High-Tech Border Fence: Obama Administration Cancels Project

[Derechos]

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday ended a high-tech border fence project that cost taxpayers nearly $1 billion but did little to improve security. Congress ordered the high-tech fence along the border with Mexico in 2006 amid a clamor over the porous border, but it yielded only 53 miles of protection.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the lesson of the multimillion-dollar program is there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution for border security.

Napolitano said the department's new technology strategy for securing the border is to use existing, proven technology tailored to the distinct terrain and population density of each region of the nearly 2,000-mile U.S-Mexico border. That would provide faster technology deployment, better coverage and more bang for the buck, she said.

Although it has been well known that the virtual fence project would be dumped, Napolitano officially informed key members of Congress Friday that an "independent, quantitative, science-based review made clear" the fence, known as SBInet, "cannot meet its original objective of providing a single, integrated border security technology solution."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/15/high-tech-border-fence-ends_n_809450.html?ir=World

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. No chance of the border contractor volunteering to give the money back, I suppose?

[Edweird]

2. Really? It only cost 1 billion? Tell you what: I'll only charge 500 million

to tell you what a dumbass idea something like that is and you can pocket the other 500 million. Deal?

[ohheckyeah]

3. I could have told them it wouldn't work

as could most anyone who has ever hiked the AZ desert. I wouldn't have charged them but a million or two.

[Rage for Order]

4. This was supposed to demonstrate Congress's commitment to securing the border

The border was supposed to be secured following the 1986 amnesty. That's how they sold it to the public: we'll grant amnesty this one time, then we'll get serious about securing the border. Trust us. Well, 20 years later, in 2006, Bush & the Republican-led Congress was trying to pass another amnesty bill but people called them out on it. Why should they be trusted to secure the border this time, when Congress was supposed to have done it 20 years ago yet failed to do so? Their answer was a promise to build a "virtual fence" to show America that they could be trusted to secure the border so that this new amnesty would be the last amnesty; there wouldn't need to be yet another amnesty 20 years down the road.

I must say, I'm completely shocked that it didn't work and the border is no more secure now than it was 5 years ago.

:eyes: