Biosecurity Summit: Process, tools and technology at the border
Nicola McKinney
Criminals who think they might be able to test the New Zealand border by using the internet might need to think again.
Nicola McKinney, New Zealand Customs Manager Targeting, told the October Biosecurity Summit how fraudsters, would-be smugglers and other criminals have been using social networking sites such as Second Life and Bebo to swap information on how to take on our border protection systems. She told the Summit how criminals can create virtual worlds in which they can test New Zealand's ability to track down illegal attempts to cross the border.
That's just one area analysts at the Joint Targeting Centre are looking at as a future tool in combating criminals trying to get around not only Customs but also biosecurity measures.
"Data mining gives us an opportunity to view transactions retrospectively to identify trends and patterns, Nicola said. "As with passengers, this can give us an opportunity to stream trade and help us identify areas of higher risk where we can concentrate our analytical resource."
Analytical resources were an important part of Nicola McKinney's presentation.
It all happens at the Joint Targeting Centre, which has been operating at Mangere near Auckland Airport for the past eighteen months.
She said the emphasis is on the "Joint" in the title of the centre, as Customs wants as many agencies working alongside it as possible. To date Maritime New Zealand, MAF Biosecurity New Zealand and Immigration have agreed to join Customs at the Joint Targeting Centre. Other agencies interested in participating in the facility include Inland Revenue, the Police and the Ministry of Fisheries, which would be helped in functions such as tracking illegal exports of paua.
Nicola described the Joint Targeting Centre, with its 50 Customs staff and a handful from other agencies, as something like a big call centre with banks of computers.
"There are TVs scattered throughout the premises and tuned to the BBC and CNN so international events can be monitored. As soon as something happens affecting New Zealand, or where we can help overseas agencies, we are able to provide a rapid response," she said.
Nicola explained the important role played by the Cusmod (Customs Modernisation) database, set up ten years ago and about to become Cusmod II.
"Interactions at the border for Customs are based on profiling or alerts. Cusmod alerts include MAF, Police, SIS, Immigration and Justice alerts. The alerts electronically screen all of the people and goods transactions at the border and hit on matches. Compliance activity is then required.
"An activity report is entered into the system which gets assigned to an intelligence analyst. Other reports, not based on Customs activity but created when a Customs officer considers something to be of interest, can also be entered. For example it could be an anonymous phone tip-off. The relevant targeting team makes a risk assessment. This work can require entity and background checks, looking at things like history including travel recordings, premises and consumer checks. once the work is completed, the Alert Filters are either updated, deleted or new alerts created."
Targeting looks at advance information and endeavours to identify the risk prior to or at the border crossing.
"If it is in the air, in the chair or on the sea - it's targeting," Nicola said.
Identifying patterns, linkages, trends or unusual combinations of movements is crucial in targeting. For instance, analysts may be alerted by a supplier who values a product at higher or lower than the market rate.
Routing is another factor. For example, imported water would be a strange commodity to come to New Zealand, so officers would look at where it had come from and whether it came via another country.
Officers also look at changes in patterns. They might find a commodity is entering the country in a scatter-gun fashion, with many small consignments in a test of the system. Or there may be a change from sea freight to air. Nicola said goods such as shonky DVDs and T-shirts or drugs fall into this category.
If delegates at the Summit were wondering what a Customs officer is peering at on his or her screen when you enter the country, Nicola McKinney explained.
Since 2002, the service has used a search/query tool called Qik analysis. It interrogates the passenger name record. It then returns the data which match the criteria within the Qik system. There's further analysis of the passenger. If a Customs officer thinks there are sufficient clusters of indicators, they'll create an alert, which appears on the officer's computer at the booth.
Looking to the future, she said the Qik tool has been developed further and now offers the ability whereby a hold-stow baggage x-ray can be tagged to an individual's passenger name record and sent to border agencies.
"So there is the potential for MAF officers to pre-screen images of hold-stow luggage prior to a plane's arrival and for Customs officers to virtually search a bag based on this image," she said.
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Page last updated: 30 April 2008