MISSOULA -- What began more than 10 years ago at the University of Montana as a NASA research project has grown into a geospatial data company attempting to bid for multimillion-dollar security projects along the nation's northern border.

GCS Research, founded by Alex Philp in the 1990s to find better ways of packaging remote-sensing imagery, now employs 15 tech-savvy workers in a renovated Missoula office building.

The company's innovations include GeoMarc, a digital watermarking system that tags photos with "metadata," or digital DNA. The tags allow users to gain value-added information that includes time, place, and target identification, among other details.

The company, which has won contracts in both the public and private sector in its decade of growth, believes its GeoMarc technology could help save the government money and reduce the need for amassing personnel at the border.

But Philp, who testified at a Senate field hearing in Havre last month, says GCS Research can't get the attention of the Department of Homeland Security, and that has left the company frustrated.

"They don't like innovation coming from the bottom up," Philp said last week during a tour of GCS headquarters in Missoula. "If it doesn't come from (Washington) D.C., it isn't going to happen. You don't need to spend a gazillion dollars in Washington to get a solution."

The S2 Corp. in Bozeman has also found ways to improve border security, which has remained a topic of interest since the Independent Record, followed by the Government Accountability Office, detailed in late 2007 the vulnerabilities terrorists could exploit by entering the county through its porous northern border.

Kristian Merkel, president of S2 Corp., expressed a similar frustration in dealing with DHS, saying his company has received the runaround from Washington when bidding for projects.

"Attempting to do business with DHS, as a small business with a new innovative approach, is frustrating," Merkel said. "I've seen little incentive for new technology to move to deployment in DHS."

The technology developed by S2 includes "spatial spectral holography" developed at Montana State University in Bozeman.

Merkel described it as a signal processing and surveillance system which uses an ultra-wideband radio frequency.

The equipment, Merkel said, would allow defense agencies to continuously identify all operating signals while locating a bandwidth where users could operate securely. It also gives operators the ability to view the full spectrum of a radar signal in real-time data.

"We want to be part of the solution," Merkel said. "We have a technology that has proven successful at each step along its development path."

While both GCS and S2 have experienced success in testing and deploying their products, they've had little luck when dealing in Washington.

At a field hearing on July 2, both Merkel and Philp accused DHS of favoring large, multi-billion dollar corporations that are accustomed to navigating Washington politics.

That, they said, leaves smaller firms in Montana with little hope of deploying their product, even if that product may do the job at a fraction of the price.

"It's not that we don't have the technology," Philp said. "What we're dealing with are barriers to implementation."

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., has spoken with both Philp and Merkel about the issue. Tester called their concerns legitimate and said part of the problem may lie in DHS's comfort when dealing with large companies, such as Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

"There's definitely a problem and part of it, I think, is that there's a certain security in doing business with these larger companies," Tester said. "I think it's a bear to go get contacts within DHS. But once they get a taste of the kind of quality of work they (GCS and S2) do, there won't be a problem."

Tester has since spoken with Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Paul Schneider about the issue. He also asked Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who chairs the Senate Small Business Committee, to help get the attention of DHS and open doors for small Montana security firms.

"I think their technology can save money in the long term," Tester said. "I don't think you need to hire as many people if you implement these new technologies."

Tester has spent the past year calling for technology improvements along the border. Radar, he has said, may be the cheapest and most effective upgrade that U.S. Customs and Border Protection could make in a pinch to better secure the northern border.

Currently, Montana's ports of entries have alarms that detect people as they approach closed gates after hours. Some areas of the border have unattended ground sensors, but Border Patrol officials have said they are limited in number.

A recent report by the Government Accountability Office found that Customs and Border Protection will deploy 2,500 unattended ground sensors this fiscal year to detect covert awareness of cross-border activity. Roughly 1,250 will go to help cover the 5,000-mile-long northern U.S. border.

"The question is, what's the underlying architecture of all this?" Philp asked. "What's the glue that holds all this together in a particular moment in time? How does this evolve next year, or the year after?

"The technology isn't slowing down. In fact, the pace of all this is increasing."

To view videos related to this story and browse content from both the 2007 series and this three-part series, click here.

Reporter Martin Kidston: 447-4086 or mkidston@helenair.com

Editor's note: It's been one year since the Independent Record's breaking and award-winning series "Big Sky, Big Border" examined national security along the northern border. Much has changed, but more remains to be done. This next installment investigates the changes in manpower, technology and commerce since last year. Click here to view more content from the series.

About the 'Big Sky, Big Border' series

The Independent Record's original "Big Sky, Big Border" series, published last September, won numerous journalism awards and contributed to improved awareness by the federal government of the potential dangers along the porous northern border.

After this series and a Government Accountability Office report highlighted the weaknesses in security along the U.S.-Canadian border, the U.S. Senate passed a $3 billion amendment to border security funding. Portions of that appropriation were spent directly on hiring new agents and examining existing and future technology to improve how the northern border is patrolled.

The IR series won two first-place awards for investigative journalism by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Montana Newspaper Association, and the series was submitted for a Pulitzer Prize in local reporting.