Stupid Panic

There is still wall to wall panic over the Christmas 'Fruit of the Loom' bomber and it is getting really tiring. The thing is all the excitement about full body scanners which are being implemented in Amsterdam and other places(the U.S. supposedly has a couple of hundred on order with more planned) is tilting at windmills. There is a good possibility that even a full body scan would not have detected the explosive secreted away in the bomber's underwear. Reports are suggesting they are not effective and would not have had any impact on the Christmas day event over Detroit.

Tests by scientists in the team at Qinetiq, which Mr Wallace advised before he became an MP in 2005, showed the millimetre-wave scanners picked up shrapnel and heavy wax and metal, but plastic, chemicals and liquids were missed.

If a material is low density, such as powder, liquid or thin plastic – as well as the passenger's clothing – the millimetre waves pass through and the object is not shown on screen. High- density material such as metal knives, guns and dense plastic such as C4 explosive reflect the millimetre waves and leave an image of the object.

Special Request

I am relaying a special request from the Department of Homeland Security.

To all Terrorists and Potential Terrorists;

Due to recent problems with our Terrorists database which surely had your name in it, probably. We are pleased to announce that one of our highly paid consultants has managed to get a copy of MS Access running on our system. We are asking each of you to please re-register at your earliest convenience.

Thank you,
Your DHS Data Team.

Incompetence Cubed

Not only are we drowning in misguided and ineffective attempts at national security but the tools the idiots in charge are using are making the failures more rapidly reachable. Contractors, who are obviously completely incompetent, are making millions of dollars on a completely useless database system. Read this from the Wall Street Journal and if doesn't make you cry or laugh then I worry. Here are a few choice bits....

The government's main terrorist-watch-list system is hobbled by technology challenges, and the $500 million program designed to upgrade it is on the verge of collapse, according to a preliminary congressional investigation.

The database, which includes an estimated 400,000 people and as many as 1 million names, has been criticized for flagging ordinary Americans. Now, the congressional report finds that the system has problems identifying true potential terrorists, as well.

[snip]

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of "potentially vital" messages from the Central Intelligence Agency have not been included in the database, known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, congressional investigators found.

[snip]

The current system "has been crippled by technical flaws" and the system designed to replace it, dubbed Railhead, "if actually deployed, will leave our country more vulnerable than the existing yet flawed system today," Rep. Miller wrote.

[snip]

Railhead was supposed to be completed by year's end but has been delayed. Nearly half of the 72 so-called "action items" for the program were delayed as of June, congressional investigators found.

In recent weeks, the government has fired most of the 862 private contractors from dozens of companies working on the Railhead project, and only a skeleton crew remains, one congressional aide said. The two leading contractors on the program are Boeing Co. and SRI International. Calls to officials of Boeing and SRI were not immediately returned.

862 private contractors doing database development and not one of them capable of doing a web search on search engines? None of them have ever heard of Google? This kind of information is not very hard to find. Jeebus how much money has been paid for this cock-up?

Don't Forget the Terrorists

My but it has been quiet on the terror front for the last 4 years but it is the summer before a presidential election so just as it was done in 2004 the Dept. of Homeland Insecurity has issued a POHA. (That's a Period Of High Alert). As good ole Tom Ridge said back then "We don't do politics at the DHS".

I don't know about you but I feel safer already.