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U.S. nearing deal on way to track foreign visitors - -

By Eric Lichtblau & John Markoff

U.S. Nearing Deal on Way to Track Foreign Visitors

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JOHN MARKOFF
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Published: May 24, 2004

WASHINGTON, May 22 — 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 employ a network of databases to track visitors to the United States long before they arrive.

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The contract, which will probably be awarded in coming days to one of three final bidders, is already generating considerable interest as federal officials try to improve significantly their ability to monitor those who enter at 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 megacontract? How much will it end up costing? What about the privacy concerns of foreign visitors? And 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, Computer Sciences 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 terrorist attacks of 2001, seeks to supplant the nation's physical borders with what officials call virtual borders. Such borders employ networks of computer databases and biometric sensors for identification at sites abroad where people seek visas to the United States.

With a virtual border in place, the actual border guard will become the last point of defense, rather than the first, because each visitor will have already been screened using a global web of databases.

Visitors arriving at checkpoints, including those at the Mexican and Canadian borders, will face "real-time identification" — instantaneous authentication to confirm that they are who they say they are. American officials will, at least in theory, be able to track them inside the United States and determine if they leave the country on time.

Officials say they will be able, for instance, to determine whether a visitor who overstays a visa has come in contact with the police, but 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 bidders agree that the Department of Homeland Security has given them unusually wide latitude in determining the best strategy for securing American borders without unduly encumbering tourism and commerce.

Whoever wins the contract will be asked to develop a standard for identifying visitors using a variety of possible tools — from photographs and fingerprints, already used at some airports on a limited basis since January, to 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."

Virtual borders is a high-concept plan, building on ideas that have been tried since the terrorist attacks of 2001.

But homeland security officials say making the system 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, under secretary 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 homeland 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.

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