Home Defense

How to Secure the Homeland Without Leaving the House

Jonathan Rauch | April 15, 2003

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"By using citizens," he says, "we can cover an enormous amount of real estate without burdening professionals with things they don't need to do." No less important: None of those citizens would need to do anything complicated or risky. "We've modeled this system on the human brain," Walker says. Each spotter is like a neuron, firing a simple binary response. "The neuron doesn't know what the brain is thinking." It doesn't need to know. The intelligence is in the system.

Like a neural net, HomeGuard is, in principle, highly redundant—and thus robust. The sprawling Internet, with its countless pathways, cannot be easily taken down. Spotters could be literally anywhere. Cameras would constantly report their own presence, triggering a security response if shut off. Privacy concerns would be minimal, since all the areas under surveillance would be off-limits to begin with.

As for the technology, all of it, Walker says, is currently available, either off the shelf or with inexpensive modifications. About 100 million Americans use the Internet every month, he notes, so potential spotters abound. The data-crunching requirements are of the scale that eBay's processing centers handle every day. All that remains is to try it out. Walker says that a $40 million government investment could fund a live prototype by the end of the summer. If the system worked, it could be scaled up rapidly. Implementation could be months, not years or decades, away.

Since unveiling the idea in February, Walker has made a dozen or so presentations to policy makers in Washington. He proposes to sell the patents to the government for $1. Asked how his sales pitches are going, Walker replies dryly: "Urgency and Washington aren't brother and sister."

Here is something those policy makers might want to think about. In the course of preparing sample images for its HomeGuard mock-ups, Walker Digital sent people to take pictures of 70 or more power plants, dams, oil-storage tanks, and other sensitive sites. It sent men dressed in hooded outfits, and carrying large black satchels, to pose as suspicious intruders. How often were these mock intruders challenged? Not even once.