When Your Ship Comes In

The world is a very different place out beyond the horizon. At any given time, some 40,000 large cargo ships are plying the world’s oceans, as are innumerable smaller merchant craft. They all pull in and out of ports, load, unload, change out crews and cargos, and steam from one location to the next. It can be an amazing, and trackless, story—rivaling Pirates of the Caribbean—to document how these ships come by and load their cargo, by what polyglot seamen and in what untamed ports.

At any point in a merchant ship’s journey, pry open a container and what will you find? When you can’t be sure, that spells danger. A single container gone purposefully astray and packed with explosives is not a fictional scenario.

Enter MATTS, the Marine Asset Tag Tracking System. Equipped with a sensor, data-logging computer, radio transceiver, and GPS, MATTS is an inexpensive black box, no bigger than a deck of cards. Affixed to a container, it can store its location history and report it back when in range (up to 1 km) of an Internet-equipped ship, container terminal, or cell phone tower. Along the way, a record of that container’s route is monitored, and authorities can know immediately if anything has gone amiss.

MATTS can use its GPS chip to estimate its location even if the GPS signal is lost—storing data like computer “cookies.” Once operational, when a MATTS tag is deep below deck, its transmitter signal will “jump” from one tagged container to the next until it finds a shipboard communications path. Soon, through research and development sponsored by the DHS S&T Directorate, MATTS will also be integrated with an Advanced Container Security Device, which will send alerts through MATTS when a container has been tampered with or opened.

S&T’s Cargo Security Program Manager Bob Knetl with a MATTS container tag.

MATTS was developed under an S&T Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract by iControl Incorporated, a small Santa Clara, CA–based company.

“We’re looking at a serious threat here,” says Vinny Schaper, the SBIR Program manager. “Eleven million containers a year are brought onto our docks. Interrupt this with a terrorist attack, and the backup would reach around the globe.”

“This could be worldwide solution to a high-priority need,” says Bob Knetl, who manages the MATTS research in the Directorate’s Borders and Maritime Division.

In an April 2007 test, 100 MATTS-equipped containers started out in the Port of Yokohama, Japan, on their way to the Port of Los Angeles–Long Beach, CA, where they will continue by rail to Illinois and be trucked to their final destination in August. If all goes well, the test will demonstrate that the communications can be used internationally and that transitioning to land-based transportation runs smoothly.

For more information about this story, click here

Menace in a Bottle

SENSIT testing is under way to detect everyday liquid products such as these.

Ever since the plot to blow up transatlantic airplanes with liquid explosives was uncovered in London last August, pressure has increased on the airline industry—and the government—to find new ways to not only detect liquids in baggage and on passengers, but also to figure out what those liquids are. Now, the S&T Directorate is teaming with scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory to develop a possible solution.

The Directorate is testing a new airport baggage screening technology that can differentiate among a variety of liquids, gels, and lotions. Called SENSIT (for “sense-it”), it already can tell the difference between some 50 kinds of fluid-type products.

“Today, when you pack for the airport, you might have to place your toothpaste tubes, shampoo bottles, and cosmetics in a sandwich bag” per the 3-1-1 Rule. “We want to make that practice a thing of the past,” says Brian Tait, who manages the SENSIT research, one of several Directorate initiatives to address liquid explosives. “And that’s going to make a lot of people very happy.”

An interim step to this goal, Tait says, is to develop the capability to screen carry-on bags that are allowed under the 3-1-1 Rule in an operational environment. In late June, he says, a Los Alamos team successfully completed a proof of concept of an extremely sensitive future screening technology that scans the magnetic changes of individual materials at the molecular level and stores them in a database. These data allow screeners to differentiate and identify many materials that may be packaged together or separately as they go through the screening process. It uses the same technology that is used to scan brains, and it is based on ultra-low field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The team aims to place the technology next to current X-ray screeners.

SENSIT has thus far demonstrated the ability to differentiate more than four dozen materials considered “safe” for carrying onto airplanes—from everyday personal items such as toothpaste and mouthwash to those that are considered hazardous.

“With the MRI signal, we want to distinguish between harmful items, and many common carry-on liquid consumables,” says Tait. “The goal is the reliable detection of liquids, with high throughput, that is non-contact, is non-invasive, requires no radiation, produces no residue, and uses the existing airport security portal.”

SENSIT is one of S&T’s Homeland Innovative Prototypical Solutions (HIPS)—research that has moderate to high risk but considerable promise for high payoff. “We’re working hard on getting the SENSIT technology to an airport near you very soon,” says S&T’s Innovation Director Roger McGinnis.

For more information about this story, click here

Looks Can Be Deceiving

Sympathy for violent groups is evident in Lebanon: in these photos taken by Flanigan, Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, is displayed in a car, and a poster of a fighter hangs for all to see.

Unfortunately, some acts of kindness are far from random. They can be downright deadly.

New homeland security research is showing how terrorist groups around the world develop strategic relationships with charity and humanitarian organizations in the very communities where they operate. In fact, these groups often fund or provide direct services such as medical care, wastewater treatment, and garbage collection, only to help build their legitimacy and recruit members for more acts of violence.

“They work to generate good will,” says Shawn Flanigan, who traveled to Lebanon and Sri Lanka from the State University of New York at Albany through funding by the S&T Directorate’s Centers of Excellence program. And if these relationships initially succeed, she says, the terrorists will pressure the organizations along what she calls a “continuum of community support.”

Charities in the Middle East, for instance, may at first be hesitant to accept money or support from groups such as Hezbollah, which is known to advocate violence to achieve political goals. But over time, if the need for medical and other services becomes dire, they will move from passive acceptance to cooperation and, eventually, to full involvement in the cause. “Some people [in the charities] will turn their heads at the violence, and others will say their religion calls them to be engaged with these groups,” says Flanigan, now a professor at San Diego State University.

She also suggests a way to prevent terrorists from using charities: Help those same charities. If organizations have the supplies they need for their communities—including the support of local and national governments—she says they will be less inclined to side with radical and violent groups. She recognizes, however, that such a change will not come overnight. As an example: While the Hezbollah-funded organization Jihad in Construction is listed as a terrorist “front” by the U.S. Department of State, it is also a prominent provider of public works in Lebanon, often contracting with the Lebanese government.

Flanigan conducted her research through funding from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a DHS Center of Excellence led by the University of Maryland. START is seeking to understand how radical and violent groups form and then persist. This knowledge, it says, can lead to effective ways to counter and prevent the spread of terrorism. Flanigan participated in START’s Pre-Doctoral Fellow program, an annual competition that provides scholars with funds to support innovative research.

For more information about this story, click here

Automatic for the People

Click on the picture to see footage of NIST’s robot tests at Texas A&M’s “Disaster City” training facility.

What will they think of next? That was the question facing government engineers at a recent test of robotic search-and-rescue technologies that may one day be used to save lives after a terrorist incident or natural disaster. Emergency responders from 16 states tested about 20 robots using two realistic training scenarios at Texas A&M University’s “Disaster City” training facility. The five-day event in June was sponsored by the S&T Directorate and organized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The goal was to put to the test robot performance using emerging standard test methods. The results will be used to develop usage guidelines that will match specific kinds of robots to particular disaster scenarios.

For more information about this story, click here

Enough to Make You Sick

Its inventors call it the LED Incapacitator (L-E-D, as in light-emitting diode). Weapons buffs call it a nonlethal weapon. But test subjects who have buckled and reeled from its nauseating strobe call it other names—none printable.

A later version of the LED Incapacitator, featuring a trimmer head.

How does the LED Incapacitator incapacitate? By simultaneously overwhelming the subject both physiologically (temporarily blinding him) and psychophysically (disorienting him). A built-in rangefinder measures the distance to the nearest pair of eyeballs. Then, a “governor” sets the output and pulse train (a series of pulses and rests) to a level, frequency, and duration that are effective, but safe. The colors and pulses continuously change, leaving no time for the brain or eyes to adapt. After a few minutes, the effects wear off.

The light could be used to make a bad guy turn away or shut his eyes, giving authorities enough time to tackle the suspect and apply the cuffs … all while sparing the lives of passersby, hostages, or airline passengers.

An animated cross section shows how red, green, and blue LEDs are focused through an optical plate.

“There are often confrontations at border crossings with suspected illegal aliens or drug runners,” Lieberman says. “You don’t want to hurt or kill them, just take them into custody. With this,” he smiles, “they don’t need to know English to comply.”

Output and size can easily be scaled up to fit the need; immobilizing a mob, for instance, might call for a wide-angle “bazooka” version. Scaling down is more difficult. At 15 inches long by 4 inches wide, the current prototype is more transportable than portable. The next-generation weapon must be as short and svelte as a D-cell Maglite, designed to fit on a duty belt. “Phase 3 will be our shrink phase,” Lieberman says.

This fall, in Phase 2, researchers at Pennsylvania State University will test the LED Incapacitator on volunteers at the school’s Institute of Nonlethal Defense Technology. Intelligent Optical Systems will use the test results to evaluate design features and tweak the strobe’s pattern and colors. “There’s one wavelength that gets everybody,” says Lieberman. “Vlad calls it the evil color.” Further tests are scheduled for the fall, and production could begin by December. By 2010, the LED Incapacitator could be in the hands of thousands of policemen, border agents, and National Guardsmen.

S&T Snapshots is a monthly newsletter produced by the DHS Science and Technology Directorate in partnership with the Homeland Security Institute. HSI is a Studies and Analysis Federally Funded Research and Development Center.