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Post-9/11 DOJ Tech Project Dying After 10 Years?
gManZboy writes "A secure, interoperable radio network that the Department of Justice has been working on for more than a decade and that has cost the agency $356 million may be headed for failure, according to a new report by the agency's inspector general. Called for in the wake of 9/11, the Integrated Wireless Network (IWS) project has already been repeatedly scaled back. Today, the Department of Justice continues to rely on several separate land mobile radio systems, some of which are unreliable, obsolete, and fail to interoperate with one another. Agents often have to swap radios, share channels, or refer to a book of radio frequencies and manually switch between those frequencies to stay online. Radios remain insecure, as much of the current equipment fails to meet encryption requirements. Much of the agency's equipment is more than 15 years old and is no longer even supported by the manufacturer."
The point was NOT to create a secure, interoperable radio network. The purpose of the plan was to create legions of (somehow) "successful" project managers and government hangers-on with quasi-governmental authority, and pump money into those organizations in return for future favors. Whether or not it produced anything was irrelevant. Around 9/11 there's so much fearmongering that nobody will say no.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
$356m isn't much money which is why it doesn't sound like much money any more. That's basically a little over $1 for every person that resides in the US. The problem is that unless it's really obvious up front it's typically not worth looking for these sorts of expenditures when the DoD alone represents more wasted money than pretty much all these small potatoes altogether.
And how is this any different than any of the programs that followed 9/11? TSA is trampling roughshod over travelers' rights, the Department of Homeland Security is a bloated farce, and the individual's basic rights under the Constitution have been eroded. To say nothing of the years of rendition flights, wars, and torture. I'm certainly glad that we're the "good guys." I wonder what the "bad guys" have been up to.
For day to day police operations, the system should be able to handle unencrypted traffic.
Because adding encryption means an additional layer that can go wrong and thus necessitates a 2nd channel for the support people to use to try to fix the primary (encrypted) channel.
And have encryption an option for the times when you REALLY need it. And have frequent tests of it to make sure that everyone knows how to enable it.
But I'm more in agreement with the GP post. This wasn't really about a working radio system. It was about moving public money to private businesses. The WTC attack and the fear were just the excuses used. IF a working product was delivered ... wow! If not, at least your buddies collected their share of the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in this project.
And if you add that dollar to the $1.33 for Solyndra, and the dollars for all the other failures, pretty soon you have enough money for a nice bottle of Scotch for every man, woman and child, which is a good thing because this pissing away my money is definitely driving me to drinking.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
And you think they want to go away? Of course not. They try their best, and still occasionally fail. But when the government does the same, we're supposed to view it as this evil thing that needs to be torn down.
People who want the government to shrivel up and die hold it to an impossibly high standard, all so that they have a pretense to bring it down.
Thank God for Ham Radio - all volunteers, most likely all patriots in time of great need, all providing gear of various levels of sophistication at no cost to the public.