Getting a Lock on Security : Gadgets That Look, Listen and Stop Intruders Showcased at Anaheim Exposition

Eduardo Contreras is looking for $240,000 worth of security equipment.

Not the little box you buy to turn on your lights before you get home, or dead bolts for the front door, although that stuff is also on display at the International Security Conference and Exposition at the Anaheim Convention Center.

No, Contreras needs a large, sophisticated closed-circuit camera system for a new convention center being built by the city of Portland, Ore. He has come, it would appear, to the right place.

Cameras, computers, locks, keys, fire alarms, burglar alarms, walkie-talkies, bomb detectors, identification systems, gates and even books on security are being hawked at the Anaheim expo, which began Tuesday and wraps up Thursday. Only $42.95, for instance, gets you your own copy of “Total Facility Control.”

There are 265 exhibitors, all with one message for the retailers, corporate security officers and just plain gadget freaks strolling the aisles: The world is a dangerous place, and getting worse by the minute. Many of the visitors must take the message to heart, because these devices now amount to a $5-billion-a-year industry in the United States.

More than 5,000 people are expected to visit the show during its 3-day run, and the vast majority of them--if Tuesday afternoon’s visitors are any indication--will be men.

Over the soft murmur of sales pitches, a burglar alarm shrieks somewhere in the cavernous exhibition hall. Contreras is listening to a salesman for Ikegama, a Japanese video equipment maker, explain a closed-circuit camera system. The system divides a monitor into nine different boxes so a security attendant can watch nine cameras at once. Contreras is watching himself in one of the nine little squares as he listens.

This stuff isn’t cheap. The Ikegama system--without the nine cameras--goes for $6,100, and the price climbs rapidly when you start adding bells and whistles such as a color monitor.

“Color really makes a lot of difference if you want to prosecute somebody based on a videotape,” said Contreras, who’s in charge of security for the public commission that runs Portland’s stadium, performing arts center and other public buildings.

“Or if the camera catches somebody suspicious in the parking lot, you can tell the guards what color clothes he’s wearing, what color hair, all stuff you can’t do with black and white.”

Contreras, an ex-cop clad casually in a shirt open at the neck, is here to price systems. Then he returns to Portland to write specifications for the security system, which will be put up for bid.

A few rows away, Michael H. McGee is looking out for the competition. So far, he said, he hasn’t seen any. McGee owns a Marina del Rey company that makes dead bolts for garage doors. The bolts unlock when you hit the automatic garage-door opener. Without the locks, says McGee, garage doors can be pried open easily.

While much of the security equipment here is as sophisticated as it is expensive, manufacturers like McGee are trying to broaden the market by pitching inexpensive home security systems to consumers.

That message, too, seems to be literally striking home. One in 12 homes in the United States is now equipped with a security system, according to a trade magazine survey last year.

Over in the next row, Louis L. Poczatek has driven over from Tustin to sell the EyeDentification System 7.5. About the size of a cash register, the 7.5 fits into the wall and uses infrared light to read the patterns of blood veins at the back of a person’s retina.

The ultimate in identification systems, the 7.5 does not make mistakes, Poczatek said, since no two retinas are exactly alike. The machine can store information on 1,200 people. To use it, you simply look in the eyepiece and press a button.

“And unlike fingerprints,” said Poczatek, ever the salesman, “you can’t alter your retina.”

At $7,000 a pop, government is still the biggest customer of EyeDentify Inc., which was started by the son of an ophthalmologist. The firm is based in Oregon and now owns Cardkey Systems Inc., a Chatsworth maker of card-operated entry systems. Both companies are in turn owned by PacifiCorp., a Portland-based public utility.

EyeDentify said it makes the only commercial retina identification system, which is part of a new technology called biometric security. But it competes with systems that recognize voices, hands and fingerprints.

Vandenberg Air Force Base has bought some EyeDentify machines. So has the Swedish air force, a federal prison in San Diego, the Utah state prison, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Energy, which is responsible for keeping the nation’s supply of plutonium out of the hands of terrorists.

Some corporations have bought the system, including banks, computer companies and American Airlines, which uses the machines to protect a computer center. Altogether, close to 400 have been installed, Poczatek said.

The machine can also strike terror into the hearts of malingerers. It can be used instead of time cards to ensure that employees are punctual and are not faking overtime. Several law firms have bought it for that.

The Anaheim show is one of four security equipment expos held around the nation each year. Last fall, a similar exhibition was held at the Anaheim Convention Center for the Assn. of Old Crows, a group interested in bugging devices and other surveillance equipment, the kind of devices that some of the equipment on display this week is intended to detect.