SAN DIEGO -- John Phillips peered down at the computer screen. Something didn't look quite right. It was 9:11 a.m. on the West Coast, or just past noon in the East, and all the bus drivers were supposed to be on break. The map of the District of Columbia showed hundreds of red blips representing vehicles that had been parked for more than an hour. But then there was one black dot, a lone bus, moving rapidly in the northwestern quadrant of the city.
Could the D.C. Public Schools bus have been stolen -- or worse -- hijacked with children still on board?
Maribeth Luftglass of Fairfax County Public Schools said drivers were initially nervous about having their movements monitored with GPS, something she can do from her laptop.
(Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)
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Phillips quickly clicked on the icon representing the vehicle and relaxed at what he saw. The bus was in front of the Kennedy Center. It was on a field trip.
From inside a dimly lit room behind two-foot-thick concrete walls, a steel door and jail gate, Phillips and eight other staffers in this 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week command center are like all-seeing gods, watching over thousands of people across the continent.
Phillips works for Satellite Security Systems Inc., or S3, one of a growing number of private companies providing satellite tracking services to anyone willing to pay. Once a fabulously expensive tool for the military, the technology is becoming part of everyday life, spawning dozens of new uses.
S3's clients include school districts such as the District and Fairfax County, state and federal government agencies, police departments and companies. But there are plenty of individual customers, too -- people interested in keeping tabs on new teenage drivers, Alzheimer's patients, philandering spouses.
The position of vehicles or people is determined by gear they carry that includes Global Positioning System, or GPS, technology, which uses a network of satellites orbiting the Earth to pinpoint the location of things on the ground. The information is then beamed to S3's computers.
On a recent weekday, the screens were flashing through maps almost too quickly for the human eye to process. A computer technician was making his way along Sully Avenue in Centreville. Milk delivery trucks were swarming all over Houston, making their morning drop-offs. Tank cars of oil were traversing the Midwest.
S3 tracks so many vehicles that federal homeland security officials rely on it to make sure none venture near sensitive areas. One map showed that all was quiet near an anonymous red-marked mass outside Denver.
Phillips said the tracking systems have helped increase security as well as efficiency for those who use them. "We look for anything out of the normal and can get a sense of the big picture of how things are moving around in a particular area in a way that couldn't be done before," said Phillips, a 33-year-old former Drug Enforcement Administration officer turned entrepreneur who is now chief executive of S3.
