Posted on 05/24/2004 11:07:19 AM PDT by esryle
WASHINGTON -- The De-partment of Homeland Security is on the verge of awarding the big-gest contract in its young history for a far-reaching system that could cost as much as $15 billion and would employ a network of computer databases to track visitors to the United States long before they set foot here.
The contract, which will probably be awarded in coming days to one of three final bidders, is already generating considerable interest as federal officials try to significantly improve their ability to monitor who is entering at the country's more than 300 border-crossing checkpoints by land, sea and air, where they are going and whether they pose a terrorist threat.
Questions raised
But with that interest have come questions -- both logistical and philosophical -- from congressional investigators and outside experts. Will a company based outside the United States, in Bermuda, get the megacontract? How much will it end up costing? What about the privacy concerns of foreign visitors? And most critical, for all the high-end concepts and higher expectations, can the system really work?
Interviews with government officials, experts and the three companies vying for the contract -- Accenture, the Computer Sciences Corp. and Lockheed Martin -- reveal new details and potential complications about a project that all agree is daunting in its complexity, cost and national security importance.
The program, known as US-Visit and rooted partly in a Pen-tagon concept developed after the terrorist attacks of 2001, seeks to supplant the nation's physical borders with what officials call virtual borders. Such borders employ networks of databases and biometric sensors for identification at sites where people seek visas to the United States.
With a virtual border in place, the actual border guard will become the last point of defense, rather than the first, because each visitor will have already been screened by a global web of databases.
Once visitors arrive at U.S. checkpoints, they will face "real-time identification," or instantaneous authentication to confirm that they are who they say they are. U.S. officials will, at least theoretically, be able to track them inside the United States and determine if they leave the country on time.
Officials say they will be able, for instance, to determine whether a visitor who overstays his visa has come in contact with the police, but privacy advocates say they worry that the new system could give the federal government far broader power to monitor the whereabouts of visitors by tapping into credit card information or similar databases. The system would tie together about 20 federal databases with information on the more than 300 million foreign visitors each year.
The bidders agree that the De-partment of Homeland Secu-rity has given them unusually wide latitude in determining the best strategy for securing U.S. borders without unduly encumbering tour-ism and commerce.
Whoever wins the contract will be asked to develop a standard for identifying visitors using a variety of possible tools -- from photographs and fingerprints, already used at some airports on a limited basis since January, to techniques like iris scanning, facial recognition and radio-frequency chips for reading passports or identifying vehicles.
"Each of these technologies have strengths and weaknesses," Paul Cofoni, president of Com-puter Sciences' federal sector, said of the biometric alternatives. "I don't know that any one will be used exclusively."
Virtual borders is a high-concept plan, building on ideas that have been tried since the 2001 attacks.
But domestic security officials say making it work on a practical level is integral to protecting the United States from terrorist attacks in the decades to come.
'Risky endeavor'
But the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded in a report in September that "the program is a very risky endeavor," given its enormous scope and complexity.
Great, but we still need Giant Bug Zappers on the borders for those pesky varmints crawling in from Mexico and Canadia.
How about putting men with guns on the border to protect it?!
It's not a question of programs, manpower or budgets, it's a question of Presidential will. The President can shut down the border cold at any time by executive decision, with no need to consult Congress. All he needs to do is issue "wartime rules of engagement" to the current Border Patrol. The current meant-to-fail Keystone Kops ROE are the problem.
What about the privacy concerns of foreign visitors?
I agree...We have no business invading their privacy...Just don't let 'em in...They can keep all the secrets they want...
Yup. National security has taken a back seat to pandering.
I wonder how far $15,000,000,000 would go toward fencing materials and border guards?
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