It’s Like A DotCom, Only With Our National Security
By Mitch Berg
I don’t know if I was the only one who heard about the Administration’s plan for a “virtual fence” – sort of like a real fence, only hideously expensive and relying on unproven technology, and which provides no physical barrier to actually crossing it – and recalled the many other “virtual” flopolas of the dotcom era.
If you did, pat yourself on the back (virtually, if not physically); you were right. The virtual fence is to security what Pets.com was to investment, or what PowerAgent was to virtual scamming:
Technical problems discovered in a 28-mile pilot project south of Tucson prompted the change in plans, Department of Homeland Security officials and congressional auditors told a House subcommittee.
Though the department took over that initial stretch Friday from Boeing, authorities confirmed that Project 28, the initial deployment of the Secure Border Initiative network, did not work as planned or meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol.
The announcement marked a major setback for what President Bush in May 2006 called “the most technologically advanced border security initiative in American history.” The virtual fence was to be a key component of his proposed overhaul of U.S. immigration policies, which died last year in the Senate.
Investigators for the Government Accountability Office had earlier warned that the effort was beset by both expected and unplanned difficulties. But yesterday, they disclosed new troubles that will require a redesign and said the first phase will not be completed until near the end of the next president’s first term.
Those problems included Boeing’s use of inappropriate commercial software, designed for use by police dispatchers, to integrate data related to illicit border-crossings. Boeing has already been paid $20.6 million for the pilot project, and in December, the DHS gave the firm another $65 million to replace the software with military-style, battle management software.
How about a few hundred thousand dollars a mile to replace the “software” with railroad-style people-management hardware – a double row of chain link topped with barbed wire?
February 28th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Bush & the likely GOP nominee this fall have no desire to build a real fence. They want a ‘virtual fence’ because:
A) It will be easy to eliminate by defunding its operation.
B) We will have to take their word for its effectiveness.
C) A real fence would actually slow the flow of low-skilled, low paid workers into the US. This would drive up the wages of working Americans and this is something that the business lobbyists do not want.
February 28th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Speaking as someone that was involved in one of the competing bids, it’s probably not very comforting to know that most of the reason Boeing won, was because their proposal was the LEAST risky (technology-wise).
February 28th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
I keep hearing people parrot the administration’s line that we need a virtual fence instead of a physical barrier because of the daunting terrain.
Then I eat at the Great Moon Buffet and see the huge photo of 2000 miles of stone wall up and down mountains built BY HAND.
If Americans are seriously incapable of stringing even a barbed wire fence along the border, this country isn’t going to Hell in a handbasket, it’s already there.
.
February 28th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I don’t have any preference between a real fence and a virtual fence. I just want a fence that works. A real fence without proper operational funding won’t work any better than a virtual fence.
A physical barrier without the security systems behind it is just a symbolic monument, or in the case of the Great Wall, a tourist attraction.
March 2nd, 2008 at 5:19 pm
I want a fence that works, too; I’m just skeptical that we’re going to get it. Think of the economics of it — each body that a coyote can get through is worth $2400. A couple of hundred thousand entries per year — and I think it’s a lot more than that — implies one hell of a lot of economic incentive to breach it, and it doesn’t much matter to the coyotes as to where the breaches are.
The Berlin Wall is a useful comparison. (Not morally, of course, but technically.) Sure, it was the cage of a prison rather than an entry barrier, but it was only effective because of how short it was, and the redundancy of the barriers and the willingness of the prison guards patrolling it to kill those trying to go across were the key.