Computers help tally costs of security

LIVERMORE -- Tighter security can have hidden costs but only recently have scientists using computer simulations begun tallying them up.

In the last four years, federal port and border officials have installed hundreds of fingerprinting machines, identity-checking computers and detectors for chemical, nuclear and radiological weapons.

More ideas -- tracking sensors on cargo containers, for example - - are on the near horizon.

But in detailed computer models built at Sandia National Laboratories-California, scientists are finding that certain security technologies, installed in the wrong places, can back up the flow of goods and people.

Computer scientist Andy Vaughn pointed to a video display of cargo containers being screened for radiation as soon as they were unloaded from a ship. Almost instantly, lines of trucks began backing up.

"There's always some trade-off between security and the flow of commerce," Vaughn said Thursday.

It turns out that delaying cargo

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