General Dynamics’ [GD] Information Technology business on Oct. 12 filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office of the Department of Homeland Security’s potential $2.7 billion, 10-year contract award to Peraton to manage the department’s hybrid computing environment. GAO has 100 days to make a decision. DHS awarded Peraton the contract on Oct. 4 under the Data Center and Cloud Optimization support services program.
Liberty Defense
has received a $500,000 contract from the Transportation Security Administration under the On-Person Screening Capability Program to enhance detection and throughput performance of the HEXWAVE standoff weapons detection product by training its automated threat recognition algorithm. HEXWAVE will also be used in a demonstration and evaluation for screening aviation workers at an agency designated location. Liberty says HEXWAVE uses artificial intelligence to provide automated decisions to security operators and can detect metal and non-metal threats, ignore benign objects like phones and wallets, and lower false alarms while increasing throughput.
myLanguage of San Jose, Calif. has received $199,592 from the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate to adapt and customize its language translation platform to support the Coast Guard for when its personnel board vessels that may have non-English speakers onboard. Under the Phase 1 funding, myLanguage will adapt its voice translation technologies for use in a rugged, handheld mobile device that can withstand extreme temperatures and is able to customize model designs and training language models to fit Coast Guard use cases. “The focus of the myLanguage technologies is to enable fluent conversations across language barriers,” says Melissa Oh, managing director of S&T’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program.
The Transportation Security Administration recently introduced its credential authentication technology (CAT) at Niagara Falls International Airport, in New York, and two airports in Michigan, Flint Bishop International and Capital Region International. The CAT devices, supplied by IDEMIA, confirm the validity of travelers’ identification documents and confirms their flight information in near real time through a secured connection. With CAT in place, a traveler doesn’t have to hand his or her boarding pass but does need to hold it up to the TSA officer for visual inspection.