CUSTOMS TO GET BIGGER PICTURE OF SMUGGLING

SAN DIEGO—It can't sniff drugs or rifle luggage. But the newest weapon
against smuggling boasts blink-of-an-eye speed that border officials hope
will be just as useful.

The weapon is a high-tech camera that feeds the license plate numbers of
passing cars into a computer that can tell if the vehicle is stolen or tied
to a crime, and how often it crosses the border and when.

U.S. Customs Service officials in the California-Mexico border city of San
Ysidro have installed a bank of the devices, called license plate readers,
in freeway lanes leading into Mexico and plan to activate them within a month.

Part of a nationwide push by customs officials to stanch the flow of drug
proceeds and firearms south to Mexico, the new system is but one example of
how officials along the U.S. border are increasingly relying on emerging
technology to cope with challenges ranging from smuggling and illegal
immigration to chronic traffic snarls.

Customs inspectors already have gizmos that peer down gas tanks and spot
drug stashes inside tires. They may also soon be scanning the payloads of
big trucks with deep-penetrating gamma rays and searching all types of
vehicles for drugs with hand-held sniffing machines. In addition, the hunt
is on for high-tech ways to disable cars whose drivers elude border
inspections.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service uses electronic fingerprinting
and computer-stored photographs to track more than 1 million immigrants who
have previously been caught entering without documents. And a sophisticated
new green card for resident aliens employs holograms and laser-etched data
to deter fakes.

Soon to open at the San Ysidro crossing are two special commuter lanes that
will allow many regular commuters to avoid 20- to 30-minute waits with the
swipe of a card. A similar program is in place in Otay Mesa, where
officials also are testing a remote voice-recognition system that someday
could allow U.S.-bound cars to clear the border without stopping.

"What we see now is just the beginning of the trend," said Raymond D.
Mintz, director of applied technology for the U.S. Customs Service in
Washington. "In another year or two, the whole face of the way things are
done at the border is going to change."

The newly installed license plate readers in San Ysidro offer one such
change: Vehicles, always scrutinized upon entering the United States, will
for the first time be recorded as they head into Mexico. The readers take
an electronic snapshot and send the digitized data into a computer bank.
That information pops up when the car reenters the country.

Officials say a log of departing cars may help establish the patterns of
drug-cartel couriers and make it easier to crack criminal rings that
operate across the border.

"You don't fight the drug war unless you get the complete picture. The
complete picture is what's going outbound as well as what's coming
inbound," said Ruben Carrasco, U.S. Customs traffic manager at the San
Ysidro port.

The installation of the license plate readers, also in place at crossings
in Calexico and Otay Mesa, coincides with a heightened effort by customs to
search outbound vehicles for contraband.

In San Ysidro, a special team combining nine inspectors and a cash-sniffing
black Labrador was formed in February to set up impromptu checkpoints for
southbound vehicles at the border almost every day. The operations are
often done in conjunction with local police seeking stolen cars or fugitives.

Customs administrators say the southbound operations are fruitful.
Inspectors turned up $1.2 million in bundles of undeclared cash in
searching a Mexico-bound van at a checkpoint last March. Other seizures
have involved tens of thousands of dollars each.

"Years ago we were losing all that," said Oscar Preciado, port director at
San Ysidro.

The license plate readers, mounted on concrete barriers a few hundred feet
north of the border, will tell inspectors whether a car nearing a
checkpoint is sought by police and log all cars leaving.

Similar readers have been in place in U.S.-bound lanes at San Ysidro for
about eight months. Data is checked against a customs computer and a
separate national crime database to see if a vehicle warrants special
attention. By the time the car pulls up to the booth, the information is on
the inspector's computer screen. Officials say the advanced notice can
prove an important warning for inspectors.

"It's one area where we have no pre-notification of who's coming. It can be
anyone from grandma from Billings, Mont., with three kids, to three
terrorists," said Dave Quainton, a customs inspector overseeing the license
plate reader project.

Mintz said the reader system could one day be combined with scales embedded
in the road to show if a vehicle is carrying a load as it reenters the
United States.

Information technology may also play a role in speeding cargo. One idea is
to create detailed profiles with scores of facts about commercial trucks --
where they've been, what they're carrying and for whom. Computers could
instantly sift through the checklist to help inspectors pick which loads
warrant a closer look.

"Fewer things will escape without some sort of action on our part," Mintz
said.

The commuter lanes being prepared at San Ysidro promise shorter waits for
frequent crossers who pay a $129 enrollment, and are fingerprinted, checked
for a criminal past and deemed to be low-risk. An INS spokeswoman said the
lanes should be running early next year. Officials expect about 10,000
people to sign up.

Checked-by: Richard Lake