Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Only in America - 28 miles of fence
After reading this, I'm almost speechless.
It's looks like a lot of people will make a lot of money with questionable results (at best).
Hopefully, I'm wrong...
It's looks like a lot of people will make a lot of money with questionable results (at best).
Hopefully, I'm wrong...
Joseph Richey writes a special report for Corp Watch:
"The subsidiary that makes these weapons -- Boeing Integrated Defense Systems Unit -- will try to achieve what previous border surveillance programs like America's Shield Initiative, Border and Transportation Security Network, and others have failed to do so far: create a mix of infrastructure, technology and personnel that will make the border impermeable.
The minimum cost of setting up the system is estimated at $1 million a mile but that figure does not include the ongoing costs of maintaining the infrastructure and staffing it.
SBInet will go beyond just the physical construction. 'Virtually every detail is being outsourced from the government to private contractors,' says California Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman. 'The government is relying on private contractors to design the programs, build them, and even conduct oversight of them.'
The federal government's role will be limited to actual apprehension, which remains, for now, the domain of trained U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. (Although that too may change if the U.S. Congress accepts a proposal by DynCorp to deploy 1,000 private agents for border patrol duties, under a separate contract.)"
