DHS Is Grappling With Bioterrorism
October / November 2009
Volume 7 Number 5
Roger McGinnis, director of innovation at the Department of Homeland Security, isn't afraid to fail. In fact, it's part of his job description.
As the point man for DHS's Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as HSARPA McGinnis is responsible for finding and deploying the best new technology to keep America safe. It's a high-stakes job that comes not only with a $35 million annual budget, but also disappointing letdowns and spectacular breakthroughs.
Fortunately, McGinnis said technology and innovation delights more than it disappoints.
"I get to take those ideas that do seem high risk, but would be really big game changers if they are successful," McGinnis told Innovation during a wide-ranging interview at DHS headquarters in Washington. "The job is actually fun."
McGinnis said when Jay Cohen, former director of the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, hired him three years ago, he explained that failure was a big part of the job.
"He basically said 'I expect 50 percent of your projects or more to fail—€”I want you to be cutting-edge,'" McGinnis explained. "He gave me the latitude to fail."
But failure doesn't seem to be present in the vocabulary of many of the scientists, venture capitalists, researchers and others who pitch technology ideas to the DHS.
"They will not give up," McGinnis said with a chuckle. "We'll start out with some program and I personally think, okay, this will be a failure but we're going to give it a shot. And they succeed."
Some of the national security puzzles that McGinnis and his team of 29 still haven't solved are fast inspection of all shipping containers and a real-time biological detection tool. Those technologies are still "several years out," McGinnis said, but DHS is getting closer.
Fairly slow and cumbersome biodetection systems are already available, such as handheld detection kits using small samples. They are extensively used by first responders and private industry throughout the country. But McGinnis said the agency is looking for solid-state detection systems that can accurately gauge the dispersal of biological agents in a building.
"This is a high-risk effort from a technology standpoint —€”absolutely," McGinnis said. "But we need something that's faster than the current biological systems. As good as they are and as much work as has gone into making them successful, everyone would like something faster.
"We want it to be ubiquitous. Instead of building something as big as half this room and setting it on top of very important federal buildings, we want to be able to use the fact that something like a computer has a fan running on it drawing air across it all the time (an HVAC system might also work) and use solid-state technology as the detection system. Can we coat the solid-state technology with something that can detect biological agents that are being blown across it all the time?
"Buildings are our first task, so it would a great success story if we could get something fast that already uses systems that are there for power, wind, air flow."
McGinnis said that aside from nuclear threats, which are managed by another division within DHS, biological terrorism is among the agency's top priorities.
"If people are successful with that, the damage is so great we just have to put money in that system—€”it's about detections, vaccines, recovery and systems to clean up so people can get back in the building," he said.
One technology currently under consideration is a something called cell-all, and it would ultimately rely on regular citizens to help. The idea is to put a bio-sensor inside cell phones. McGinnis said current detection methods often raise false alarms, but if you have 20 cell phones triggering an alarm it would eliminate uncertainty on the part of humans who must monitor and respond to the alerts.
"Right now there is a problem with fault detection," he said. "But if we we have a system in a metro station and 20 cell phones are saying its happening—€”that's different. The ubiquity of cells phones is unique. And anything you can get just a tiny bit of power from, you can get a detecton from."
However, McGinnis acknowledged that the technology, while strictly voluntary, would present privacy concerns for some Americans. He said DHS frequently consults with civil libertarians and privacy lawyers to ensure the agency's technologies don't violate the law.
"I personally would want to be able to notify other people," with a cell phone censor, he said. "But I can understand why people don't want that. When I say we're worried about privacy, we seriously are."
Aside from bio-detection, McGinnis said he's made it a personal goal of his to improve the airport security process. His office is working closely with Los Alamos National Laboratory and, eventually, the private sector, to develop and deploy rapid magnetic resonance imaging systems that will make it possible for travelers to carry containers holding more than three ounces of liquids again.
"I want to take us back to pre-9/11, so how can we do that?," he said. "We X-ray everything now but we still have to make you open things up because we don't know what those liquids are."
The technology developed by LANL is still in the prototype stage, he said, but holds great promise. "It's not something we're ready to put in the airport yet," he said. "Los Alamos is not going to produce it but the technology will be government-owned. Someone else is going to have to produce it."
John Verrico, a DHS spokesman sitting in on the Innovation interview, said that as a frequent flier, he's as motivated to "put people back in a better mood" in airports again. "Including me," he added with a laugh.
"We want to reduce the stress on the passenger, reduce the workload on the TSA agent and just make everyone's life easier," he said. "If this project is successful it will affect two million people in this country everyday."
Speed is of the essence in any security technology involving large amounts of people.
"One of the factors we're tying to improve is the speed in which things go through," Verrico said. "If it is going to slow down the through-put at the airport it's not going to help. We need small, fast and cost-effective."
Another high priority for the department is developing a touchless fingerprinting system that could dramatically speed up the flow of people crossing borders with Mexico and Canada.
"We want to facilitate legal immigration while enforcing the laws," McGinnis said. "In Nogales, they get between 500 and 5,000 people crossing a day. And the chokepoint is always the fingerprint place."
DHS is also eagerly looking for private-sector outfits to manufacture a new technology—€”developed post-Hurricane Katrina—€”to stop the flow of water through a breached levee.
"I hope we have some vendors step up and start producing those," he said. "Instead of us going out and trying to sell to to 10,000 people, it's going to take a company to start developing these and have them for sale."
As always, DHS is looking to the national laboratories and the private sector to develop the technology needed to protect lives—€”and the American way of life itself. He said when the agency reorganized three years ago it realized it wasn't communicating well enough with the private sector about its needs. Now DHS will send teams of people to a disaster site specifically to see what needs aren't being met. DHS now publishes the gaps in its science and technology capability to solicit help.
"We learned to let everyone know we're open for business —€”and we want to hear from them," "McGinnis said. "Before, I'm not sure we did that."
Shifting gears to the criticism of the agency's organization, McGinnis said many of the complaints have been valid. The department was created hastily in the aftermath of 9/11 and now has about 110,000 civilian employees working under six different agencies, including the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection, Citizenship and Immigration Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard.
"We seem to be getting our feet on the ground," McGinnis said. "We had to set up very quickly in 2002. We had to bring in very smart people from laboratories who were not necessarily program managers or acquisitions kind of people. We made that kind of transition and now things are getting much better."
Tom Michael is Innovation's Washington bureau chief.
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Here's Where Homeland Security Needs Technological Help
In an effort to provide greater transparency into the future technological needs of the Department of Homeland Security, the FutureTECH Program has been created as a resource for organizations to gain insight into areas where science and technology can have significant impact in the years to come.
This program enables the Science and Technology Directorate to efficiently and cost-effectively leverage the resources, skills, experience and productivity of the private sector and other entities like the national laboratories and university community to develop technologies/capabilities in alignment with research/innovation focus areas articulated by the Department.
FutureTECH is an innovative private-public partnership that outlines focus areas for which current technology only exists at earlier stages on the technology readiness scale.
DHS may enter into a simple CRADA (Cooperative Research and Development Agreement) with an organization that shows it has the ability to deliver technology aligned with the research/innovation focus area sought by the Department.
The directorate has compiled the following list of critical research/innovation focus areas that describe general areas in which technology development efforts could provide significant capabilities in the execution of the DHS mission. This kind of open communication acts as a genuine catalyst for R&D to occur on a large scale, in many different venues to develop technologies/capabilities that will advance the cutting edge of homeland security.
—€ Counter IED Network Attack & Analysis describes a technology/capability that better predicts and prevents the successful use of improvised explosive device (IED) threats.
—€ Detection of Homemade Explosives (HMEs) describes a technology/capability that detects homemade explosives (HMEs) and their precursors in both screening and stand-off applications in order to alert an operator or responder to the presence of materials in sufficient quantities to be a significant threat.
—€ Stand-off Rapid Detection of Person-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (PBIEDs) describes a technology/capability that detects improvised explosive devices (IEDs) concealed on an individual's person at a sufficient distance and in sufficient time to allow actions to be taken to safely deal with the threat posed by those devices.
—€ Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED) describes detection of a non-invasive technology/capability that detects vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) at a sufficient distance and in sufficient time to allow actions to be taken to safety deal with the threat posed by those devices.
—€ IED Access and Defeat describes a technology/capability that can access and defeat improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in a way that ensures the safety of IED defeat operators and first responders involved in bomb disposal operations.
—€ Radio Controlled Improvised Explosive Device (RCIED) Countermeasures describes a technology/capability that provides an improved means to jam radio-controlled improvised explosive devices (RCIEDs) within a meaningful radius of operation to allow actions to be taken to safely deal with the threat posed by those devices.
—€ IED Assessment and Diagnostics describes a technology/capability that can assess and diagnose new and emerging improvised explosive device (IED) threats.
—€ Waterborne IED Detect and Defeat Systems describes a technology/capability that detects the presence of explosives or explosive devices, locates the explosive or device precisely, diagnoses the device to determine its components and how they function, and defeats the device using the "best tool" to eliminate the threat.
—€ IED Warnings describes ta technology/capability that identifies effective methods to guide public officials and to inform the American public accurately during conditions of heightened U.S. threat alert.
—€ IED Threat Characterization and Signatures describes a technology/capability that provides the ability to obtain, access and analyze detailed and authoritative performance data on improvised explosive device (IED) threat devices based on the design, assembly and detonation of IED threat devices in a laboratory and/or testing environment.
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