I'd like to thank Chief Manger of the Montgomery County Police Department and his staff, especially Customer Advisory Board member Dana Way, for their support of our National Training Symposium in Gaithersburg, MD last month. All the attendees I spoke with said they appreciated the opportunity to interact with each other and with our staff, and to learn more about our products and how they can be used. We also had an opportunity to welcome the Annapolis, MD Police Department, one of our newest customers, and to hear from George White, FBI CJIS Information Security Officer, on the proposed extension of the deadline for compliance with advanced authentication requirements (see related newsletter article).
 
For those of you who were unable to come, we've posted the Symposium presentations on the Customer Support Forum website. Many of the Symposium sessions introduced new or enhanced products for our customers. You'll read more in the articles below on new releases of InfoServer, MobileCop, PocketCop, MobileNavigator and Fleet Navigator, as well as DataShare, our new information sharing add-in. Our continued investment in developing and enhancing products like these has encouraged customers like the Baltimore Police Department, which is deploying PocketCop to every patrol officer, to continue investing in us.
 
As we transition to become InterAct911 Mobile Systems, Inc., expected later this year as previously announced, our primary focus continues to be maintaining the confidence of every customer in our commitment to offering the best mobile data solutions available anywhere.

Best Regards,

Ken Souza

Customer in the News

 
The Baltimore Police Department has announced plans to equip its 2000 plus patrol officers with PocketCop® on a BlackBerry smartphone. PocketCop will be deployed even to officers who have mobile data in their patrol vehicles in order to increase police presence and availability on the street. "We're going to reduce people's fear of crime by having much more community contact," Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefield III said. Click here to view a recent newscast.

PocketCop Closes the Gap

The latest release of PocketCop for BlackBerry smartphones and Windows Mobile devices goes a long way towards matching the mobile data functionality available on an in-vehicle laptop and taking interoperability with MobileCop to the next level. With version 3.7.5, users can now email one another from within PocketCop and exchange secure, encrypted email with MobileCop® and MobileRescue™ units. And, just as in MobileCop, queries in PocketCop can now return relevant Field Interview Tracker (FIT)™ responses and RMS matches through InfoExchange (if these products are installed).
 
In addition, a request for enhancement (RFE) submitted by several PocketCop users has resulted in a modification of the Summary Tree in the PocketCop Inbox (shown below) to make it more like the CCI Summary Screen in MobileCop and provide more useful information on the query results to help the user determine whether he needs to look at the detail.

Current PocketCop users can upgrade by contacting Customer Support at 800.355.1313 or supportle@bio-key.com.

InfoServer/MobileCop 8.0 Available in December

The latest version of InfoServer®, currently in field testing with several customers, further enhances the InfoServer Administrator (ISA) interface first introduced two years ago and meets Windows 2008 requirements for applications that run as a service. With version 8.0, functions previously entered on the command line of the server are now available in ISA. A new task tray application that replaces the DOS console window lets you View Status and View Console Log, as well as control actions such as Start and Stop Services. There are also new reporting capabilities and functions that will help administrators manage their growing user base, including the ability to display the client application name (e.g., MobileCop or PocketCop) and version in use, and to disconnect a unit if necessary.
 
The new version of the MobileCop client includes several features that enhance officer safety and effectiveness. Activating the Officer Needs Assistance (ONA) button or receiving a hit announcement will now automatically transmit the last known GPS coordinates (if AVL is in use). In addition, a digital image (such as a photo of a missing child or person of interest) can now be attached directly to a Talk message and shared with other officers.
 
We'll contact all customers as soon as InfoServer/MobileCop 8.0 is available for general release (expected later this year).

Product Spotlight: DataShare for Inter-agency Information Exchange

 With the release of InfoServer 8.0 we're introducing DataShare™, a separately-priced add-on, which allows multiple InfoServers to be connected together to allow cross-agency information access by mobile users. DataShare supports local, regional and even inter-state exchange. All exchanges - from point of origin to point of delivery - are handled as secure, encrypted communications within the Infoserver environment. All source data, however, remains with the owner agency, which decides which other agencies it will share with.
 
DataShare replaces ClusterLink™, which supported only the exchange of Talk, Status and Announcement messages. DataShare supports not only inter-agency messaging, but also the sharing of Matching Recent Inquiry (MRI) results, FIT responses and RMS matches (through InfoExchange) - and any combination of these sources. DataShare's management user interface provides a consistent way to specify what local data you want to share and the remote data you want to see.
 
DataShare allows both "peer-to-peer" and "hub and spoke" connectivity, providing flexibility in addressing different types of network configurations. The peer-to-peer architecture is well-suited to the exchange of information between two agencies with a direct connection between their InfoServers. The hub-and-spoke approach allows data sharing among multiple agencies even when they're not all directly connected to one another. For more information contact Rick Goodspeed.   

MobileNavigator 2.0 with

New Fleet View Option

 The recently-released upgrade to MobileNavigator™, our in-car mapping and navigation solution, is available with a Fleet View option that shows the officer in the vehicle the current location of all other GPS-enabled units (including PocketCop users). The user can filter the display by unit status, group and priority, and the unit icon indicates direction of travel. With this information, along with the mapped directions that MobileNavigator provides, nearby units can assist in a pursuit or quickly get to the scene of an incident where backup may be needed. Fleet View also provides officers or detectives on a stakeout with the information needed to alert other units that might be approaching the area under surveillance.
 
MobileNavigator 2.0 also includes an upgrade to Microsoft MapPoint 2009 and provides the ability to cross-reference MapPoint street names to locally used names that might be sent in CAD dispatches.
 
The latest version of our companion FleetNavigator™ for dispatch and command staff also includes an upgrade to Microsoft MapPoint 2009, as well as a new database design for storing and accessing large datasets of historical information on units.
 
Limited-time Price Discounts Available!
 
Through March 2010, Fleet View is bundled at no extra cost with MobileNavigator at the standard MobileNavigator license price of $300 - a savings of $100 per unit. During this same period FleetNavigator can be purchased for $1000 per license - a $250 discount from the standard price. For more information contact your Area Sales Director or call 800.400.6311.

CJIS Advanced Authentication Deadline May Change

At the National Training Symposium last month George White, FBI CJIS Division Information Security Officer, provided an update on his agency's Advanced Authentication Policy for accessing FBI CJIS data from non-secure locations. Noting that the current target date (September 30, 2010) for all current mobile data systems to come into compliance is probably unreachable, George indicated that the there is a proposal before FBI leadership to move the target date to 2013.
 
The internal proposal would also clarify that all wireless access (which would include in-car mobile data systems as well as handhelds), as well as any web-based connectivity or any access from non-secure locations, does fall under the policy. The policy would require "added security functionality, in addition to the typical user identification and authentication of login ID and password, such as: biometric systems, public key infrastructure (PKI), smart cards, software tokens, hardware tokens, or 'Risk-based Authentication' that includes a software token element comprised of a number of factors." Mr. White's presentation is posted on our Forum website, and he can be reached at gwhite3@leo.gov.

BIO-key Newsletters Now Available Online 
 

Looking for information you remember reading in a past Newsletter edition? You can click here or just go to "Newsletters" under "News and Events" on the BIO-key home page to access recent Law Enforcement Newsletters. We've also posted the most recent edition of our Biometrics Newsletter on the site.