To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. A NEW DAY FOR MASS TRANSIT attack on this system. It was wide open.” Last November, a man carrying a Chinese SKS semiautomatic assault rifle capable of firing bullets that will penetrate steel and concrete was arrested only after he’d boarded a MARC train at a station in Baltimore. “The man, carrying the three-foot-long rifle wrapped in a blanket, was allowed to board without interference or notice,” Faddis said, emphasizing that “he was arrested not because railroad security personnel had identified him as a threat but because the cab driver who dropped him at the station called police.” “What we’re doing by and large in terms of security when we do practice security on our transit systems is an extrapolation from traditional law enforcement techniques that were designed to deter common criminals,” and that “just doesn’t have any deterrent effect on someone who is determined, disciplined and focused on engaging in terrorism,” Faddis explained. Veteran CIA counterterrorist Chuck Allen, DHS under secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in a January hearing that “a determined and innovative adversary will make great efforts to find security vulnerabilities and exploit them. Terrorists are always seeking to identify weaknesses in our security and exploit them.” Consequently, Allen said, “vulnerability assessments used to develop security and protective protocols must look closely at our nation’s assets from the perspective of the terrorist, vigorously seek the weaknesses that they can exploit and work tirelessly to minimize if not eliminate those weaknesses.” law enforcement officers,” Roeber told Homeland Security Today. “As for on board the trains themselves,” Roeber explained, “our programs have been two-fold: We allow uniformed officers to ride for free, and so there is a large presence of both uniformed officers as well as military officers. In and of itself, that acts as a major deterrent. The one program—and we were the first in the country to start this and have been very successful with it—was we initially had 120 undercover officers—they could be FBI, Secret Service, ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives], homeland security; they were the full gamut of law enforcement—and we’ve increased that number up to 140. But the protocol was that we would give them free passage—and they’d get a free monthly pass that would have a designation on it that only internal VRE people and conductors would know. “The agreement in principle was: Were a felony or some other act taking place on the train, that they would assist in stepping in until law enforcement could intervene,” Roeber continued. “So by the very nature of having 140 people participating in the program regularly, what it did was to act as that When does 1 + 1 give you more than 2? When the best of Microsoft® and ESRI are paired together. By combining collaboration software from Microsoft office SharePoint Server® 2007 with the advanced geospatial capabilities of ESRI’s ArcGIS® Server Advanced Enterprise edition, public safety officials now have a new weapon to fight terrorism, crime and other threats. Together, Microsoft and ESRI are bringing sophisticated collaboration and analysis capabilities to state and local fusion and operation centers. Today, we are helping drive homeland security innovations to more effectively help officials protect citizens, prevent and solve crimes, and enable counter-terrorism. Visit www.microsoft.com/fusion for more on how to improve collaboration and intelligence analysis among law enforcement, emergency management and first-responders. Transit officials: Security adequate Capital area transit officials and TSA’s Lennon disagree with Faddis’ assessment. Mark Roeber,VRE’s government relations manager, said VRE’s deployment of both uniformed and plainclothes federal, state and local law enforcement agents serves as an effective, persistent unpredictable deterrent. “The reality of the situation for us is that, of course, we are an open system and we are owned by eight local jurisdictions in northern Virginia, so we do not have our own police force. We rely on, particularly at our outlying stations, the cooperation and consideration of those jurisdictions to send Register online today for exclusive online content and eNewsletters HSToday Magazine | April 2009 25