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News
Article
Aviation
Week & Space Technology's
Homeland Security &
Defense Newsletter
JUNE
3, 2002 - John Croft
INTELLIGENT
VIDEO SYSTEM NABS ILLEGAL ENTRANTS
Even
when the right people with the right credentials
are allowed to go through the right airport doors,
the wrong things can happen. That's because friend
and foe alike are too often able to slip through
supposedly secure portals by "piggybacking"
or "tailgating" through the door behind
the credentialed employee. Such a low-tech loophole
can outsmart high-tech smart cards designed to
boost security by authenticating via biometric
signature that the cardholder has access to the
secure area.
Sept.
11 aside, there's been pressure to solve the problem
for years. In a stinging 1999 report by the U.S.
Transportation Dept.'s inspector general, special
agents were able to penetrate secure areas in
eight major airports, eventually boarding aircraft
uncontested. Sixty-eight of 99 unauthorized entries
were "piggybacks" and would have been
prevented if employees had ensured doors had closed
behind them after entering the secure area (anywhere
past the security checkpoint).
It
appears that airports will now have another option
that lets computers put a stop to the practice
with an "intelligent" video system being
marketed separately by ADT Security Systems and
Honeywell in partnership with Seattle-based Newton
Security Inc. Last year, Loronix Information Systems,
a wholly owned subsidiary of Verint Systems Inc.,
began marketing a digital video-based system able
to count the number of people passing through
a door via advanced tracking algorithms.
The
Tailgating Detection, Alarm and Recording system,
or T-DAR® , is an $8,000-hardware/software
package that combines Newton's machine vision
technology with two specialized overhead stereo-optical
cameras and one generic "scene" camera
to detect and track the movement of people passing
through secure doors and passageways. If two bodies
are spotted where only one should be, T-DAR®
issues an alarm and rolls videotape during the
unauthorized entry.
"The
system gives us proof of who it was, time of day
and the card number of the legitimate guy,"
said J. Leonard Wood, ADT's manager of aviation
services. ADT officials teamed with Newton to
demonstrate the system at the American Assn. of
Airport Executives conference in Dallas late last
month, drawing the attention of about 60 airport
directors and roughly a third of the 3,000 or
so attendees, Wood said.
The
machine vision software, originally developed
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
put to use in the manufacturing industry by affiliate
Newton Labs, is best known for its quality control
functions in assembly lines. For instance, one
manufacturer uses the software to make sure juice
bottle caps are tightened correctly and another
uses it for quality control on a plastic catheter
assembly line. Newton developed T-DAR®
about a year ago to address a longstanding problem
in the security industry--freeing security guards
from having to study video monitors for the rare
anomaly.
By
itself T-DAR® is primarily a detection
system, but when combined with a "mantrap"
device, a double-door entry corridor where the
first door must be secured before the employee
can pass through the second door, it can also
be used to trap an unauthorized entrant.
The
National Safe Skies Alliance, a non-profit security
testing and evaluation organization funded by
the Transportation Dept., recently completed tests
of the T-DAR® system at an employees-only
American Airlines baggage door at Orlando (Fla.)
International Airport. ADT officials said the
tests were very successful.
©
June 3, 2002 The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
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