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Web Alarms, Mobile Alerts Aim
to Make You Safer
Reuters
Sunday May 06, 2007
NEW YORK—From emergency message networks that can reach
100,000 people within minutes, to alarm systems that allow you to
monitor your home over the Web, new technologies are aiming to make
U.S. consumers feel safer.
While institutions such as immigration services, banks and credit
card companies continue to improve their systems to prevent fraud
or theft, in many cases homeowners and their communities haven't
kept pace.
That's starting to change—but, unfortunately, it often takes
a major disaster or tragedy to get people thinking about how to
better protect themselves and their families.
Many new security technologies have sprouted as a result of the
September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
The deadly rampage by a lone gunman that claimed 32 lives at Virginia
Tech university last month brought renewed attention to a wave of
companies offering the latest technology to keep people informed,
and hopefully safe.
"It's probably one of the most backward industries in the
United States today," said Vincent Tedesco, chief executive
of Total Computer Group (TCG), referring to security technologies
for identifying criminals. His company builds software applications
for law enforcement agencies.
TCG is trying to remedy the situation with software that helps
give police departments rapid access to crime records via a handheld-device
linked to a Microsoft-supported database.
TCG's system could clue-in police, in the course of a routine identity
check, whether they are dealing with someone who has a criminal
record.
"Mohammed Atta was pulled over (while driving) in Florida
and he had no license," Tedesco said, referring to one of the
September 11 suicide plane hijackers. "If that officer had
this product he would have known this guy was on the FBI terrorist
list."
In the last few months alone, TCG has reached deals with 58 police
departments in Pennsylvania and 20 new departments in New York state.
The company is also in talks with authorities in the United Kingdom
and with the Sultan of Brunei.
The Virginia Tech tragedy has spawned interest in ways to alert
large groups of people of an unfolding crisis, whether by phone,
text message or email.
"Everyone is becoming much more aware that there's technology
out there in a situation where you want to get an urgent message
out," said Mike Taylor, vice president of marketing for Honeywell
Building Solutions.
"Until you have a crisis, the sense of urgency around doing
something with it just isn't there," he said.
Honeywell recently upgraded a system used by schools to meet the
needs of universities in alerting students to potential danger.
The Instant Alert Plus technology can make 100,000 30-second phone
calls and send 125,000 text messages within 15 minutes.
While that may be more than enough to cover a campus from students
to faculty, employees and parents, the system could eventually cover
much larger communities or entire cities.
"The good thing is this a very scalable system," said
Taylor. "I'm sure we could add capacity if we had the need
to do one million (alerts) in 15 minutes."
Such mass communication methods can be used for anything from notifying
chemical plant employees of a leak to mundane matters like informing
parents about a school meeting.
"In a Michigan school district, it was used to make parents
aware that a man was posing as a policeman with a badge and walking
up to students and asking to rifle through their schoolbags,"
Taylor said.
InGrid, a company that has developed a Web-accessible home security
system, is mindful of the dual nature of systems meant to warn and
communicate at the same time.
The company's technology is based on wireless sensors placed at
many points inside a home that are linked to both a handheld device
and a password-protected Web site.
The sensors provide real-time information not only on whether the
house is safe from burglars, but whether children, parents or babysitters
have entered the premises using their passcodes.
A newer application being developed by the company could help customers
keep tabs on elderly parents from work or another location, hooking
up to a medicine cabinet to make sure they are properly cared for.
"Once we have a system in the house, it provides a very efficient
platform for collecting data of all sorts," said InGrid founder
and Chief Executive Louis Stilp. "If your parents are living
independently at home and no one has opened the refrigerator door
today until 2 p.m., there might be a problem."
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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