HOMELAND SECURITY IS STILL A JOKE, and Jonathan Rauch writes on how the government let down its guard by passing on an innovative security approach:

Hiring people to stand guard full-time over all but the most sensitive sites would be prohibitively costly and cumbersome. Walker’s solution was what he calls distributed surveillance. HomeGuard posts webcams on the peripheries of no-go zones around critical sites. Cameras, of course, are old hat. Here is the innovation: Regular people, not high-priced security professionals, monitor the sites over the Internet. If a camera detects motion, it transmits a picture to several “spotters,” ordinary Web users who earn $10 an hour for simply looking at photos online and answering this question: “Do you see a person or vehicle in this image?” A yes answer triggers a security response.

The details are ingenious, and you can read about them in my 2003 column on HomeGuard. Suffice to say that, in principle, the system is cheap and almost infinitely scalable. In practice, however, the system needed field-testing before private industry could consider it. Having built a prototype, Walker Digital approached the government in the spring of 2003.

On the recommendation of Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., Walker and his staff met with a series of officials, first at the White House and then at DHS, where they spoke with people from then-Secretary Tom Ridge on down. They were not selling anything. “We were very clear we would give it to a contractor in a heartbeat,” Walker says. “We were reluctant to build a field trial. It’s not our thing. We’re systems designers.” Having designed the system, they were trying to give it away.

It didn’t happen, though. Too bad, as it seems like a real Army of Davids approach.