NSW Water Police are participating in a global satellite technology trial that could increase the amount of raw intelligence available to counter-terrorist agencies.

If the trial proves to be successful, a number of NSW Police vessels will become extra sets of eyes for a wide range of global and national security agencies, including the Australian Federal Police and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

NSW Police is considering upgrading ship-to-shore satellite links installed on a number of its long range craft, giving them the bandwidth they require to send pictures and video to shore based operations.

NSW Water Police' use of satellite service had, until now, been limited to voice communications. According to Syd Griffith, senior manager of the NSW Police Special Services Group, improvements in the technology had now brought the cost of using higher bandwidth applications within the organisation's reach.

"Satellite technology before was just horribly expensive and you would never consider using the sort of bandwidth that you would need to send images cause you couldn't afford it -- it just wasn't worth it," said Griffith.

Police are trialling a version of the satellite unit expected to be rolled out on its 16 metre craft, the Inmarsat F33. It's capable of a modest data rate, 9.6Kbps, but Griffith said that's enough for one way video-conference quality video. The unit (the F77) envisaged for its 22 metre craft which spend up to three days at sea is capable of 64Kbps.

Xantics, the company that is providing the satellite ground station link is believed to charge AU$3.50 per megabyte of traffic according to technicians assisting the NSW Police.

NSW Water Police said its resources had increasingly come under pressure over the last six years. In 1996 the group was given greater responsibility for law enforcement in Australian waters while maintaining its search and rescue role. It's now being called on again as fears of terror attacks on Australian shores increase.

"Since September 11, the focus on international terrorism has created a situation where we work very closely with our federal colleagues," said NSW Police Inspector Graeme Jameson.

Police also hope the new system will increase cooperation between intelligence wings of Australian authorities, boosting their efforts to conduct search and rescue operations and conventional law enforcement tasks.

Griffith said that the police were already working on finding a way to share information with Australia Customs surveillance units via its command centre in Canberra in real-time.

"I'm assuming that we'll put an ISDN network in place between both networks and then we'll put a software platform over the top of that," he said.

As part of the evaluation, NSW Police are testing a groupware application that allows its fleet to share pictures of suspect vessels with each other and land-based intelligence units.

The new system links Police vessels to a ground station in Perth via the Inmarsat global marine satellite service, and from there to conventional terrestrial communications such as the PSTN and the Internet.

The global field evaluation, which involves the US Coast Guard and Spanish fishing regulators, is expected to last six weeks.

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