Press Contacts

If you need assistance, either with background information or coordinating an interview with a member of NaviTag's management team, please contact the NaviTag Press Office.

NaviTag Press Office

email: media@navitag.com

also check out the media centre for additional information.

Technology Journal: Heightened Security

Joseph Pereira, The Wall Street Journal
March 27, 2003

Next week, four U.S. companies and a Swiss concern will take part in a heightened-security experiment as part of a government effort to stymie would-be terrorists. Under the plan, the companies will affix a small tracking devise to cargo containers being shipped from abroad and then trucked over U.S. highways. Somewhere along the way, agents pretending to be terrorists will attempt break-ins.

The experiment, expected to take about a month to conduct and evaluate, is being conducted with a $875,000 grant from the federal Transportation Department. NaviTag Technologies Inc., a closely held Massachusetts start-up, has developed an item dubbed the Cargo Tracking Unit. A set of lights and contact sensors is triggered if a container is tampered with. A signal transmitted to an orbiting satellite then relays the alert to a NaviTag data center, which forwards information to the government and commercial organizations. If the devices passes muster, the $400 product could be rolled out for government and commercial use by August.

Other companies participating in the experiment include toy maker Hasbro Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Anderson Cargo, a trucking firm. “The timing of the idea couldn’t be better.” Says another participant, Georg Mieling, president of a Boston-based division of Jungbunzlauer, a Swiss food-ingredient maker. "I always believe in preventative caution."