definition focusing on terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction. American corporations say it should include protecting American citizens and companies in overseas locations. Should it include our satellites in space and our embassies abroad?"

Even the Department of Defense has yet to define the scope and mechanics of homeland security.

With open arms

In all of America there appears to be only one constituency that can say with certainty what homeland security is. And they are those who will profit from whatever it is. Among this select group of nomenclatures those of San Diego County stand out.

In February 2002 Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Ca.) convened his Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Research and Development in El Cajon-The Box-a 94,000 person municipality at the heart of San Diego County. Also attending was Susan Davis, Hunter's congressional neighbor to north and party counterweight on the Armed Services Committee. At the hearing witness after witness described San Diego County, home to two Navy aircraft carriers and one sixth of the fleet, as soft and venerable, ripe with intoxicating terrorist targets.

"We have the port, an international border, very high throughput of international traffic, high profile targets, San Diego bridge, [and] nuclear power plants," said Stephen Rockwood, director and executive vice president of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). SAIC's government contracts account for more than 60 percent of its income.

"I agree with him as to the vulnerabilities within the region; you are rich in those vulnerabilities," said Carl Siel, director of homeland security for the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), a fleet-wide technology acquisition arm focused on integrated systems for command and control, communications, and surveillance.

Rockwook, Siel, and other panelists were anxious to show vulnerabilities because they seek San Diego County's designation as a national test bed for homeland security technology. Such a distinction would mean a bolstered appropriations outlay for SPAWAR and huge profits for SAIC and its associates in the defense industry.

Kathy Sridhar, president of the National Defense Industrial Association's San Diego chapter; and president of Indus Technologies, a defense contractor, offered the subcommittee a bounty of San Diego's assets in support of it becoming the nation's test bed.

"We have the busiest international border in the country…a coastline and we have a commercial port. We have access to open spaces and the desert for testing. We have nearby test facilities like China Lake. We have an international airport, a multitude of racial-cultural groups and languages and many large companies with security emphasis like Titan, SAIC, [and] Booz Allen," she said.

Sridhar and others explained that together these assets and vulnerabilities allow for a wide variety of testing in San Diego County.

"Everything is here," said Mark Thiemens, Dean of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) "You need the military presence and you need the corporate presence in a big way. You need the high tech and the biotech. You need the university involvement, and you need to put it together in a package. And we have all the players here."

On April 5 Hunter and Davis invited those players to a summit on homeland security. Attendees christened themselves the San Diego Regional Network for Homeland Security (RNHS) and agreed to seek San Diego County's designation as a counter-terrorism and homeland security technologies test bed and center of excellence.

At the summit San Diego State University President Stephen Weber and UCSD Chancellor Robert Dynes committed their universities to co-leadership roles in RNHS. The universities will act as coordinators for the "regional responses to the scientific, technological, and operational challenges". UCSD is the dominate partner.

University life

UCSD is the 5th largest university recipient of federal research money and an unabashed enthusiast of San Diego's designation as an open air lab. It is tirelessly channeling intelligence into the homeland security movement and energy into funding procurement for homeland security research. Many of UCSD researchers are working on projects critical to a homeland security surveillance system.

Mohan Trivedi, director of the Computer Vision and Robotic Research (CVRR) Laboratory and his research team are building and commercializing several surveillance and tracking technologies. One involves face recognition software that will isolates faces in a crowd, adjust for environmental conditions, and match faces against a database. In another project CVRR has installed cameras and sensors along 3.5 miles of San Diego coastline "for constant surveillance". Human operators will only be necessary when computers detect "suspicious activity" and alerts the "appropriate authority". And CVRR developed software that turns handheld computers into remote tele-viewers or Digital Tele-Viewers (DTV) which can access video streams from camera networks. The technology will decentralize the command and control stations used to monitor public spaces by allowing multiple users to customize their view independently of others on in system and outside a central command center. Trivedi expects all projects to "yield real-world results" in about one year.

Over at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Cal-(IT)2), a UCSD and UC Irvine project working with wireless technology and the Internet, researchers are building the Wireless Internet Information System for Medial Response in Disaster (WIISARD). A joint project between UCSD and the Veterans' Administration Hospital, WIISARD is directed by Dr. Leslie Lenert, and envisioned as a medical tool. It would allow EMTs to receive information from the hospital and transmit back so personnel can prepare for patients before they arrive. WIISARD, however, is not limited to hospitals. A technology infrastructure using PDAs it could easily be adapted to provide the any organization's resources to members in the field.

At UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering a $2.3 million grant issued by the National Science Foundation funded a high-performance, wide-area, wireless data network. Simply called the High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN) the system provides internet access to researchers and schools in remote areas and allows sensors and other monitoring devices to operate without wires or constant support.

In May of 2002 Trivedi's CVRR and the HPWREN project joined forced to deploy a network of cameras and other sensors to "demonstrate a single monitoring system that could be used simultaneously by academic researchers and agencies as diverse as Caltrans [California Department of Transportation], SPAWAR and the U.S. Coast Guard," according to the Jacobs School.

By adding WIISARD to the equation the DHS can create regional and national networks-connected to a variety of databases-giving personnel in the field real-time access to information on individuals or vehicles encountered or passing a certain fixed point. And this is just a fraction of the homeland security research being done at one university.

UCSD's contributions don't stop at the laboratory's door though. UCSD's most important non-research initiative are its partnerships with SPAWAR and others that bring scientist's work to the marketplace.

The California Center for Advanced Technology (CATT) uses a $5.2 million grant administered by the Department of Defense to fund and fast-track commercialization of marketable technology. A joint venture between SDSU's College of Business Administration, UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering, ORINCON Corp, and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center San Diego (SPAWAR/SCC San Diego) the "first priority" of CATT "is targeting technologies…in Crisis/Consequence Management and Homeland Defense". In November of 2002 SPAWAR awarded CATT $4.4 million to "identify, evaluate, fund and accelerate" dual use (public and private) crisis and consequence technology for homeland security.
UCSD Connect is another partner in the bid to bring ideas from RNHS researchers to the marketplace. Connect's impetus is "linking high-technology and life science entrepreneurs with…technology, money, markets, management, partners, and support services."

While USCD's home in a military city certainly plays into its eagerness to support the homeland security agenda there are other motivation as well. Like many universities it hopes to attract the eye of the secretary for homeland security who must designate university based centers for homeland security in less than one year. UCSD's location, programs and history make a strong candidate but it never hurts to show you want it.

Sparing no effort to show its sprit the university has established a flag waving Liberty graced homeland security web site (homelandsecurity.ucsd.edu). The site is organized around the four "urgent and essential" missions for homeland security laid out in the National Strategy for Homeland Security. Here UCSD promotes its work in the fields of bioterrorism, critical infrastructure protection, cyber security, and emergency response.

Freedom's road?

Imagine the United States as a house. This house is equipped with a keyless lock. To enter the house you swipe a card and for added security a scan is taken of your fingerprint or retina. Inside the house sensors monitor communication channels and alarms alert you to entryway breeches. Across town your partner is receiving information about the house-how many heartbeats are inside for example-from a roof perched antenna. If there's too many heartbeats-or not enough-she can call up cameras on her PDA and tilt, swivel, and zoom to check things. She's also receiving a constant stream of information about the structure's internal environment: temperature, air quality, CO level, et cetera. So is the fire station, the police department, and the local hospital.

Now remember that this house is the second largest country in the world and the fire house, police department, and local hospital are federal agencies with limited rights to examine what occurs in public and private settings.

There are aspects of the government's plan for homeland security that are sure to be effective without a saturated surveillance of domestic territory. For example, Customs is working with other nations to secure transport containers at their origin and pre-clear reliable shippers for swift passage. Another initiative is "The Smart Border Declaration" under which Canada and the U.S. commit to establishing a process that allows frequent border crossers to do so quickly, freeing up agents for less secure people and vehicles. (This system, however, may lead to the cross border movements of citizens from both country being recorded, which would then be available to U.S. and Canadian officials.)

These and others similar initiatives provide a level of safety unmatched by massive surveillance of the American public and are truly international assaults on terrorism. They cost little and provide immediate benefits. A national surveillance network as envisioned by the White House will take years to develop, billions of dollars to build and maintain, and provide limited security. Most important, because this system is a threat to freedom of movement, privacy, speech, and thought operating under a legal framework of play-dough it will prevent liberty's final victory.

Copyright 2003 Stephen Konieczka, Chicago

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