How Do You Say “Boondoggle” in Hindi
Depending on whether you have ever been involved in one of these disasters, you are ready to laugh or to cry as the FBI eyes $1 billion surveillance deal:
CLARKSBURG, West Virginia (CNN) — The FBI is gearing up to create a massive computer database of people’s physical characteristics, all part of an effort the bureau says to better identify criminals and terrorists.
But it’s an issue that raises major privacy concerns — what one civil liberties expert says should concern all Americans.
The bureau is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create the database that will compile an array of biometric information — from palm prints to eye scans.
Kimberly Del Greco, the FBI’s Biometric Services section chief, said adding to the database is “important to protect the borders to keep the terrorists out, protect our citizens, our neighbors, our children so they can have good jobs, and have a safe country to live in.”
But it’s unnerving to privacy experts.
“It’s the beginning of the surveillance society where you can be tracked anywhere, any time and all your movements, and eventually all your activities will be tracked and noted and correlated,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Technology and Liberty Project.
Here’s the formula: FBI + Computer = Expensive Disaster
This program will be well over cost by the third year and cancelled with nothing to show for it. They have not managed to implement e-mail at the FBI, so the possibility of their completing a project this large is zero. It should be stopped to avoid wasting the $3 to $5 billion that will be spent with nothing to show for it. This is just another backdoor effort to fund total information awareness.
They keep gathering blocks of data hoping for magic to happen, that somehow answers will begin erupting from this oversized heap of garbage. They don’t want to admit that they are going to have to do some work.
They don’t have the professional staff to write the request for proposals, much less a contract, so they will hire a contractor who will write something that makes a particular bidder happy, and the resulting mess won’t do anything useful. That is the history of the FBI and computerization, only this time much of the actual work will be out-sourced.
