WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community is investing in new technology meant
to provide instant recognition of insurgency fugitives in such crowded
facilities as airports and subways.
A Los Altos, Calif. company, Pixlogic, has been developing technology
meant to search for fugitives and insurgency suspects in a crowd.
Pixlogic has employed new software based on visual pattern recognition and search
technologies to match archived still or video images with those gathered
from security cameras or other sources, Middle East Newsline reported.
Executives said the CIA has been an investor in the development of
technology by Pixlogic and other U.S. companies.
"It does a reasonable job of matching people that sort of look alike,"
Pixlogic chief executive officer Joseph Santucci said. "Most [competing]
software tools only work under constrained circumstances."
Executives said the company's software could also detect and alert
investigators to anomalies in video footage provided by closed-circuit
television systems. Such anomalies could include an individual carrying a
large box, or a truck that returns to the same spot. They said such
technology has not yet been employed in either Britain or the United States.
Industry sources said the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement
community was also expected to increase investment in counter-terrorism
technology. They said the technology would include instant translations,
particularly from Arabic to English, as well as search and text mining.
"We have put a little over 100 technologies into the intelligence
community that are actively being used," In-Q-Tel chief executive officer
Gilman Louie said. "Some of them you know, while other technologies we don't
broadly advertise."
U.S. companies have been wooed by their counterparts in Israel for joint
marketing and development projects in counter-insurgency. Several Israeli
firms have been developing software and sensors to track insurgency suspects
and detect bombs.