Technology and Homeland Security, Research Paper Example

After the tragedy of the 11^th of September the American government began to take exhaustive measures with the purpose of prevention of terrorist attacks. The technologies for safeguarding or protecting the country against terrorism include tools of detection, which are intelligence-gathering systems, sensors for uncovering the activities of terrorist or the presence of radioactive, biological, or chemical agents, and tools of protection, which are vaccines, intelligence, protective clothing, blast absorbing materials, neutralizing agents, and decontamination materials (Coleman, 2003). In this work I would like to dwell on how technology, specifically information one, contributes to the safety of the country.

Information technology is used in homeland security mainly to detect and detain security suspects, as well as to reduce the risk of security hazard and prevent the situations when terrorist attacks become possible. One of the technical tools vital for protection of the country from terrorism is data base technology.

Data base technology can be defined as a methodology and software tools for modeling and holding large amount of information of any type and structure, as well as inquiry and update operation processing. Data base technology the government is using is far beyond the scope of relational database system, because it supports also holding and retrieval of multimedia and geospatial data, time sequence, free form text files, HTML and XML documents, etc.

Data mining, multimedia data retrieval, speech recognition, acquisition of document characteristics attract much interest today as a means of the homeland security reinforcement. For example, data mining facilities can be used for auto-detection of security suspect’ unordinary routes (e. g. visiting in one week several countries which give refuge to terrorists), or movement of funds through the international bank network. Such technology as facial recognition or image referencing may serve as a means of people and transport identification after they were snapshot in airports, near power stations, politically important memorials, etc. Data mining technology can be used for automatic annotating of texts written in a free-form style with the purpose of subscripting, classification and subsequent retrieval. This helps to trace terrorists’ correspondence. The technology of document characteristics acquisition is extremely useful for detection of e-mail letters and other documents that contain certain key words and combinations which gives an opportunity to warn the government about potential terrorist or any other criminal activities. The government is already using such monitoring systems as Echelon (National Security Agency) and Carnivore (Federal Bureau of Investigation). All these high-tech solutions ensure the reinforcement of national security. However, the majority of mentioned technologies need deep investigation, especially it concerns the areas of understanding natural languages, retrieval of information content and determining if the pieces of non-text multimedia data (images, video, audio and radio signals) match each other.

It should be also mentioned that the US government cooperates with other countries to enhance the effectiveness of national defense which enables to adopt some useful skills and technologies. For example, Israel managed to develop innovative ways of struggle against terrorist attacks. So, they were the first country which used x-ray machines to in­spect airplane luggage on every commercial flight of their national airline. Moreover, recently they invented guns that shoot around corners, laser units that can de­tect explosives from distances of hundreds of feet, and computer software capable of translating dog barks into English-language commands. Nowadays the USA is using similar technology which cannot but ensure the confidence of our being well-protected.

Moreover, before we are able to talk about high-tech aspects of data base technology, we should pay much attention to so called low-tech aspects, because there are still plenty of practical tasks that can not utilize the developed technology effectively.

Among the problems the data base systems face nowadays consists in the fact that they are based on technologies (such as Dbase, FoxPro, etc.) designed exclusively for desktop computers. Consequently, these networks are not connected to other data sources which results in difficulties such as getting associate information which was accumulated by different departments. In order to make it possible to enable an easy access to the data, as well as provide the opportunity of tracing connection between different data sources and ensure reliability of the earlier data bases, one should transfer and integrate the date into data marts which are to be regulated by relational database systems of the corporate level.

In addition, data bases often contain inaccurate information. It may be omitting details (e. g. in questionnaires), invalid or unconventional data (e. g. weight in unit of measurement which are not used on the territory of the country). Error-checking and upgrade are not performed in due course, because operations like these require large expenses. At the same time, automatic error-checking before the data input slows down the process of data base completion.

Moreover, in relation to the homeland security one of the most irritating kinds of inaccurate information seems to be names of people who came from the countries of Asia, the Near East, Africa and Europe. For example, the name Mohammed, Muhammed, Muhamed and Mohamed may belong to one person as well as to different ones. Furthemore, very often only one of these names is kept. As modern data base technologies are designed mostly to search exact matching, it can lead to serious confusion.

Thus, it is extremely important nowadays to work out an effective classification which would enable to find required documents in free-form style in a short period of time. Moreover, it should be authoritative, otherwise made mistakes may threaten the safety of the country and its citizens.

The issue of protection of the country from terrorist attacks is really one of the most important state problems nowadays, as we all are well-aware of the fact that in case we do not care for our safety, we will be exposed to the cruel activity of terrorist and other criminal organizations. It goes without saying that in spite of the fact that the USA is one of the most democratic and developed countries in the world, it can’t fully guarantee that it is safe to live here. Moreover, democracy means relative freedom which enables, if not carefully watched, criminals to prepare their attacks.

The data base is just one kind of technology which must be helpful in the fight against terrorism. Among others there are robotic technology, biometry, multimedia technologies, etc. However, in case of active usage of like facilities there appears a threat to citizens’ private life. However, the laws are being developed by the government which will regulate these sophisticated relationships between the state and its citizens.

To conclude, we viewed several kinds of technology that help the government to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks. Primarily, we paid attention to the detection facilities including the most important one – data base system. Although in this area there are still drawbacks to be removed, it is evident that using effective data base is a vital aspect in homeland security. It enables to detect dangers ant take measures to prevent it. Furthermore, the cooperation with other countries on this issue seems to be adventurous, as it enables to share the latest scientific achievements which may also contribute to the public security. To add one should not neglect the technology which was used before as a back issue, because there are still areas that can not be dealt with by the modern technology and, therefore requires the old one. Anyway, as all contemporary facilities are developed on the basis of the old one, it does not seem to be a great difficulty.

References

Bonvillian, W. (2007). Homeland Security Technologies. Retrieved March 30, 2009, from http://www.issues.org/18.2/bonvillian.html

Branscomb, L. (2002, June). Science and Technology for Homeland Security. Retrieved March 30, 2009, from http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ocga/testimony/Homeland_Security_Weapons_Mass_Destruction.asp

Coleman, K. (2003, March) Technology and Homeland Security. Retrieved March 30, 2009, from http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=302

Fact Sheets from NIST (2004, March). Technologies for Public Safety and Security. Retrieved March 30, 2009, from http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/homeland.htm

Kaplan, E. (2007, November). Homeland Security Technologies. Retrieved March 30, 2009, from http://www.cfr.org/publication/14827/homeland_security_technologies.html