Slashdot Mirror
Feds Pay Millions For Bogus Spy Software
gosuperninja writes "The US Government paid tens of millions of dollars to Dennis Montgomery because he said he had created software that could decode secret Al-Qaeda messages embedded in Al-Jazeera broadcasts. Even though the CIA figured out that his software was fraud in 2003, other defense agencies continued to believe in it. To date, the government has not prosecuted Montgomery, most likely to save itself the embarrassment."
Of course it's not true. Contrary to government-is-full-of-idiots lore, intelligence agencies aren't easy to become part of and you don't just get random contractors walking in and making sales pitches. Anything involved with signals processing requires you to not just be a mathematician but a fucking good one - something you must prove with academic records and with copious testing. And that's before all the lengthy background checks and character suitability which might just let you get in the building. Even though I'm in the right discipline with good academic results and have a nice conservative background, I fail on "not being academically brilliant enough" and "not loving my country enough".
The above does not apply to the rest of government, where any old shit will go - especially, in the UK, if the minister / civil servant with decision-making powers stands to benefit personally from giving a contract to a particular private entity. I imagine the same applies in US land, despite the suggestion of a fair bidding process. (That's how Halliburton works, right?)
Learn to read, Sir. For one:
The above does not apply to the rest of government, where any old shit will go
For another, it's often the more competent branches of government in less incompetent countries which have exposed the con. The fact that some ministry in Thailand or Kurdistan was involved - and probably knew what it was doing and was engaged in some money laundering operation anyway - has little impact on security in the US and the UK.