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GAO Slams DHS Over BioWatch Biological Defense System
Mansing writes "Citizens need to evaluate if they are indeed safer for all the 'security precautions' put into place. 'The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has rushed to acquire a new, multibillion-dollar version of the BioWatch system for detecting biological attacks without establishing whether it was needed or would work, according to a new report by a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress. ... The existing system's repeated false alarms have triggered tense, high-stakes deliberations over whether to order mass evacuations, distribute emergency medicines or shut down major venues.' Is this just more money funneled to U.S. companies, or is this really keeping the U.S. safer? Are the same types of 'security precautions' being instituted in Spain and the UK? Or is this preying on fear a uniquely U.S. phenomenon?"
"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has rushed to acquire a new, multibillion-dollar"
As always with government, follow the money. Every single thing government does can be explained by following the money.
I'm really looking forward to the day when America stops treating terrorists like terrorists and just treats them as common criminals. Then maybe this whole terrorist boogie man boondoggle can go away finally. It'd sure kill the romance of a terrorist as being something more then a common thug or crook.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I want to provide DHS with multibillion dollar systems too.
Typical of the DHS. A bureau of people who don't know what they are doing, and doing it loudly and expensively. DHs is constantly fighting with DoD and NSA for control of the cybersecurity initiatives, from the only people in gov't who know anything about or have experience in that area. And when they didn't get what they wanted, they decided to make redundant and less efficient/useful groups than the DoD.
DHS is analogous to a two year old. "I don't wanna share! Mommy but I want a new toy! My daddy can beat up your daddy!" And the rest of gov't has to put up with it.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
DHS exists because It's a great way to dump US tax dollars into privatized money machines. It's hear to stay, voting or not.
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I'm the first one to say the gov is wasting money, especially the military or the DHS but if your system is constantly going off and causing that much of a nightmare and it's that far beyond totally not working, they have to do something and immediately. If there was a better alternative immediately available, they would have chosen it. If you want some heads to roll, find out who bought and tested the first system.
Damage is already done, now decision makers will have bias toward expecting false positives and would not trust any system like this.
As to keeping people safe, I don't see how you could contain release of weaponized virulent infection even if you detect it early on. Fortunately, at least for now, such weapon is extremely rare and not something you could cook up in a third-world Jihadist lab.
That's all the TSA is. Since the implementation of gate rape, more people have been driving instead of flying. Since driving is more dangerous than flying, this has lead to an increase in deaths on the road. Specifially, 1,200 deaths per year can be attributed to the TSA, and that was the estimate in 2005. I can only imagine it's gotten worse since then.
What this means, if you add up the numbers is that Janet Napolitano is responsible for more American deaths than Osama Bin Laden ever was. We are literally ruled by terrorists.
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Is this just more money funneled to U.S. companies
This is a trick question, right? :)
I think this is a case of a government department trying to grow.
A business leader will try to grow their business by increasing profits through more sales or greater efficiency. That's the nature of business.
A government department will try to grow by increasing their budget or sphere of influence, which usually means regulations. That's just the nature of government.
Biowatch is a fascinating scientific tool that should be funded, should be deployed, should be scientifically incredibly valuable, and could do enormous good for all mankind.
The disaster is using it as a FUD weapon to scare people into paying more taxes, giving up civil rights, creating a culture of fear, terrorizing our own people for fun and profit.
The disaster is much like what would happen is the Hubble were launched and instead of being used for cool science research, was used to keep the population terrified of an invasion from Mars. "We must watch mars intently, awaiting the day of invasion and the resulting destruction, (btw please send us money)"
Another analogy... like using a calculus textbook as a club to beat people to death... is that really the "best" use you have for it?
Its really quite sickening to see what could have been a cool scientific instrument being used as a brutal weapon of terror against our own innocent civilian population.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Why stop with one pork-barrel project? What sound premise is there for the existence of DHS to begin with, at all? None whatsover. It's purported functions can be handled quite well, better, in fact, by other Federal, State, local, and private instrumentalities, and individuals. (They just aren't allowed sometimes...well, basically all the time, the way I'm hearing it.) This, however, encourages all that unhealthy, dog-eat-dog competition such public benefactors as J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller warned us about. Can't have that.
It's not about fear. Get a fucking grip. It's a dog-and-pony show about passing the buck(s), and saying what people have to posture at wanting or have to do to get their slice of the pie. And God forbid they should help make more, or make their own.
This reminds me of the early days when nuclear strike warnings were really caused by signals bouncing off the moon. I think there were other false positives in those days, too.
Now, perhaps 1) things have improved and life is safer, or 2) there are just as many false positives as in the 1950s, or 3) they have just turned the system off and will wait for positive reports before deciding what to do. In fifty years, the above may be applicable to bio-terror monitoring.
Their they're doing there hair.
How can bioterrorism threats be taken seriously when we are our own worst enemy? Munincipal waste systems are prime targets - this is the soft underbelly of america.
Imagine the scenario -
1) Flush biologically active agent that thrives in sewage treatment plant (i believe this can be engineered)
2) dewater, concentrate and truck to farm field - fling in rural area (area of few hospitals and less than average intelligence community)
3) innoculate residents
4) residents travel to urban areas, spreading disease
Possible? Plausible? I think so.
Look up what we do with the "residuals" from a sewage treatment plant - yes - we use it on farm fields as "fertilizer".
Yes - its biologically active (they dont pasturize it).
Sewage sludge is a money maker for some and busy work for others.
When you do some reasearch, you will find that we dump biologically active "sludge" on farm fields - sludge that can "rebloom" and contains many of the hazards identified in bioterrorism response plans.
More info:
http://vimeo.com/24854061
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/2/11/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHsIjMPP2M8
http://thewatchers.us/NCDENR.html
http://cwmi.css.cornell.edu/sewagesludge.htm
When I was travelling to a conference in the States, I couldn't help but notice how... pervasive paranoia was. I was travelling with a Metra train to Chicago downtown, and there were stickers everywhere how you should report strange behaviour, announecements over speakers to "say if you see", help the dogs who are sniffing for explosives, and so on.
There is basically nothing like that in Europe. I wonder if it's just a different in mindset, or are the companies/government pushing that hard to make people feel afraid?
This is from the DHS website: Link
I'm all for jumping down the government's throat for wasteful spending, but let's keep things in perspective. I also didn't see a link to the GAO report in the sensational article at the top . Here's a link to a GAO report: GAO Report I'm not sure if if is the one being described in the article, but this one came out in January.
What you folks aren't realizing is that even though he is dead, bin Laden is still winning this war.
His stated aim was never to be able to beat down the United States in a military or conventional war. Even he knew there was no force outside the United States that could do that. The only way to destroy the United States was to create a set of conditions where it would destroy itself and the best way to do that would be to create havoc in its economy. What's happened since the 9/11 attacks and a few other minor events? The US has taken part in a ongoing military action in several countries in the middle east that have cost it hundreds of billions. It's instituted internal measures to counter "terrorism" on its home soil that have cost more hundreds of billions. In an attempt to make everything seem all right, it fostered a false economic boom that finally crashed and put the country on shaky ground economically. Citizens are now encouraged to report each other if they seem to be acting in a suspicious or covert manner. (Could be they are planning to blow something up. Could be they are planning a surprise birthday party. It doesn't matter, it's all suspicious.) And, because the government doesn't learn from its mistakes, this process just keeps on growing. The US is facing yet another credit cap crisis that either hits the wall and reduces the government and the services it provides drastically or gets elevated again creating an even more likely worse event sometime in the future.
bin Laden is winning and you don't even know it. The measures to counter terrorism have already been mentioned earlier in this thread. Quit considering terrorists as some special class of criminal. Their actions are no different than any other kind of criminal and can be prosecuted under normal criminal law, murder of various degrees, illegal weapons use or movement, false accounting practices to fund their operations. All these things are just normal criminal activities if you remove the stigma of the label terrorist.
The most damning thing about the situation right now is the dichotomy between FEMA and the FBI. FEMA promotes emergency preparedness, stockpiling food, water, other supplies, cash (in case the electronic transaction system fails) while at the same time these actions are labeled by the FBI as indicators that someone is a potential terrorist.
You all best get ready to see the United States break apart into a smaller set of unions or independent countries. The larger entity is just about at the end of its rope. Of course, if you look back you might find that the founding fathers never really considered the United States as being a single country from sea to sea. There were plans to foster an independent sister (or brother, for the patriarchal minded among us) state on the west coast. In hindsight, it might have been a good idea; having someone about who could cuff your ears every once in a while when you start acting stupid.
I suspect that what we are seeing here is analogous to what happens when children are raised in a "too clean" environment. The body's immune system needs to be kept occupied with low-level threats which happens when kids play outside in a real environment filled with various germs. When over protective parents keep children away from the outside world in a cleaner / protected environment, there is a much increased risk that their immune systems, evolved to attack something, will begin to attack the children's own bodies. Diseases such as asthma, where the immune system over reacts to non-threats are the result.
Similarly Homeland Security seems to be doing more damage the the American people than the threats it was ( allegedly ) created to defend against.
Buying hugely expensive gear without any reseach into actual need or competition for the contract: $billions
Costs to businesses and the public purse because of false alarms: $millions
Constructing post-facto justifications for the purchase and deployment: priceless.
There are some things tax money can buy. For everything else, there is "the terrorist card".
You are joking, right? Don't tell me you are one of those Americans who still believes FoxFiction to be an authentic news station (after they won their two legal cases, allowing them to forever fictionalize their "news")? Or that Americans aren't all hopeless, given that hardly a one of them understands who owns JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, ExxonMobil, BP, GE, AT&T, et al.?
Please tell me you aren't one of those incredibly simpleminded, gullible types who believes that USCoC (US Chamber of Commerce) meme about voting for Obama for future SCOTUS choices --- as if that matters after Bush, then Obama, has criminalized dissent in America with their preemptive arrests?
Moving an animal infectious disease lab from a remote coastal island to the campus of a midwestern university in the heart of beef country (and within sight of the sports stadia) is craven pork-barrel politics and its most insane.
Via Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_Island_Animal_Disease_Center:
"On September 11, 2005, the United States Department of Homeland Security announced that the Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center will be replaced by a new federal facility. The location of the new high-security animal disease lab, to be called the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), has been recommended to be built in Manhattan, Kansas.[11] However, this plan has been called into question by a recent GAO study which states that claims by the DHS that the work performed on Plum Island can be performed safely on the mainland is not supported by evidence."