RFID Technology from WhereNet Providing Safe Harbor for U.S. Commerce

By Karen Peterson

As the nation continues to arm itself internally against what President Bush in his State of the Union address called a war against terror that "is only beginning," America's high-tech companies are finding that their products may serve a secondary importance as tools for helping ensure greater homeland security.

For WhereNet, located in Santa Clara, Calif., the technology is RFID tracking, certainly not a new technology but one that, in WhereNet's case, turns out to be a good fit for what the Department of Homeland Security is now tackling: how to keep our ports, and the cargo they process, safe from terrorists.

Once focused primarily on RFID systems for supply-chain efficiencies in the automotive and, later, the marine terminal markets, after 9/11 the company saw an opportunity "to leverage our infrastructure for security functions," said John Rosen, WhereNet's director of product marketing.

WhereNet is currently involved in two national security areas. One has to do with the cargo itself and falls under the federal government's four-year-old Operation Safe Commerce initiative. The other is more immediate: providing the means for ensuring that the people entering America's terminal facilities are really who they claim to be.

With upwards of 5,000 trucks passing through the busiest marine terminals in the U.S. each day, following 9/11 the Coast Guard revisited what had already been in place but laxly enforced: driver authorization.

"In the past, a smile and a wave was about all you needed" to get into the terminals, said Rosen, whose background is in the marine market. With that casual approach an anachronism in a dangerous age, WhereNet found it had an edge: the company's active RFID, real-time locating system technology was already in place at terminals on the West Coast. The move to help terminal companies comply with Coast Guard requirements using RFID, said Rosen, "was an easy step for us to take."

Now counting 11 West Coast terminals as customers, in its largest marine security effort to date, announced January 12, WhereNet was tapped to equip up to 10,000 drayage trucks serving two of the nation's largest -- at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach -- with its active RFID tags as part of the TruckTag program initiated by PierPASS.

A not-for-profit company made up of 12 southern California marine terminal operators, PierPASS was founded to address a number of industry issues -- including traffic congestion and air quality -- as well as to find solutions for meeting the Coast Guard security mandates.

For TruckTag, WhereNet's tags, attached to the driver-side mirror of each truck, will be used to check that the driver's license and the truck ID match up with information from carriers that is compiled in a database from eModal, an Irvine, Calif.-based company that provides directory and information services for local trucking concerns.

A voluntary program, so far 7,000 trucks have registered through eModal, and WhereNet is in the process of distributing the tags for the truck companies to install. For the terminal companies, the WhereNet solution provides an easy answer to DHS concerns: the RF sensors are already mounted throughout the facilities, so nothing more is needed for compliance.

Rosen guesses that the trucking companies coming on board will also see the added benefit of RFID technology. "They'll see that it doesn't slow down the process at all," said Rosen, "in fact it does just the opposite."

Tapping into RFID to Guard Against Deadly Cargo Tampering

Operation Safe Commerce, launched in 2002 by the U.S. Departments of Transportation and Customs prior to the establishment of the DHS, is aimed at ensuring the safety of what's inside the six million containers that enter the U.S. each year -- containers that are then shipped across the nation's highways and railroad lines.

In the beginning, the government looked at what WhereNet's Director of Homeland Security Solutions Matthew Schor called "mundane solutions," like fences and cameras, before homing in on the use of RFID tracking in pilot programs that included WhereNet's real-time technology. The pilots used light sensors on tags attached to the containers: if light came into any of the sealed containers, an alert was generated.

WhereNet took the alert solution to an important next step, said Schor, by identifying, through what is now called the company's e-Seal technology, where in the facility the breached container was located. It's an important distinction. Unlike cargo on ships that stay in place, containers in terminals are often being moved from one area to another.

"It's good to get an alert," said Schor, who joined WhereNet last April when the company announced its newly created security group. "But with 50,000 containers in an average terminal, being able to provide an exact location -- and to do so while the containers are in movement -- is exciting. E-Seal is our crystal ball."

Operation Safe Commerce is now under the auspices of DHS, and, as of last spring, more tightly integrated under a new presidential directive that combines the efforts of the DHS with the Departments of Defense and State to protect the nation's maritime interests.

The focus, too, has been narrowed from overall breach detection to a specific concern -- clandestine nuclear attack -- a move that Schor applauds as a more realistic approach to the wide range of threats, including chemical and biological, that weapons of mass destruction represent.

"We can't solve every threat at once," said Schor. "We need to rank them; we need to focus on, as DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff has said, the threat that can cause the most damage. Nuclear weapons are scary; and the threat is real."

WhereNet is continuing to position its tracking technology as part of the new push to monitor for radiation by building on what TruckTag is offering in southern California -- a solution that doesn't slow down the process of what holds countries and nations together: commerce.

"The fact that nations trade with one another precludes that we don't pull out our guns," said Schor.

The problem, of course, is that means for world trade are now targets.

"Before 9/11, we hadn't thought in terms of having enemies who didn't just want to hijack a plane; they wanted to kill us," said Schor. "After 9/11, we found that the people who want to harm us can use our transportation systems to do so."