Company analyzes terrorist watch list.

• Author: Book, Elizabeth G.
• Position: Security Beat

Language Analysis Systems, Inc., (LAS), a Herndon, Va.-based company, has developed a name-analysis system for the federal government that could be used to study terrorist watch lists.

The software can authenticate names and name variants, to correctly identify the cultures associated with the names. The company claims it can trace and authenticate names that have legitimate variant spellings in other languages.

LAS has been in business since 1984, initially working on a State Department project to process visas. In the years since its founding, however, it has "pioneered the use of computational linguistics to solve the complex problems with multi-cultural name matching and searching," according to a company release.

The computer program uses tools for...