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US Virtual Border Fence Doesn't Work

Posted by kdawson on Fri Feb 29, 2008 08:54 AM
from the time-to-try-pair-programming dept.
lelitsch writes "The Washington Post reports that the initial pilot of the Virtual Border Fence planned by the DHS and subcontracted to Boeing has been a miserable failure. A lot of the points in the report have the hallmark of death-march software development projects. Some choice quotes include 'did not work as planned or meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol,' 'DHS officials do not yet know the type of terrain where the fencing is to be constructed,' and 'the design will not be used as the basis for future... development.' The article notes that Boeing was forced to deliver 'something' early as President Bush pushed for immigration reform in Congress in 2006. That reform effort died last year in the Senate."
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[+] IT: Work Resumes On Virtual Fence With Mexico 259 comments
Hugh Pickens writes "Work resumed this week on the five-year project to link a chain of tower-mounted sensors and other surveillance equipment over most of the 2,000-mile border with Mexico. The network of cameras, radar, and communications gear is intended to speed deployment of US Border Patrol officers to intercept illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and other violators, yielding greater 'operational control' over the vast and rugged area. A $20M pilot project for the Secure Border Initiative, or 'SBInet,' carried out in the Bush administration, was generally considered a colossal IT failure. Since that time the DHS has given the prime contractor, Boeing, another $600M. The government says it has learned many lessons and made many changes in the program since the previous pilot rushed off-the-shelf equipment into operation without testing. The Obama administration has lowered the cost estimate for the 5-year project by $1.1B, to $6.7B, mainly by deferring work on the most difficult 200 miles of the border, in southwest Texas."
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  • by Ranger (1783) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:01AM (#22599270) Homepage
    But how will we stop all those virtual Mexicans now?
    • by Channard (693317) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:05AM (#22599316) Journal
      Someone needs to do all those shitty jobs that your average Second Life citizen thinks they're too good for.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        They wouldn't be such bad jobs if we didn't permit illegal immigration to mess with the labor supply to drive down wages. For whatever reason, a lot of people have it in their minds that hard physical work "just must be" worthless because it doesn't take much training. But if it came down to it, I'm betting they'd much rather do their desk jobs than pick strawberries even for the very same pay.
        • by nicklott (533496) on Friday February 29 2008, @10:50AM (#22600484)
          Name me one society in history that has valued physically demanding jobs over sedentary work... Through most of history societies have used slavery or other forms of compulsion to make other people do the hard physical work they didn't want to.

          I don't think recent illegal immigration is messing with wage levels here, this is the other edge of the double edged sword of free-market capitalism: If strawberry-picker wages rise then the price of strawberries will rise too. But then wal-mart won't sell as many strawberries, so they'll go and buy them from producers in other, cheaper, countries, eg mexico. This will drive the growers out of business, losing the Fed a whole bunch of taxes and earning them a barracking in congress. To keep the US growers in business then the government either looks the other way while the growers use illegal immigrants to get their cheap labour (the only way to keep it cheap enough is for the employees not to have any benefits, hence illegal immmigrants) or pays them a subsidy to keep the prices down. Obviously they're going to plump for the cheaper option where possible.

          You can replace strawberry picking above with pretty much any industry in the country, be it animal, vegetable or mineral.

          For example Fruit/veg picking is largely manual labour that can't cut its costs by mechanising, it relies on on low labour costs so the government looks the other way. Cotton growing is now largely mechanised and wouldn't benefit much from cheaper labour so instead they get huge subsidies to keep the price competitive.

          This is also of course why the US is increasingly on the wrong side of the WTO. Free markets are great while you can sell your stuff cheaper than everyone else, but when they undercut you, it doesn't look so rosy; He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.

          • GLADLY! (Score:4, Interesting)

            by rickb928 (945187) on Friday February 29 2008, @11:29AM (#22601026) Homepage
            The U.S. for one.

            The NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, etc all have physically demanding jobs that pay very well, thank you.

            And I know what you meant. 'physically demanding jobs' would mean 'manual labor'.

            Somehow, oil rigs are a good place to find physically demanding work that pays well. The key is that the product or output is valuable...

            We don't want to spend as much on our landscaping as we do on our SAP implementation, because the 'product' of our landscaper is not as valuable. That never will change. And productivity of landscapers is not the issue. The value of the product is.

            So answer me this, /.'rs...

            In Downeast Maine, blueberries used to be picked by the Mic Mac Indians from Canada and Maine. recently, however, the growers started importing migrant and illegal workers from 'wherever', and most were indeed Mexican. Other workes such as high school kids and a fair amount of regulars used to pick as well. I could make $600 a week back in the 60s, which was a darned good sumemr job save for the literally backbreaking work of raking berries out of bushes a foot high at most. bending over, carrying the boxes to the truck, etc was hard, but damn the money was good for a few weeks. But no more, the growers claimed a labor shortage. Truth is, the illegals are even cheaper than the Mic Macs, which is cheap indeed.

            This is not about our 'value' of labor, so much as it is the profit to be gained by reducing cost further.

            Remember Sen. John McCain, also known down here in Arizona as "Senator Lettuce"? He spouted off a couple of years ago (2006?) about how we 'couldn't' do the jobs Mexican immigrants did. In particular he made this statement:

            "If I offered you a job picking lettuce in Yuma for fifty dollars an hour, you couldn't do it, my friend".

            The next day, more than a handful of people showed up with resumes in hand, looking for the $50 an hour lettuce picking job. They were ready. Of course there are no jobs like that. Lettuce isn't worth that much.

            One of the lies is that this is about wages. It is about profits.

            Nobody has a dog in this immigraiton fight except the ordinary citizen:

            - Big Business likes cheaper labor, it equals both profits and lower costs of healthcare and such.
            - Federal government doesn't want to rile Business.
            - Democrats see Mexican immigrants as future Democrats.
            - Republicans dare not offend them, lest they become Democrats.
            - Labor unions see them as future members. Sooner or later.
            - State governments don't want Business to move to another state or overseas, which they will do anyways.

            Don't be surprised that the 'virtual fence' doesn't work. Ineffective measures will be a key component in the federal government's war on immigration. Reagan's '86 (or was it '87?) immigration reform had three main features:

            - Amnesty. This worked, mostly.
            - Securing the borders. No money, no securing the borders. This worked famously.
            - Deportation of undesirables and future illegals. No money. This also worked famously.

            The current plans will be more of the same. Amnesty is crucial, as it bring the Democratic Party new members, aids the labor unions, and gives Business the same workers at pretty much the same pay. Failing to secure the borders ensures continuing supplies of cheaper labor. Deportation is of course pointless if the border isn't secured. In fact, deportation is a free trip home to visit family and educate others on how to 'do it' in the U.S.

            We need change, alright. Arizona's employer law is a start. But I'm not hopeful. We need to vote out the scoundrels. Sadly, all of our Presidential candidates seem to be drinking the same Kool-aid on this issue.

            We also need to stop rewarding moving jobs offshore. We don't need to offer incentives for keeping jobs here, just not incentives for sending them overseas...

          • by cayenne8 (626475) on Friday February 29 2008, @11:55AM (#22601476) Homepage Journal
            "Picking strawberries wouldn't be such a bad job if non-illegals did it... citizens wouldn't be afraid to speak up about unfair conditions, the lack of health benefits, unsafe conditions, and the lack of a union. The wouldn't be afraid of being deported if they asked for things like water and breaks."

            That and we have PLENTY of able bodied people on welfare, that could be put to work....if you want welfare help, get out and work some jobs like this too.

            If we didn't have illegals driving down wages in manual labor markets, our welfare folks might could get off welfare and make living wages.

                • by fredklein (532096) on Friday February 29 2008, @05:36PM (#22606114)
                  Can you provide any references to support this fact? 5% seems very low to me.

                  To be honest, it's just a number I remember from a previous thread on this topic.
                  But a little Google-Fu got me this:

                  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003265139_imprices19.html [nwsource.com]
                  At a local QFC, Red Delicious apples go for about 99 cents a pound. Of that, only about 7 cents represents the cost of labor, said Tom Schotzko, a recently retired extension economist at Washington State University. The rest represents the grower's other expenses, warehousing and shipping fees, and the retailer's markup.
                  And that's for one of the most labor-intensive crops in the state


                  5%, 7%, close enough. The point stands: wages could go up substantially (even enough to attract citizens instead of illegals) and the price of friut would not 'triple' or 'quadruple' as some scaremongers claim.
  • by RockMFR (1022315) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:02AM (#22599278)
    Outsourcing the software development to Mexico was a terrible idea.
  • by Phoenix666 (184391) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:02AM (#22599280)
    If we just annexed Mexico we'd only have to build half as much fence to keep the Guatamalans and Hondurans out. Plus, they have margaritas.
    • You joke, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by geoffrobinson (109879) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:11AM (#22599356) Homepage
      It amazes me that the Mexican president encourages illegal immigration into this country and calls those of us who want immigration laws to be followed racist or anti-Latino. All the while, they have stringent immigration laws for those coming to Mexico and are trying to build a fence with Guatemala.

      The chutzpah is unbelievable.
      • Re:You joke, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by arivanov (12034) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:46AM (#22599710) Homepage
        It does not amaze me in the slightest.

        Mexicans sending money home - surplus money.

        Other Latin Americans illegally entering the country and sending money home - lose money.

        This is also not just Mexico, but all over the world. In some places it is actually legal. Poland is exporting workforce to the UK and importing from Belorussia and Ukraine. Romania is exporting workforce to Italy and Spain and is importing from Moldova. And so on. And all of them try to restrict influx while very happily consuming money sent home by gastarbeihters.
        • Re:You joke, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by ScentCone (795499) on Friday February 29 2008, @10:08AM (#22599942)
          In a recent conversation with a tour guide/historian while standing in the ancient Roman coluseum in Verona, Italy, this exact topic came up. The structure was built with slave labor at the height of the Roman empire's economic/military juice (it's quite a thing to see, really - but a shame that the outer ring of the thing got clobbered in an earthquake... though that provided lots of nice Extreme Makeover supplies for the local architects working on the town's other buildings). During the summer, they have a regular rotation of opera performances (sans amplification - very quaint, very cool) on stages/sets that have to be loaded in and out and rapidly changed. The work is done in the sweltering heat during the day. It's hugely labor intensive, and almost entirely done by eastern Europeans who are the equivalent of the migrant workers that pick lettuce in California. The guide (herself a native Veronese) said, "Oh, Italians would never do that job - it would kill them!" She also made jokes about how it would scuff their shoes. Mind you, she's a local, so she's allowed.

          But she also talked about the utter lack of affordable housing for the workers, the huge crime problem that comes with (and between) them, the large camps of them that live under bridges, etc. But the Romanians (largely) she referred to come and do it, rack up the cash, and them take it or send it home. The main point was that this is as old as time (well, as old as relatively modern civilization, anyway). Sure, the Romans did it at the point of a spear, and the (ironically named) Romanians are doing it out of an interest in clawing their way back from the ravages of life under a typically nasty Socialist regime... but the notion of having "other people" do certain kinds of work is, literally, a classic.
        • by grassy_knoll (412409) on Friday February 29 2008, @10:10AM (#22599960) Homepage
          You beat me too it.

          From the all knowing wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

          Remittances, or contributions sent by Mexicans living abroad, mostly in the United States, to their families at home in Mexico, are a substantial and growing part of the Mexican economy; they comprised $18 billion in 2005.[52] In 2004, they became the second largest source of foreign income after crude oil exports, roughly equivalent to foreign direct investment (FDI) and larger than tourism expenditures; and represented 2.5 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product.[53] The growth of remittances has been remarkable: they have more than doubled since 1997. Recorded remittance transactions exceeded 41 million in 2003, of which 86 percent were made by electronic transfer.[40]


          [ tinfoil ]
          Why, it's almost as if illegal immigration from Mexico is overlooked by the US Government as a method of foreign aid to Mexico. US corporations get cheap disposable labor ( if the workers complain they get deported ), Mexico gets an infusion of cash to prop up their government.
          [ /tinfoil ]

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        The chutzpah is unbelievable.

        I'd be more inclined to say "admirable." Given that it is estimated that more than 10% of Mexico's GDP comes from money sent back home from the US he's doing everything he can to improve his economy. Just think about his situation: he gets to govern a country with an income that goes up when people leave the country. People who are out of the country don't consume servives or materials and don't commit crimes. He should be doing everything he can to keep people coming across Mexico's southern border.

      • The south west was taken from Mexico. How did we do it? Not by the alamo and defeating Sanata Ana, but by moving large amounts of Americans into the area. The interesting thing is that many Mexicans fought against that because they felt that once the Americans outnumbered the mexicans, that they would annex it back into America. And we did.

        I am doubtful that the reverse will happen here, but the main reason why they come here is simple; MONEY. W's building a fence is a total joke. Whether physical or vir
    • They are slowly annexing us by moving here.
  • by z80kid (711852) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:04AM (#22599290)
    No mere border fence is any match for

    The Six Million Peso Man [youtube.com]

  • Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)

    When the hell has building a giant wall ever helped anything? Jesus...At least they could have outsourced the work to China...Their wall didn't work, but at least it got finished.

    But, I suppose anything is better than coming up with a sensible immigration policy. Gotta keep those high-paying fruit picking, chicken boning, and christmas tree cutting jobs local.
    • Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Detritus (11846) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:15AM (#22599394) Homepage
      One reason all those crap jobs have such lousy wages is that employers know they can always hire illegals, who are in no position to complain about wages or working conditions. I'd rather pay more and see an American citizen get the job.
      • Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 29 2008, @09:23AM (#22599482)
        I'd rather pay more and see an American citizen get the job.

        No, you wouldn't.
        Ideology is easy when it doesn't hurt you (or, in this case, your pocket).
      • Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)

        Actually, the reason is that you put someone through 12 years of school, and he doesn't want to work in a chicken processing plant anymore.

        Like it or not, we don't have the workforce to fill out those sorts of jobs anymore, and frankly it doesn't make any economic sense to force a decently educated worker into a job that could be filled for much less cost by someone who has no education at all. If nothing else, there is a huge opportunity cost for our economy when you force a worker that is capable of working some kind of high automation line job, into the kind of crap work that was common 100 years ago...It makes far more sense to send the work to another country in that case.

        It always annoys me when people like you think that, if only we paid the fruit pickers more and threw out all the migrant workers, then our economy would somehow boom. The only thing that would boom is the cost of the fruit, and that makes everyone who buys it poorer, it makes fruit from other countries more competitive in the marketplace, and that drives domestic fruit producers out of business. What a great plan.
        • Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by grassy_knoll (412409) on Friday February 29 2008, @10:03AM (#22599886) Homepage

          It always annoys me when people like you think that, if only we paid the fruit pickers more and threw out all the migrant workers, then our economy would somehow boom. The only thing that would boom is the cost of the fruit, and that makes everyone who buys it poorer, it makes fruit from other countries more competitive in the marketplace, and that drives domestic fruit producers out of business. What a great plan.


          Ahh... so the best option for everyone is to ensure illegal aliens arrive en mass. If they complain about low wages, hazardous working conditions or exploitive management ( see: Company Store [wikipedia.org] ) then we deport them.

          Right. Nice way to maintain a permanent underclass.

          After all, it's not like if we required proof of citizenship and forced the agricultural industry to pay decent wages those workers would spend any money here in the US, right?

          Or if we permitted those workers to come to the US on visas and bring their families with them the practice of sending remittances to their home country might dry up or significantly decrease thus keeping more money in the US?
          • Ahh... so the best option for everyone is to ensure illegal aliens arrive en mass. If they complain about low wages, hazardous working conditions or exploitive management ( see: Company Store [wikipedia.org] ) then we deport them. Right. Nice way to maintain a permanent underclass. After all, it's not like if we required proof of citizenship and forced the agricultural industry to pay decent wages those workers would spend any money here in the US, right? Or if we permitted those workers to come to the U

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)


          Actually, the reason is that you put someone through 12 years of school, and he doesn't want to work in a chicken processing plant anymore.

          Nonsense. People don't want to do those jobs at the wages offered, and the work conditions present.

          it doesn't make any economic sense to force a decently educated worker into a job that could be filled for much less cost by someone who has no education at all.

          More pure nonsense. Are you trying to tell me the education system is that much different than it was 30 years
    • Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lumpy (12016) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:17AM (#22599416) Homepage
      you're right. the one in China was 100% ineffective and did not do anything.

      Damn Chinese they kept building it for decades upon decades all in a feeble attempt. Everyone knows that the Great Wall of china was a complete failure.

      sarcasm aside it CAN work and BE effective if it was not half-assed. Therein lies the problem. The idiots in Washington get all puffy and hem and haw all over the issue while in reality they secretly don't care and want to allow the illegal immigrants in the country. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that every single one of those congress critters has an illegal wither cleaning their house, pool or keeping up the yard. They dont want to stop the flow of very cheap labor coming into the US.
      • Re:Stupid. (Score:4, Interesting)

        It actually didn't work all that well. Certainly didn't keep invaders from invading. It would have been far more effective (and cheaper) to just have a better military.

        How much money are you willing to sink into putting a goddamn WALL around the country? I frankly don't think it will ever work, and sure if we put as much money into it as we put into Iraq, I bet we could stop the immigration across the land, but I don't think that would be sufficient in the long run. If people want in, they'll get in.

        It never ceases to make me laugh how hard people fight to keep immigrants from doing jobs that they would never do, not in a million years. If you're worried about their treatment, then make it legal, give them the right to sue over poor conditions and workplace injuries. Tax their salaries to help pay for the demographic hellhole that will be this country for the next 30 or so years...Worried about your job? In 10 years, as the boomers retire en masse the workforce is literally going to shrink. That means we will need those people; we will need their labor, and we will need the tax revenue to pay for services for the huge chunk of society that's going to be retired.
    • When the hell has building a giant wall ever helped anything?

      Indeed.

      A better idea would have been to arm Lou Dobbs with automatic weapons.
  • by Assmasher (456699) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:15AM (#22599402) Journal
    ...a wide area surveillance group, I would like to suggest a few reasons why this occurred, especially given what we know of Boeing's attempt to provide a solution.

    Wide Area Surveillance is, like any real world 'enterprise' solution, complex. That is not to say it is not achievable, it is just not something you decide to do on a whim ;). There's a vast amount of 'learning through pain' which (of course) teaches you how to avoid stumbling blocks in the future. WAS is a fusion of architectural planning, mechanical engineering, network engineering, environmental engineering, and software engineering. It is also one of the more difficult management projects due to the fact that very few companies (almost none) have the in-house departments/divisions to handle all aspects of it; ergo, most companies do the more natural 'I am the lead contractor, you all can sub-contract to me for utilities, HVAC, network topology, integration software, camera systems, electromagnetic fences', et cetera.

    This means that during the bidding process for these jobs, as with any $$$LARGE$$$ government contract, much of the sub-contracting can be political and very rarely results in a proffered solution that is 'best in breed' in all (or even most) areas.

    This is all very normal. The real difficulty is in identifying which aspects of a WAS solution will kill your project. For example, the article claims that using off the shelf commercial software for dispatchers was a serious issue. I can tell you from experience, there's no way that this derailed the project. There are several companies (the one I used to work at is one for example) that specialize in integrating their 'command & control' (for lack of a more encompassing term) suites with 3rd party streaming video, network systems, hardware devices, et cetera. The relative cost of these systems varies from very low (with a fair amount of services work being entailed) to moderate (where you get far more C&C stuff than you plan to use but it's there if you need it in the future - but they fully integrate the things you do need off the bat.)

    Usually the biggest problems are from poor planning at the start or 'mid course correction' by people who didn't make careful consideration of their options up front regarding the physical infrastructure required. A good example of this is 'pole placement.' One of the easiest, conceptually, methods of watching swathe of territory where there isn't supposed to be much activity is to use a high quality camera mounted (usually mounted on a Pan/Tilt/Zoom gimbal) on a tall pole. How tall? THAT is the question my friends. From a cost point of view you want to put them up as high as is feasible given the terrain and what the local survey should be. This means less poles, less cameras, and less overall costs to cover a wider area; HOWEVER, the higher you put that camera the more difficult the installation of the pole because I assure you that putting a camera 60 feet off the ground results in shaking, deflection, twisting, and all kinds of other frame stabilization nightmares. Usually what happens is that the project denotes the max camera heights, assigns what types of poles/towers will support the cameras, how they will be built in order to overcome problems like these and then 6 months later they change the camera heights (usually because they want to cut out a few poles and the neighboring cameras must take up the slack), bingo you're well thought out and budgeted pole no longer serves your needs.

    It is at this point that the reader will think 'ok, then we need to redesign the poles right? No big deal...' Sadly this does not usually happen. The change request costs associated outweight the money saved on the pole changes but that doesn't mean they won't still use the wrong poles and save a hundred thousand on camera costs, they'll just try to hack some solution like putting a frame stabilizer black box on the back of the camera, because that should work, right? ;)
  • by elrous0 (869638) * on Friday February 29 2008, @09:21AM (#22599448)
    The U.S. government is such a laughable morass of bureaucracy, exploitative contractors, incompetence, and outright ignorance that any huge project with big promises has to be viewed with suspicion (if not outright laughter). Anyone remember the FBI database overhaul [guardian.co.uk] debacle?

    NASA, the FBI, etc. all seem to follow the same pattern. They get the idea in their head for something big (usually as the result of politicians putting it there or the need to make it look like they're doing something about some big problem). Then they contract the technical stuff out to some contractor who feeds them a line of bullshit (instead of hiring their own people to do it, the way NASA did it in the 60's). Then they hold a big press conference, in which they make grandiose promises about how great this new thing will be (the best ones are accompanied by CGI animation of said great thing). Then they give some contractor a shitload of money. Then the contractor ends up in delays and overruns, forcing government agency to give them even MORE money. Then the contractor either doesn't deliver anything usable at all, delivers a shoddy piece of shit that doesn't even come close to the original promise, or simply delays it until the administration changes or the project gets canceled. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.

  • Walmart (Score:5, Funny)

    by DigiShaman (671371) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:27AM (#22599528) Homepage
    Just build the Great Walmart of America. One side is the employee entrance, the other side for customer.
  • DHS vs basic math (Score:4, Informative)

    by unchiujar (1030510) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:29AM (#22599550)
    some relevant quotes
    "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. "
    "Boeing has said that the initial effort, while flawed, still has helped Homeland Security apprehend 2,000 illegal immigrants since September"
    A quick division $85 600 000 / 2 000 gives $42 800 per illegal immigrant. And this is the cost to the taxpayer without personnel salaries and other expenses, just what was payed to Boeing. I strongly doubt that each illegal immigrant, if not apprehended, will cost the US tax payers $42 800.
  • Development Issues (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gallenod (84385) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:30AM (#22599572)
    I work for DHS and a friend of mine runs a small program that's been managing sensors on the border for 25 years.

    Boeing was hired as the project's integrator and instead of subcontracting or working with the existing systems tried to do everything themselves. Why? To keep as much money for themselves, of course. They ignored, at first, all the existing systems and tried to replace them with proprietary technology that would anchor them into govermnent contracts in perpetuity.

    They failed. Now they have to rely on refined data from a government-developed system to produce any results at all. This is a pattern I've seen in 26 years of working for the government: we hire an outside vendor who comes in and has to rely on our knowledge to make anything work. In a lot of cases they get us to do much of their work for them. The vendor's employees get huge bonuses and we get downsized. Granted there are times where if you don't bring in someone from the outside nothing will change, but the number of times internal staff saves the vendor's ass has been, in my experience, much higher than the other way around.

    Sometimes it's better to spend your money on what your own staff can do instead of just assuming that an outside vendor will automatically develop something better. For some reason, too many executives undervalue the abilities of their own people and hire big names like Boeing for many times what it would have cost to develop better systems in house. The Secure Border Initiative is apparently one of them.
    • by sheldon (2322) on Friday February 29 2008, @10:38AM (#22600340)
      You don't seem to understand. If you're a manager working for DHS, what future do you have?

      If you do it yourself, you'll just be a manager of a larger group with more work, but no more pay.

      If you hire Boeing, at least you know you'll be able to quite DHS in a few years and get a nice cooshy job as VP of Product Oversight for $1.5/mil a year for life, because of your aid in getting them the $4 billion contract.
  • I'M SHOCKED!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Electric Eye (5518) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:36AM (#22599612)
    You mean something forced through in a short period of time using Homeland Security money failed?? I've never heard of such a thing. This never happens. The HS Dept is flawless in all of its executions and, as far as I know, has never wasted so much as a few dollars on something bogus. Just look at all the nice trailers they bought for those poor people in New Orleans! What about the millions of dollars of anti-terrorism "kits" and emergency response stuff sent to Wyoming? I just refuse to accept this article as truth!
  • by Badbone (1159483) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:37AM (#22599622)
    It was set up to fail from the very beginning. Its no secret that every power in the American government wants more illegals. The republicans want more cheap labor. The democrats want more poor voters. This fence was never more than distraction. Just a way for government to pretend they are doing something, while actually doing nothing.
  • by SlappyBastard (961143) on Friday February 29 2008, @10:02AM (#22599876)

    The reason Mexicans come to the US in droves is because their country is broken. Most of the police and half the military are on the take. Even the honest folks have decided to steer clear of the disaster.

    Nothing America erects on that border is going to change the fact that Mexicans can make a decent and safe living in Mexico.

    • by PontifexPrimus (576159) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:06AM (#22599324)
      ...and here's why [germany.info].
      Relevant quote:

      As of January 1, 2000, children born in Germany to foreign parents acquire German citizenship at birth if at least one parent has lived legally in Germany for a minimum of eight years. Children who acquire German citizenship under this provision will be allowed to hold dual citizenship until they reach adulthood; they will be required to choose between their German and foreign citizenship by the age of 23 at the latest. Children born to foreign parents before the enactment of the new law who are under the age of ten will also be able to claim German citizenship by virtue of birth in Germany, if the above named conditions (time of legal residence) apply.
      If you're so woefully underinformed, just keep from commenting, ok?
      • by megaditto (982598) on Friday February 29 2008, @10:26AM (#22600170)
        "Lived legally for 8 years" is the key part here.

        What Germans are doing is penalizing children born to illegal immigrants.

        These kids become criminals from birth, but you Enlightened Europeans probably see no problem with that either (since the kids should have chosen better parents, right?)
          • an illegal immigrant brings in her 1 year old daughter to the US. The child grows up there, but remains illegal. Ok, so she isn't a criminal from birth, just a criminal from age 1. That doesn't strike me as a huge improvement.

            I want to preface this statement by saying that we continually poop on Mexico and so the situation is inherently unbalanced, but the idea is to motivate people to fix the problems in their own countries instead of just coming here. But again, to be fair, in the case of Mexico (and some other countries, really) we have created their situation and so it's not fair to tell them to go and fix it. Just need that disclaimer there to complete my statement :P

            consider some poor guy in his twenties - he flees from his homeland because he'd starve otherwise. His only viable choice is to enter a developed country illegally.

            In some countries which are now desert largely due to human activities (deforestation, irrigation) people really can starve because there is no food and no means to support food. But in many other countries, people are starving because they won't work the land. In most countries there is land out in the boonies that no one wants where you can live as a farmer. Boring life, but it's a living.

            People fleeing themselves, I have little compassion for (I need to apply the attitude to myself on occasion as well.) People fleeing someone else, okay, I feel sorry for them and am inclined to give them aid.

            I can't feel bad about Mexicans etc. running up here to the US to get health care and education because let's face it, between NAFTA and the War On Some Drugs and supporting or preventing this or that coup we have crapped up Central America beyond belief. By the same token, anyone who comes over here from the mid-east (for peaceful reasons, anyway) is well-justified in my book. But immigration creates real social problems and it's unfortunate when that happens to people who don't deserve it. (Life, of course, is not fair.)

            I my mind it makes a lot more sense to try and help that country they are trying to escape from, rather than handing out citizenship to a few of it's inhabitants, or it's inhabitants' children.

            I agree wholeheartedly. But that's not the way to make money, so you're not going to convince any capitalistic society to get on board.

            About the only country I think you might potentially get really interested in helping the world would be China - but they'd want to do it their way. And I don't think the results would be pretty. It's really never all that good when a whole country is on the same page, to be honest. (This is where I invoke Godwin's law, right?)

            Really though it would probably be enough for the various industrialized nations of the world to stop defecating on everyone else.

            For Americans it's very important to think that being born within a country constitutes a right to be there - because they know that they've immigrated a few generations back, at best. Europeans are more likely think of their country as something which belongs to their people.

            Yeah well, they're both wrong. The "native" Americans (who migrated to the northwestern part of the area now known as the Estados Unidos Norteamericanos about 12,000 years ago) had it right; the land does not belong to us, we belong to the land. Not all of them felt that nobly about it of course but frankly, the idea of drawing lines on a map and suggesting that they have significance is folly. The only regions that make sense are ones with natural boundaries -- Or as they are sometimes called today, "bioregions."

            Humans are destroying the land's ability to support humanity. I don't want to get in a full-on debate over the "noble savage" but around here people built temporary homes and burned them, starting fires that truly did manage the forests of the area. Suggesting that people with a strong oral tradition who lived here for 10

    • by slapout (93640) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:21AM (#22599458)
      I could be that he was responding to demand from the people.
    • by kellyb9 (954229) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:22AM (#22599464)
      And this makes the Bush administration different from others how?
    • Just Business (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BarC0d3z (825670) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:42AM (#22599664)
      Forcing someone to deliver a proof-of-concept or sample product for an arbitrary date is just common business practice. In this case, if Boeing wanted to continue the contract with the US Government they needed to prove they were up to the challenge. The arbitrary date was set by Bush because of his agenda. Just last week our company had to build a demo sandbox for a potential customer to play around in. We had a restrictive timeline in which to build it because the customer sponsor had a deadline to receive funding. We had to deliver something mostly untested and with deprecated hardware. The only difference is we had done it before so was able to deliver quickly. In my mind it's just finger-pointing if a vendor agrees to a certain date and then can't deliver. Just like our company should be willing to accept the consequences if our potential customer comes back with complaints that the system we gave them is too slow or buggy and "doesn't work."
    • by ScentCone (795499) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:55AM (#22599790)
      And the Bush administration once again puts politics above effective governance and management.

      And a slashdot user once again trots out their favorite villain without actually using their damn head.

      So, you're saying that Boeing told DHS that this would not work in its first prototype/deployment? They were under orders to deploy something they knew would not work? Or is it possible that the procurement people said, "We need something that can do X, can you provide that on this timetable?" And the vendor said they could, and that it would work. Is your position that the president looked over their proposal, saw the technical flaws and systems integrations problems with the laptops and software, and said, "no one will notice, do it anyway," or that perhaps it's not the executive branch's leadership job to know when a vendor is lying about the compatibility of the components they're stitching together? Why aren't you complaining about Boeing, for lying about their ability to actually do this, and agreeing to take the contract?
      • I'd say both sides knew it would never work the way it was intended, but it doesn't really matter. They only have less than a year left anyways. This is another project like Reagan's favorite pet project the STAR WARS DEFENSE INITIATIVE. Good thing we spent shitpiles of money on that. I feel safe knowing that we can knock down all those pesky Soviet missiles. And yes, the Bush administration was responding to what the public wanted - not by coming up with an effective solution, but doing the "feel good" solution that sounds great on paper, but never quite works out in reality. I mean, what company is not going to take a billion dollar contract from the government, even if they think it isn't exactly feasible? They will just end up asking for more money in the end.
        • by Attila Dimedici (1036002) on Friday February 29 2008, @11:00AM (#22600626)

          I'd say both sides knew it would never work the way it was intended, but it doesn't really matter. They only have less than a year left anyways. This is another project like Reagan's favorite pet project the STAR WARS DEFENSE INITIATIVE. Good thing we spent shitpiles of money on that. I feel safe knowing that we can knock down all those pesky Soviet missiles. And yes, the Bush administration was responding to what the public wanted - not by coming up with an effective solution, but doing the "feel good" solution that sounds great on paper, but never quite works out in reality. I mean, what company is not going to take a billion dollar contract from the government, even if they think it isn't exactly feasible? They will just end up asking for more money in the end.
          You do know that SDI is where the technology they just used to shoot a broken satellite down came from? You do know that the deployment of SDI in Eastern Europe is what Putin has been complaining about for the last two years? In other words that STAR WARS DEFENSE INITIATIVE is becoming practical at about the time that Reagan predicted it would at significantly less cost than its critics predicted.
          • And you do know that SDI was a pipe dream that tricked the Soviets into a defense spending contest that basically collapsed the Soviet empire and caused the breakup of the USSR? It was never designed to be a working solution. And shooting down one of our own satellites is a far stretch from the "global missile defense blanket" we were promised. From all the test results at trying to take down actual missiles, they had a very poor success rate. And they were talking about using satellite mounted mirrors/laser system to blast down missiles. Where is that? I'd also be willing to wager that advancement in the technology field and computers are more responsible for us being able to hit fast moving targets with our missiles than the SDI research.
            Besides, big deal, China can do it too. Have they been spending billions of dollars since the mid-80s to come up with their success?
            • And you do know that SDI was a pipe dream that tricked the Soviets into a defense spending contest that basically collapsed the Soviet empire and caused the breakup of the USSR? It was never designed to be a working solution.

              SDI had two purposes. One: win the cold war. Only we could afford to go into space over and over. Two: produce technology for the weaponization of space.

              And they were talking about using satellite mounted mirrors/laser system to blast down missiles. Where is that?

              Uh, do you know the contents of every US military satellite currently orbiting?

              No? I didn't think so.

              The technology, however, is on the way. Being able to do these things from the earth is much harder than being able to do them from space (aside from power requirement issues, which can be solved by spending more money to put up more mass.) If you can fly a 747 with a chemical laser in it and shoot down a missile (done) then you can build the laser anti-missile satellites. Especially since our spy program has taught us so much about optics and tracking.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          Nah. I was trolling. And I got you!

          Ah, but a troll that so closely matches the dimwitted, but frequently tossed-around memes that one sees here, whether a troll or not, requires that rebutal. Otherwise, the rest of the bunch that simply see a rant that dovetails with their world view say, "Yeah, man - tell it like is! The Man..." blah blah. If you're going to troll, you've got to do a much more nuanced job of it. At least invoke the Trilateral Commission, or fake up some money-making scheme that allows D
      • by Pojut (1027544) on Friday February 29 2008, @10:48AM (#22600460) Homepage

        The repubs are just better at hiding it.


        No they aren't. It's common knowledge about all the stuff that went on behind closed-doors with our current leaders...repubs aren't better at hiding it, they just don't care that they are doing it. Dems are the ones that try to convince you they aren't lying...Repubs say "hey, here is what I have to say, it's full of shit. You know it, I know it, and we also both know you won't do jack about it."

        There is definitely a difference.
    • Re:Oh Vey (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Detritus (11846) on Friday February 29 2008, @09:23AM (#22599478) Homepage
      Because that's what the government ordered. You may know that it's a piece of crap that will never work properly, but any decisions on modifications, redesign or cancellation are made by the customer. The customer gets what he wants, even if he is an idiot.