"Success stories and failures as airport tests new security measures"

Tuesday, September 2, 2003

Success stories and failures as airport tests new security measures
By JENNIFER PETER
The Associated Press


BOSTON (AP) - Since beginning its aggressive pursuit of new security
measures in 2001, Logan International Airport has rejected two different
new-age technologies once considered promising for verifying identities and
picking terrorists out of a crowd.

After a three-month pilot last year, airport officials rejected a face
recognition system that was tested on 40 airport employees, explaining that
it was too expensive and too potentially faulty for widespread use.

Because it is based on a database of photographs, it also has inherent
limitations, according to Dennis Treece, corporate security director for the
Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan

"We don't have a photograph of every terrorist," Treece said.

A 2002 Massport report, recently obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of
Information Act, revealed that the system generated false positives more
than half the time and false negatives in more than 10 percent of cases.
Massport announced last year that the system was not yet "ready for
primetime."

Treece revealed Tuesday that a second technology, which scanned employees'
irises before allowing them into secure areas of the airport, has also been
rejected after it was tested at Logan. A central flaw, Treece said, was that
many employees simply did not like to place their eyes so close to a
machine, even when assured it would cause no damage. It also did not work on
people who have color-tinted contacts.

"We ultimately rejected it, not because the technology didn't work, but
because there were limitations we couldn't see our way around," Treece said.
"It didn't socialize well."

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, which were carried out with the help of two
planes hijacked from Logan, Massport officials have worked aggressively to
make the airport a security leader, earning kudos from the leader of the new
Homeland Security department.

Several technologies have been tested and embraced by Logan officials,
including hand-held computers for the state troopers stationed there, an
infrared motion detection system to guard its coastline perimeter, and a
hand geometry detection system at the airport's business office.

After a pilot program last year, the airport has also purchased two machines
that authenticate the identification provided by prospective employees.

The airport is in the process of putting a special blast-proof film on all
of the terminals' curbside windows, which prevents the glass from showering
into pieces if an explosion occurs.

On the less technological side, Logan in June became the first airport in
the country to arm its anti-terrorism unit with submachine guns for patrols
through the terminals. Last November, the airport instituted a behavior
recognition program, which trains officers to watch closely for suspicious
behavior.

The ACLU, which was initially denied access to the facial recognition
report, has argued that security should be based on "good old-fashioned
detective work" rather than potentially faulty technology.

"What this report shows is that despite a lot of time and money poured into
facial recognition at Boston Logan, as well as other airports around the
country, the technology doesn't work," said Carol Rose, executive director
of the ACLU's Massachusetts affiliate. "This type of technology invades our
privacy without making us any more secure. It gives us the false sense of
doing something to make us safer, when in reality we're not."

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