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US State Dept. Loses Anti-Terrorist Program Laptops
Stony Stevenson writes "It has surfaced that the US State Department can't account for up to about 1,000 laptops, perhaps as many as 400 of which belonged to the department's Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program. Internal auditors found that the department lost track of $30 million worth of computer equipment, 'the vast majority of which... perhaps as much as 99 percent,' were laptops, according to one official. Another official calculated that the average State Department laptop costs US$3,000 and figured that meant as many as 1,000 laptops might be astray — not 10,000 laptops as the US$30 million figure suggests. They're obviously not very good at maths."
They're using them and a bunch of XBoxes to create a supercomputer possible of calculating what wacky thing the president is going to do next.
laptops it is?
:)
I mean, seriously
Who they want to fool?
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Seems like that is the most effective thing right now.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
now they have to scrap the whole program and start from scratch thanks to poor training and human error.
your multi-billion dollar system is rendered useless by one incompetent employee.
They're using their grammar skills there.
So it figures we'd be out a few laptops, yes?
Why does any of this shit surprise people today?
I would give eBay a try to find them out!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Obviously the problem is in assuming that all of the laptops were "worth" the same. Actually, there were 999 laptops that the government paid about $1,000 each for, which had important documents containing SSNs, medical and employment records, etc of every single person in the united states who was not a member of the Department of Homeland Security, as well as various secret anti-terrorist initiatives, identities of government moles working within terrorist groups and so on, totaling a value of about $999,000.
The other $29,001,000 is due to the loss of one laptop containing the SSN and medical records of the director of the Department of Homeland Security.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Call in Jack Bauer, I'm sure he'll have them back within 24 hours.
What the hell kind of souped up Alienware laptops are the State Department using that cost $3000 each?
Were they MacBook Airs? Perhaps they're stuck inside some manila envelopes.
A state department laptop costs an average of $3000? That's completely insane! No (non-gaming) laptop costs that much unless you're just trying to burn money. This further reduces my faith in the abilities of the national government (and makes me feel really great about my taxes). =/
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
If you see anyone who looks like this then the laptops have fallen into the wrong hands.
:)
Sorry, had to do it.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
so easy to lose
I msut admit, I took all the anti-terrorist laptops and sold them to my good buddy, Usama.
You want Captain Jack, from Torchwood. Y'know, the world's mot famous secret organization, beyond the government, outside the United Nations, second left over the flyover, straight on at Budgens, first right at the lights then first left at the Kwiksave. He should have them back before they were taken.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This is actually part of the State Department's Anti-Terrorism Anti-Assistance Program.
The laptops are equipped with lojacks that they hope will trace back to Osama himself.
The guy said he was a drug dealer down on his luck. Now I understand why it had these pictures in it.
I smoked a joint and got all paranoid and shit and threw it in Lake Springfield. Sorry.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
1) They've only done one pass of their inventory. Once this has become public, the supervisors will get pushed on from their bosses to make sure that more equipment is accounted for in the second and third passes.
2) The reason that many of these laptops are listed as worth ~$3,000 is probably that some of them are 10+ years old (when laptops were really really expensive). That also explains why some of them can't be found; they're shoved in the back of filing cabinets or in the bottom of desk-drawers because they haven't been used in years and years. Their practical value is probably nothing, but -- on paper -- they're worth thousands because that's what they were bought for all those years ago...
I haven't worked for the government ever asides from working as an intern for a local County government's IT department, so I really don't know the answer to this.
What in the world happens with these things as far as papertrails go? This question comes to mind every time they "lose" weapons or laptops. Isn't there anyone that has their name on these items as being responsible? Surely either the shipping departments, the departments that they were assigned to, or the people that they were assigned to could be held responsible right?
I imagine for example that in moving of large arms shipments around the Middle East for our troops that there's someone always in charge of the stuff, or that last touched it. Wouldn't a great place to start (and place the blame) be the last person that signed off on something like this? In anything bigger than a really tiny company, there should be very clear paper trails like this right?
Doesn't someone have to answer? Isn't it the auditors job to know who last touched them?
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Maybe someone built a Beowulf cluster out of them?
Cost of laptop: $3000
Cost of personnel to procure it, insurance, shipping, paperwork, legislation, research, etc on a per-item basis: $8000
Total cost in taxes, per laptop, to you: $11000
Cost of laptop, out of back of 10-year-old SUV with motor running, on street, from some guy named Joey with methamphetamine acne: $400
technical writing / development
They're obviously not very good at maths
9/11 changed everything... even multiplication.
I'm not dead yet!
Oh yeah, like you *never* misplaced your cell phone, or anything.
Large organisations like to restrict the numbers of their suppliers as far as possible, this means there is little or no competition for vendors, who are then able to charge as they like.
I don't know which MBA came up with that concept, but there you go.
Deleted
Then they wouldn't go missing.
More stupid gov spending.
...for proper communications between federal agencies. Obviously, these laptops were searched and confiscated at the border by customs officers for child pr0n.
It's clear that employees are unable to manage the security of locally-stored data.
Now do you think someone, somewhere, has a Beowulf cluster going?
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
So now the terrorists need to check if their identity's been stolen?
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
Whoa, whoa, I had to stop reading right there. Auditors?! What kind of freedom-hater would audit the people who are protecting us from the terrorists?
I say we fire the accountants and their childish demands for .. um .. accountability. Freedom should be messy! Looters in Iraq, bargain laptop resellers in America -- it's all good.
I was about to reply with the same thing. This is yet another example of why it is ridiculous to say it is better to "just let the government handle it". Not only is there no incentive to be cost-effective, secure, OR efficient, but the exact opposite becomes the case - government employees get their jobs through friends and family, ie cronyism, so because they did not need to prove their competence to get their jobs, there is also no incentive for them to be competent in their positions.
If the fact that they were missing was only discovered in an "audit," maybe the Department is getting too much money and buying too many laptops in the first place that go unused, and then unnoticed when they disappear.
If they can't keep track of a bunch of laptops, how long do you think it will be before one of the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractors are unaccounted for, and on the street? Talk about making Windows obsolete!!!
I "hope" you people get a reality check and "change" your minds...
They can just use the laptops they confiscate from everyone else at the border.
http://www.eff.org/cases/us-v-arnold
HAND HEALTH CARE OVER TO THEM, HA aha h aha aha aha aha ah aha aha ha aha ahhha hh aha ha ah aaaaaah ha aha aha aha hh haha aha haa hh h cough cough
ha aha aha ah aha aha aha haa ha aha
They, the govt do 3 things well-
death
taxes
laws
All of which amounts to death tax laws in addition to the 3 in some poetic form of dysfunctional govt.
Yet another reason not to pay taxes.
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
Bush/Cheney State Department is incompetent!
...One Laptop Per Terrorist program.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The parable of the broken window might be of interest to you as to why this is a bad idea.
You are saying "it is ok to steal from people if that money is going to be used to buy other things", right?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
One of my friends works for the U.S. Army as an engineer. He used to work at a base here in town, until they decommissioned that facility and offered their employees jobs at one in another state.
Anyway, I remember years ago, him telling me about all the extra/unused computer equipment they had sitting in storage, on-site. There was a lot of "office politics" going on all the time, where somebody in charge would "mandate" that the whole division use a specific operating system version, or specific version of an application. Then, many of the users, finding that very inefficient and unreasonable, would find ways around the order. Sometimes, you'd have such things as an old Novell Netware LAN that a group used exclusively, despite an order it be replaced with a Windows Server and Win2K workstations (or whatever). They'd just run BOTH setups in tandem, so they could get "business as usual" done without disruption, but show they met the "requirements" if anyone checked on them.
It sounded like a lot of the "surplus" equipment resulted from these "orders from above" and changes in command. (EG. Some of the old, duplicate equipment in use might finally be "retired" when new people took charge of a dept. and forced everyone to change and ditch the old configuration.)
Anyway, because of all of this, I think a lot of equipment wound up not having documentation on who it belonged to, or who was responsible for it. (Again, if you were going against the command of a superior officer and hanging onto hardware and/or software they said you needed to stop using - you weren't likely to want your name attached to it when it suddenly showed up in storage, 1 or 2 years after the orders were to "upgrade" all of that stuff, right?)
The $30M number is bogus, it includes a lot of other stuff.
This whole article is sourced from a blog called "Dead Men Working" which is focused on venting the frustrations diplomatic foreign service officers about their problems with getting security clearance from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security; coincidentally the group alleged to have lost the laptops. So take the article with a grain of salt.
Also, the blog reported yesterday that the laptops were all found and accounted for. So, really, nothing to see here.
The "Dead Men Working" blog is really interesting reading though. http://www.deadmenworking.blogspot.com/
$3 000 / laptop * 1 000 laptops = $3 000 000
$3 000 / laptop * 10 000 laptops = $30 000 000
How does the new, inflated ($3000 per laptop?!? Why?!?) price mean there are only 1000 laptops missing, unless there's data that I'm missing? The conclusion doesn't seem to follow the premise.
Now, if this other State Dept official had calculated the average laptop to cost thirty thousand dollars, I would see how that makes "only" 1000 missing laptops...
Seriously, is this a case of bad arithmetic, or bad journalism?
3,000*10,000=30,000,000 ... SO it has to be 10,000 and not 1,000. ... which is 3 Million.!
3,000*1,000=3,000,000
01110000 01010111 01101110 00110011 01100100
Anti-terror laptops lose U.S.!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
the XBoxes are running a modified version of Windows ME that is running Microsoft Bob in an emulator.
When they come out with the Vista version they will be able to model the behavior of Congress.
By using the most irrational OS it is easy to emulate the politician's irrational behavior.
everytime one of these stories comes out, we have the predictable gov't is a bunch of people who don't care about our money comments.
but is gov't really worse then priv sector ? don't forget, priv sector isn't under the openess rules of gov't a corp looses a 1,000 laptops, they don't talk about it.
What i have seen in industry, there is just as much waste, if not more.
there are many way on which equipment is "lost". perhaps refurbished count as lost, nowadays. no proof obviously, put the percentage of lost goods is quite suspicious - only the shiny laptops...
It is just the new anti-terrorism program in action.
:(
Give the major suspects a computer and a WoW account and they won't have time to design bombs....
And talk about no meat to the article
While its still high, they might have included the rest of the costs involved, setup, admin time, software...
Base cost of the box is not total cost of the unit.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
the were 'confiscated' by airport security guards
Most likely because they don't have to care. One thing I have noticed when reading stories of government incompetence is that no one really gets in serious trouble. Worse the government has this propensity to impose rules on businesses and individuals that they not only do not adhere to but will actually codify into law that it does not apply to them (remember the days of discrimination laws?)
So in a case like this accountability isn't built into the system. The powers that oversee them are themselves. Now take the military, they have a process in place and when a mistake gets made it gets tracked very thoroughly and the parties responsible are punished - even if this means going far up the chain. The story the other year about the nuclear weapons being loaded on the wrong plane and lost track of is a great example. Again however they are subject to investigation and vilification by other government agencies who not only oversee them at the direction of the law but out of whim.
This problem that occurred is yet another example why I dread the day the Federal government finally gets control of our nation's health care. We already spend two TRILLION dollars combined at the federal, state, and local level, yet all these problems persist. It all happens because there is no true accountability. Heck we don't even hold our elected officials accountable for government actions they take but instead we all freak out over a sex scandal!
The fact is, they don't have to account for the money they spend, they waste, or they lose. We don't make elected or appointed officials sign documents stating that they believe this is a valid expenditure of tax money. Until they have to own up to spending our money they won't care what the end result is. No more blank checks, no more passes. If they don't put themselves under the same rules as they expect us to live they should not be there.
I would love to see a Sarbane Oxley type mechanism in place on them. Hell they inflicted it on many of us. Whats good for the goose...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Yes, at first thought that works, but then we would see gov't. employees missing along with the laptop.
My solution would be to chain the employees to a welded down desktop so the whole building would have to be lost/misplaced/sold in a pawn shop.
After seeing SO many of these articles, I can only surmise that giving them laptops in the first place is a poor choice.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
And this ladies and gentlemen is the reason why laptops are now searched at airports.
:p
To find their missing stuff again!
Sorry, I RTFA.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
will end up on Wikileaks! I will wait patiently.
Your tax dol^H^H^H^H^H^H^H borrowed from China dollars at work, have a nice day!
Stop putting important things on laptops! Good laptops are relatively expensive and especially easy to steal; like many common items, one can calmly pick one up in a crowded public area without anyone taking notice. A desktop doesn't have to leave the office, flash drives are cheap, easy to keep track of with a neck/wrist strap, and not much of a target. Lose a thousand encrypted flash drives and you'll only be missing a few tens of thousands, compared to stupidly passing out laptops like candy.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
This is an important security matter; how would you like to be the guy having to explain to George W. that a burnt out rental car that had been hired to a known terrorist did not represent a terrorist attack, but simply said terrorists laptop battery cooking off.
Squirrel!
Remember Bill Clinton claiming $4 rebate for each pair of used underpants he donated to charity?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
At least according to this website: http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=hsnews-000002717866
Maybe, just maybe, It was a bunch of rednecks with shotguns who have an itching to kill all the terrorists....HA, thats fun to think about. The sad thing is they would prolly do a hell of a better job than the current task force appointed to this task. Next thing you know they will be misplacing their nuclear missiles.
The numbers don't add up... $30 Million, 99 percent are laptops with an average of $3000 each. That IS 10,000 laptops.
Otherwise, it's 1000 laptops at $3000 each and $3 Million dollars lost, and 10 percent of the $30 million were laptops.
Math aside, you guys really think they "lost" 1000 ( 10,000 ) laptops? Seems more likely somebody pocketed the cash, and the auditors caught it. So conveniently, the department 'lost' thousands of laptops?
We must of course give the Bush regime unlimited powers to spy on us. Because then they can keep all our most private info someplace where it can all be stolen at once.
--
make install -not war
I know contractors that have worked at Aberdeen Proving Grounds (Army ordnance testing facility). I'm told it's commonplace to encounter stacks of laptops in unsecured areas, free for the taking. And that's apparently what happened to a lot of them.
Perhaps they're just trying to find these machines.
I doubt they've actually been "lost".
Seriously, you don't LOSE 1,000 laptops. The users know where most of them are. They probably got issued new ones, and they realized they weren't accounting for the old ones.
There are a bunch of State Dept. employees' kids running around with laptops packed with SS#'s.
Someone will be getting a raise and a promotion over this fiasco.
In the government old equipment does not loose value so if they loose track of a 10 year old 5000 dollar laptop they still report loosing 5000 dollars not the 10 it is worth. Much of the "lost" equipment in the government is worthless and simply was not thrown away with the correct paperwork. But the way they do accounting makes it look a lot worse.
Into terrorist hands and are being used for nefarious purposes.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
"You think corporate employees don't get their jobs through friends and family or cronyism?"
Of course this happens, but if those who get these jobs are not qualified, they will make bad decisions that ruin the company, and customers will move on to another provider. So there is an incentive to finding skilled, competent employees. When the government grants itself a monopoly on a service, customers are stuck with that service as the only choice, and so there is no incentive for the government to find the best and brightest because no matter how badly they do, they can still take as much money from the public as they want to keep their sham going.
"There are efficient government run systems."
Please list them. Government-run systems may occasionally have bouts of efficiency, but only a competitive market, in which the customer has multiple choices for the same service, will guarantee that the customer does not get screwed in the end. All it takes is a new congressman in 2 or 4 years to completely screw a region, and as the service is government-granted monopoly, those customers can have no other choice.
"Some stuff governments just do better than private corps."
Besides steal from their own citizens, can you please elaborate on what "stuff" you are referring to?
"The idea is governments try not to do too much stuff that they're not good at, and regulate the private corps (especially the monopolies)."
Please think about how ridiculous this statement is. A monopoly can only be maintained through government manipulation of the economy. Sure, companies do merge and people are periodically left with fewer choices, but as these mergers result in worse service for a community, demand will increase for better (or more specific) service, and other private corporations will expand to fill this demand. For a true monopoly to be maintained would require that someone prevent alternatives from existing; this would have to be done by force, and only the government is capable of forcing anyone to do anything against their will (as long as that will does not violate the rights of others, of course).
Again, this is the primary difference between government-run services and private services - choice. Obviously with private services, the number and quality of choices will fluctuate, but because customers have alternatives, in the long run there is an incentive for the companies to provide better service, in order to increase and maintain their customer base. None of this exists for government-run services.
The best part of private-run services, though, is that you are freely giving your money to them in exchange for a service at an agreed-upon price, whereas the government can freely tax you as much as they please for a service, and your only alternatives are jail or deportation - either of which would be forced upon you.
"And the government is accountable to the people."
This is the most laughable statement of all. This may be true if the public kept itself informed about the issues, and if we actually knew where our tax dollars were going, and if corrupt congressmen could not simply be granted immunity or pardoned, but as it stands there is no accountability, and the only thing that is required to get reelected is sufficient funds.
With a private corporation, though, if you provide poor service, customers can choose an alternative.
"Anyway, it does look like the US voters are happy enough with the situation, otherwise they could get together and vote for someone really different for a change."
Just because voters are happy with government-run rights violations does not mean those rights don't exist. You can't vote rights out of existence. Forcefully taking someone else's productivity (ie, money) is a violation of their rights.
"the voters voted in an independent instead of the incumbent."
30 million divided by 3000 is 10,000.
3 million divided by 3000 is 1,000.
Who was bad at maths again? Or were you using some other number?
...Customs http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/24/2028215 has them?
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Are you joking or not? The only thing I'm not sure about is whether teflon-coated laptops are available.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Of course, your underlying assumptions - that people will vote for a president with the same discretion they use to find and buy better products, and that elected officials will actually follow through on the promises that got them elected - are false.
"Especially in a system where business effectively runs government."
The only thing that makes it possible for corrupt companies to be able to "run the government" is that the government has its fingers in the economy. If the government was unable to manipulate the economy, there would be no incentive for corrupt corporations to invest in politicians. The government was created to uphold the rights of its citizens, not to violate those very rights in exchange for fundraising.
My calculator isn't either. It says 30,000,000 / 3,000 = 10,000.
I would expect nothing less than stories such as this under this Administration for anything associated with "anti-terrorism" or "Homeland Security".
They have too much power...excessive power yields excessive arrogance which yields excessive carelessness which all too often eventually yields excessive casualties.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Get a clue. You will get a government whether you like it or not. Think of it as an emergent phenomena when you get a large enough number of people.
You're lucky enough that you have some form of democracy.
So now either you pick the government or you let your beloved private corporations do it by doing the "magician's pick a card thing".
The current situation in the USA seems to be the latter, and you obviously don't like it.
You don't have to pick the "magician's preselected cards".
"Get a clue. You will get a government whether you like it or not."
Who said I don't want a government? Of course I want a government. The government is what is supposed to uphold and protect the rights of its citizens. However, when people vote for congressmen willing to violate the rights of their constituents, all because those voters believe they will somehow benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else, the result is a broken government.
Please explain where you got this notion from that I am in favor of anarchy.
You seem to think that by going after certain corrupt corporations, we can solve the problem. Except, of course, that more corrupt corporations will come to replace them. The only thing that is going to solve the problem is to remove the desire for corporations to fund elected officials, and the only way to do that is to stop those elected officials from being able to pass laws that manipulate the economy. Is that clear enough?
That's completely insane! No (non-gaming) laptop costs that much
Toughbook 30
They need them this tough because Jack Bauer is beating terrorists with them for information. If they were just Dells he'd be up to 10,000 by now!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)