Boundless Security Systems, Inc—

Newtown Firm Offers A Clear Vision For Safety And Security

By Kaaren Valenta

A Newtown company has been selected by MSGI Security, Inc of New York City to join an international consortium of companies representing various facets of the security business, for expanding its global platform of security solutions into airports and cross border checkpoints.

Boundless Security Systems, Inc, of Newtown will provide outdoor digital video surveillance equipment to the international consortium. Boundless equipment makes it possible to fight criminal and terrorist activity more economically and more precisely, according to its chief executive officer, Steve Morton.

Boundless was founded by Mr Morton in 2001, in direct response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. An important feature of his security system is that it has built-in redundancies that allow recorded security video to survive, even if the hardware is knocked out, destroyed in an attack, or fails for other reasons.

“I’ve been involved in computer architecture for years,” said Mr Morton, an Oxford resident who holds a bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “It’s not so much about the details as it is how it all ties together. Just like an instrument is only one part of the orchestra [while] the composer is the architect.”

Several events helped shape Mr Morton’s career.

“Seventeen years ago we lost a son because the imaging technology at the time couldn’t see what was wrong with him and couldn’t save him,” he said. “We were on the Sally Jesse Raphael Show, and I said that if I ever had the opportunity to help children, I would do it. By focusing on helping others you are looking ahead, not looking behind.”

After the Jonesboro schoolyard shootings in 1999, and Columbine the following year, Steve Morton championed the use of fingerprint technology in handguns so that children could not use them to kill.

“It’s called a Smart gun, a gun that recognizes the owner’s fingerprints,” he explained. “We had broad visibility at the time but the NRA [National Rifle Association] wouldn’t accept it. However, it gave me an opportunity to focus on what really matters.

“What I have developed since then gives me an opportunity to say that ‘when you send your children to school in the morning, I’ll help them to come home safe in the afternoon.’”

Steve Morton worked for MIT Lincoln Labs in Lexington, Mass., on satellite communications, and from there to ITT on a project that brought him to Shelton 26 years ago.

“We were designing central office dial systems to sell in Europe,” he said. “After seven and a half years, the whole facility was closed and about 1,000 persons were laid off.”

Mr Morton went on to found a semiconductor company then founded Boundless with his wife, Maureen, who is the financial and operations partner.

“There is a growing need for outdoor and railway video surveillance to combat criminals and terrorists,” Mr Morton said. “Outdoor video surveillance is effective at reducing crime in city neighborhoods, but its high price has limited its use.”

Most outdoor systems use a single pan-tilt-zoom camera at each location, covering too large an area and risking that a decoy will distract the viewer from the real action, he explained. Most systems also connect cameras to a central control room with the risk of losing that control room in an attack, and losing local and remote access to live and recorded images from the cameras.

Plus, the traditional systems are very slow and extremely expensive to install, he said.

“There is a bunker mentality,” Mr Morton said. “New York’s Office of Emergency Management was on the sixth and seventh floor of the World Trade Center. We haven’t learned. The attitude is still to build thicker walls and go further underground. But it’s still putting all the eggs in one basket. I wrote a white paper last September on the hidden vulnerability of video surveillance. ”

“If a command center or a fiber optic cable in an underground conduit is destroyed, you can lose it all — an entire city,” he said.

By contrast, Boundless Security Systems’ unique ultralow bandwidth, multistream technology uses the Internet to transmit images.

“It’s a completely different architecture,” Mr Morton said. “The Internet is everywhere. You can access it from a Starbucks or McDonald’s or a squad car or motorcycle or using a cell phone — from almost any location.

“You can put four video cameras at an intersection for less than the cost of one camera [in a traditional system] and the images can be remotely viewed — any place that there is an Internet connection — both live and recorded,” he said. “This is invaluable in getting the information to the first responders. It is great for getting a lot of general information quickly for situation assessment; for routine work like just keeping an eye on things; or for typical investigative work where you need the sharpest image, like enlarging a face or a license plate.

“The Boundless system can provide 12 times the number of cameras for the same price as a conventional surveillance system,” he added. “You can search three hours of video in a few seconds and you can do it from almost anywhere using the Internet. It saves a lot of money and does a better job of getting the information to the people who can help.”

The system has a dynamic IP address that reduces costs and helps protect sites from cyber attacks, he said. It can also provide backup access to the Internet.

Mr Morton said Boundless is basically a software manufacturer, using products that are readily available in the computer industry. The software technology was in development for several years in a trial-and-error process.

“We looked at other systems and discovered the flaws,” he said. “We used the ‘Russian test’ in which you stress a system beyond its breaking point to see what will happen.”

Late last year Mr Morton opened an office on Simm Lane in Newtown. The company has a website at www.BoundlessS.com.

“The traditional role of video surveillance is to use it to investigate long after the perpetrator has left the scene,” he said. “But at Columbine, there were two kids shooting inside a school and a hundred officers outside with no idea what was happening inside. If my kids are in that school, I want them out now. And if I can get my kids out, I can get yours out safely, too.”