Big Sky, Big Border: Firms such as GCS Research of Missoula find difficulty getting on Department of Homeland Security radar for contracts

Editor’s note: It’s been one year since the Independent Record’s breaking and award-winning series “Big Sky, Big Border” examined national security along the northern border. Much has changed, but more remains to be done. This next installment investigates the changes in manpower, technology and commerce since last year.

What began more than 10 years ago at the University of Montana as a NASA research project has grown into a geospatial data company attempting to bid for multimillion-dollar security projects along the nation’s northern border.

GCS Research http://www.gcs-research.com/ , founded by Alex Philp in the 1990s to find better ways of packaging remote-sensing imagery, now employs 15 tech-savvy workers in a renovated Missoula office building.

The company’s innovations include GeoMarc, a digital watermarking system that tags photos with “metadata,” or digital DNA. The tags allow users to gain value-added information that includes time, place, and target identification, among other details.

The company, which has won contracts in both the public and private sector in its decade of growth, believes its GeoMarc technology could help save the government money and reduce the need for amassing personnel at the border.

But Philp, who testified at a Senate field hearing in Havre last month, says GCS Research http://www.gcs-research.com/ can’t get the attention of the Department of Homeland Security, and that has left the company frustrated.

By MARTIN J. KIDSTON – Independent Record

Full Story: http://helenair.com/articles/2008/08/04/top/top/50st_080804_border.txt

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Big Sky, Big Border: 24-hour port priority

By MARTIN J. KIDSTON – Independent Record

Editor’s note: It’s been one year since the Independent Record’s breaking and award-winning series “Big Sky, Big Border” examined national security along the northern border. Much has changed, but more remains to be done. This next installment investigates the changes in manpower, technology and commerce since last year.

Full Story: http://helenair.com/articles/2008/08/05/top/top/50st_080805_commerce.txt