WASHINGTON - The Department of Homeland Security is on the verge of awarding the biggest contract in its young history for an elaborate system that could cost as much as $15 billion and would employ a network of computer databases to track visitors to the United States long before they set foot here.
The contract, which will probably be awarded in coming days to one of three final bidders, already is generating considerable interest as federal officials try to significantly improve their ability to monitor who is entering at the country's more than 300 border-crossing checkpoints by land, sea and air, where they are going and whether they pose a terrorist threat.
But with that interest have come questions — both logistical and philosophical — from congressional investigators and outside experts. Will a company based outside the United States, in Bermuda, get the mega-contract? How much will it end up costing? What about the privacy concerns of foreign visitors? Most critical, for all the high-end concepts and higher expectations, can the system really work?
Interviews with government officials, experts and the three companies vying for the contract — Accenture, the Computer Sciences Corp. and Lockheed Martin — reveal new details and potential complications about a project that all agree is daunting in its complexity, cost and national security importance.
The program, known as US-Visit and rooted partly in a Pentagon concept developed after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, seeks to supplant the nation's physical borders with what officials call virtual borders. Such borders would employ networks of databases and biometric sensors for identification at sites where people seek visas to the United States.
With a virtual border in place, the actual border guard would become the last point of defense, rather than the first, because each visitor already would have been screened by a global web of databases.
Once visitors arrive at U.S. checkpoints, they would face "real-time identification," or instantaneous authentication to confirm that they are who they say they are. U.S. officials would, at least theoretically, be able to track them inside the United States and determine if they leave the country on time.
Privacy concerns
Officials say they will be able, for instance, to determine whether a visitor who overstays his visa has come in contact with the police. Privacy advocates say they worry that the new system could give the federal government far broader power to monitor the whereabouts of visitors by tapping into credit card information or similar databases. The system would tie together about 20 federal databases with information on the more than 300 million foreign visitors each year.
The company that wins the contract will be asked to develop a standard for identifying visitors using a variety of possible tools — including photos and fingerprints, already used at some airports on a limited basis since January, and techniques like iris scanning, facial recognition and radio-frequency chips for reading passports or identifying vehicles.
"Each of these technologies have strengths and weaknesses," Paul Cofoni, president of Computer Sciences' federal sector, said of the biometric alternatives. "I don't know that any one will be used exclusively."
Some techniques tried
Virtual borders is a high-concept plan, building on ideas that have been tried since the 2001 attacks.
Domestic security officials say making it work on a practical level is integral to protecting the United States from terrorist attacks in the decades to come.
"This is hugely important for the security of our country and for the wise use of our limited resources," Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border security, said in an interview. "We're talking here about a comprehensive approach to border security."
But the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded in a report in September that "the program is a very risky endeavor," given its enormous scope and complexity. "The missed entry of one person who poses a threat to the United States could have severe consequences," the report said.
An update issued by the accounting office earlier this month found that while domestic security officials had made some headway in meeting investigators' concerns about management and oversight problems, the progress "has been slow."
The update said major questions remained about the project's cost and viability. "I don't think there's any less concern today," Randolph Hite, who wrote the reports, said in an interview.
The costs are enormous, and congressional investigators said they did not believe officials had a clear handle on the financing. The bid request set a maximum of $10 billion, but the accounting office found that some of the cost estimates were outdated and the final price tag — when financing from agencies like the State Department is considered — could reach $15 billion by 2014.
Like air traffic control
The virtual border is similar to the idea of an air traffic control center, officials note. In this case, the system would allow domestic security officials to monitor travel on a national level, shifting resources and responding as necessary.
The air traffic control analogy is significant in part because Computer Sciences and Lockheed Martin have traditionally been the nation's two largest contractors for the Federal Aviation Agency in the development and maintenance of the nation's air traffic control system.
But that parallel worries some officials. More than $500 million and 15 years were squandered on the effort to modernize the nation's aging air traffic system beginning in the late 1980s and a prime contractor was IBM's Federal Systems Division, now part of Lockheed Martin.
An issue irking some lawmakers is the fact that Accenture is incorporated in Bermuda.
Federal officials say they are satisfied that Accenture, which has about 25,000 employees in the United States and fewer than a dozen in Bermuda, meets the definition of a U.S. company and is eligible for the contract.
source: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/8743636.htm 24may04
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