Systemic Flaws in High-Tech Border Security

(Second of two parts on virtual fence, new and proposed.) 

Before rushing ahead with another high-tech fix for our so-called “border
security,” the Obama administration should take a hard look at the conceptual
and strategic failures of the SBInet. 

It wasn’t just technical glitches and
management shortcomings that  doomed
SBInet.

A series of blistering reports from DHS’ own inspector general and the
Government Accountability Office, as well as a barrage of criticism from the
various congressional committees that oversee DHS, warned that SBInet was a bust. The
reports noted that Border Patrol never offered any clear definition of the
project, a credible price estimate or strategic plan. (See: Fallacies of High-Tech Fixes for Border Security.)
The “system of systems” was plagued by cost overruns, technical glitches, and
repeated schedule delays.

Typical of
the abstract language describing the SBInet concept, DHS said it represented “a
systematic approach to deploy technological tools in stages, allowing each
stage to build on the success of earlier stages.” And the objective is “to
provide a clear common operating picture (COP) of the border environment within
a command center environment, which will provide commonality within DHS
components and interoperability with stakeholders outside DHS.”

In the end, DHS concluded that “the original concept for SBInet does not meet current standards
for viability and cost-effectiveness” and that the “SBInet system is not the
right system for all areas of the border and it is not the most cost-effective
approach to secure the border.”

According to
DHS, the “independent, quantitative, science-based assessment of the SBInet
program” that it commissioned “demonstrated that SBInet is not the most
efficient, effective and economical way to meet our nation's border security
needs.” 




No doubt. As any observer knew, SBInet was shot through with flaws –
the least of which were technological – from its start in November 2005.

The Napolitano-mandated
assessment, according to DHS, concluded that SBInet did not “have the
capability to provide a one size fits all integrated technological solution to
border security.”  DHS reported that SBInet
research and development “generated some advancements in technology,” but,
rather than seeking new technological platforms, DHS will in the immediate
future “utilize existing, proven technology solutions tailored to the distinct
terrain and population density of each border region.”

The scandal
of insider contracts, scant oversight, and technological failure in electronic
surveillance on the border predates SBInet. 
Between 1997 and 2006, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and DHS spent
$439 million on two electronic surveillance projects that were largely
abandoned because of system failures.

These were
the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System (ISIS) and its successor,
America’s Shield Initiative. The General Services Administration and DHS’s Office
of Inspector General OIG issued blistering reports about ISIS and America’s
Shield, prefiguring more recent governmental critiques of SBInet.

New High-Tech Solution Moves Forward
Without Sufficient Consideration

DHS says
that the new search for a high-tech solution for border security “recognizes
that we must effectively deploy a wide range of proven technology along the
Southwest border to best meet our nation’s pressing border technology needs and
complement this administration’s unprecedented investment in manpower,
infrastructure and resources to secure the Southwest border.”

It should be
remembered that, as DHS presses forward with its new border technology plan, SBInet
was also initially scheduled to use only proven, off-the-shelf technology. Boeing
did attempt to cobble together different systems into one system, but little
worked as planned.

Then, when
it tried to create a unique technology platform, Boeing had little success. The
system couldn’t distinguish between a person and a bush swaying in the wind. It
didn’t get close to establishing a common operating picture for the Border
Patrol.

As it moves quickly
toward a new high-tech plan, DHS hasn’t acknowledged that its “system of systems”
had underlying systemic flaws – namely, the failure of DHS to focus on real security
threats, the outsourcing of border security projects (including its oversight
and management) to private contractors, and the failure of DHS to submit the hugely
expensive project (projected $8 billion) to a cost-benefit assessment. Such an assessment would attempt to measure the margin of increased security resulting from new border security programs against their cost. 

If DHS doesn’t
change its ways (and it has said or done little to indicate any change in
operations) then the newly initiated high-tech plan for border security will
surely end like its predecessors – monuments to fallacies of high-tech
solutions to challenges of managing our border with Mexico.

For more information see:

CIP
International Policy Report: Fallacies of
High-Tech Fixes for Border Security, April 2010

http://www.ciponline.org/CIP_Publications/1004_TBP.pdf

Catching "Our Adversaries" with New Virtual Fence

(First of two parts on virtual fence, old and newly proposed.) 

The virtual
fence is dead. Long live the virtual fence!

Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Jan. 14, 2011 that DHS was cutting
of funding for Secure Border Initiative Network (SBInet). I DHS Secretary
Michael Chertoff in November 2005 introduced the new remote surveillance system – what he called a “virtual
fence” that would include not only a system of electronic detection but also a
communications system that would enable a quick response to illegal border crossings.

Homeland
Security says has spent about a billion dollars on SBInet – with only the
detritus of a dysfunctional Boeing surveillance project southwest of Tucson to
show for all that spending. Virtual fence, indeed.

The DHS called SBInet
a “system of systems.” But it turned out to be a major technological and
bureaucratic bust – which system’s critics, including congressional committees
and governmental monitoring agencies, had been saying for the past three years.

DHS, however,
has not given up on finding a high-tech fix for border security. Several days
after shuttering the dysfunctional SBInet, Customs and Border Protection (CBP),
the DHS agency that includes the Border Patrol, took the first step toward
creating a SBInet II. The new technology plan is based on an “Analysis of
Alternatives” ordered last year by Napolitano.

CBP issued a
Request for Information (RFI) on Jan. 18, 2011 for vendors interested in participating
in a new high-tech plan for border security.  The RFI asks vendors for information about
existing surveillance and communications technology that could be part of a
system of “integrated fixed towers” along the border.  

Towers with
cameras and communications devices were the main feature of the failed SBInet pilot
projects in southern Arizona. 

But Boeing
proved utterly unable to create a virtual fence – a technological platform for
border security that would detect illegal entries, communicate actionable
information back to Border Patrol “command center,” and then quickly relay
information about illegal border crossers to Border Patrol agents in the field.

In its goal
of providing “automated, persistent wide area
surveillance for the detection, tracking, identification, and classification
of illegal entries,” the new technological plan for border security differs
little from its failed predecessor.  

CBP is, however, attempting to
distinguish the new plan from SBInet and the remote electronic surveillance
projects that preceded it by stating that the proposed system will be adaptable
to varying conditions along the nearly 2,000-mile border and that it will be
based not on new technology developed for the project but on “off-the-shelf”
technology from the private and public sectors.

Another important difference is
that the CBP is seeking information as the first step rather than simply
turning over the project to a contractor based on solely on company promises
and assurances.

Containing “Our Adversaries”

But there are worrying signs that
CBP’s new initiative will continue its unfortunate history of seeking high-tech
fixes for a problem that it hasn’t even defined.  The DHS and CBP have committed to ensuring border
security but offer no definition of the term or a strategy on how to achieve a
secure border. As a result, all illegal crossborder entries are regarded as
security breaches and threats to the homeland.

In this security paradigm, immigrants
seeking work and packages of smuggled marijuana are security threats just as
are terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.

This unfocused vision of border
security leads to unfocused, ineffective, and wasteful projects.

DHS says the new technology plan
will provide “flexible capabilities that will enable the Border Patrol to move and adapt to the threat.” The
undifferentiated threat encompasses all illegal border crossings. So enraptured
with -- and blinded by -- the post-9/11 security/military framework for border
control that DHS labels illegal border crossers as “adversaries.”

Describing
the new plan in its “Report on the Assessment of the SBNnet Program,” DHS
attempts to assure us that its proposed high-tech border security plan won’t
repeat the mistakes of past programs that merely shifted the flows of
immigrants and illegal drugs to new corridors: The Department recognizes that,
as we tighten the security of one area, our adversaries will attempt to find
new routes in other areas.”

It’s no
wonder that our nation’s institutions of homeland security and border security –
as well as the concepts shaping their operations – have come under such harsh
criticism.

Border security
hawks insist that all illegal intrusions threaten our security and sovereignty.
But DHS and CBP should have a more strategic view of border control – one where
immigrants and smuggled marijuana wouldn’t be regarded as “adversaries.”

CBP does say
– as it state previously with its Secure Border Initiative -- that its new
system will “identify and classify these entries to determine the level of
threat involved.”  That would certainly be
an amazing high-tech achievement – identifying terrorists and terrorism weapons
through remote electronic surveillance – but an unlikely one.

If Congress
believes that, then DHS may also have a bridge it could sell it the credulous
senators and representative who allocated billions of dollars for one border
security initiative after another without demanding any evidence that these
would indeed improve our security. 

For more information see:

CIP International Policy Report: Fallacies of High-Tech Fixes for Border Security, April 2010

http://www.ciponline.org/CIP_Publications/1004_TBP.pdf

Sealing the Border Against Marijuana

Customs and Border Protection says it is "securing the border" against "dangerous people and drugs." And it has the stats to prove it. 




If you don’t mind logistical inconsistencies, the
Department of Homeland Security has the proof that CBP (the DHS agency that includes the Border Patrol) stands on the frontlines of homeland security -- keeping us safe against immigrants and marijuana. 

In a new report outlining its
plans for more billion-dollar, high-tech projects to secure the border, DHS
boasts: “Recent efforts have generated significant improvements in border security,
as measured by a decline in apprehensions and an increase in drug seizures.”

In its Report on
the Assessment of the Secure Border Initiative-Network (SBInet) Program,
DHS includes a chart (above) that is intended to document its border-security achievements.
But there is no explanation how its purported success in securing the border can be measured simultaneously in increasing
numbers (drug seizures) and decreasing numbers (illegal border crossers
apprehended). 

When defending its annual budget increases, DHS pointed
to the rising number of illegal immigrants in the first half of the decade to explain
the urgent need for more agents, more walls, and more high-tech fixes. As the
number of apprehended immigrants has started to decline, DHS underscored the
purported effectiveness of its border security spending and the resulting “deterrence.”
 

Depending on the topic of the press briefing or
congressional hearing, DHS variously attributes the new numbers of arrests and
seizures to the border fence, increased Border Patrol agents, remote
surveillance, and higher overall agency budgets.

But DHS' arguments about increased deterrence from the expanded
deployment of Border Patrol agents (doubled since 2003) for some unexplained reason don't apply to the control of illegal
drug flows across the southwestern border. With drugs, more border security
means more seizures not fewer. 

DHS doesn’t attempt to explain why deterrence may work
with illegal immigrants but not with illegal drugs. As has been the practice
during the four decades of the war on drugs, increased seizures, arrests, and
eradications are the benchmarks used to determine success – not the measure of
drugs flowing into the United States or consumed here.

In this case, DHS argues the steady rise in the tons of
marijuana seized along the border makes the homeland is safer , while pointing
out that this upward trend in marijuana seizures roughly parallels the
steady rise in the number of Border Patrol agents.

Whether it’s the thousands of immigrants apprehended or the tons of marijuana seized, the Border Patrol always seems to have the numbers to
support the dual contention that it is doing a great job and that a budget increase
is critical. 

When immigrant apprehensions are up, the Border Patrol and ICE say
it is the result of their diligence. When the number of immigrants they capture
is down, they say it is because of the deterrent effect of their increased
enforcement.

It’s what Peter Andreas and Kelly Greenhill call the “numbers
game” in their book Sex, Drugs, and Body
Counts. “The standard
quantitative indicators – such as numbers of arrests, deportations, seizures,
confiscations, and so on – are built into the funding mechanism, creating
powerful bureaucratic incentives to sustain them,” they write.

The numbers game played by the DHS and its
border-control and immigration-enforcement agencies has been wildly successful
in supporting ever higher budgets. Yet, never does DHS bring other, less
convenient numbers into the game picture, especially when it is making a case
for increased agency budgets.




Missing Intelligence




Missing in the DHS chart of
seizures are, among other things, numbers from the Justice Department’s
National Drug Intelligence Center.

The center’s National
Drug Intelligence Assessment 2010 reported that marijuana
in the United States is “widely available, in part as a result of rising production in Mexico. The
amount of marijuana produced in Mexico has increased an estimated 59 percent
overall since 2003.”

Increased border
security by DHS, then, has had little impact on the availability of marijuana
in the U.S. market. According to this Justice Department, “Marijuana is the
most commonly used illicit drug, with 25.8 million individuals 12 years of age
and older (10.3%) reporting past year use.”

That’s about
the same percentage of U.S. residents who have used marijuana every year this
past decade, even as population is rising. In their book, Andreas and Greenhill note that
the numbers used to assess cross-border activities “often have more to do with
political imperatives and bureaucratic incentives than actual deterrence.”

What’s all too
clear is that DHS, despite its professed commitment to protect against “dangerous
people and goods,” is playing the same old numbers game, while failing to address
the policy origins of the border control, immigration enforcement, and drug
control crises – namely our failure to reform immigration policy and to end the
drug wars home and abroad.

Federal Stimulus Funding for Border Security and Drug War in Arizona

Arizona is
in tatters. Politically, economically, and socially the state is reeling.

The
decision by Gov. Jan Brewer to sign the anti-immigrant Support Our Law
Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (SB 1070) last April put the ills of
Arizona on national display, exposing the state’s deep social and political
divides. 

The attempted assassination of Cong. Gabrielle Giffords further
damaged the state’s already badly frayed reputation.

Described by Pima County Sheriff as “a mecca for
prejudice and bigotry” following the Tucson massacre, Arizona also faces one of
the nation’s most severe fiscal crises – even worse than that of California,
according to a new study by the Brookings Institution.

Facing a budget deficit of more than $2 billion,
Gov. Brewer has, with the strong backing of the Republican-dominated
legislature, proposed a new budget that severely slashes government spending,
especially for education and medical services. Spending for parks will be
zeroed out in the new budget.

The fiscal crisis has been building since 2008 when
housing prices plummeted, the sub-prime credit crisis hit, and the nation’s
Great Recession struck. Over the past couple of years, the magnitude and
severity of the state government’s fiscal woes were disguised by the influx
into the state of more than $4 billion in special federal funding from the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (ARRA). But as this stimulus/stabilization funding comes to an
end, Arizona’s fiscal plight is raising increasing concerns about the state’s
stability.

Anxiety
about Arizona’s future arises in large part from doubts about the capacity of
the state’s political leaders to identify the fundamental problems facing the
state and chart an appropriate course forward.

Stabilization vs. Security

Last
year, Gov. Brewer began closing state parks and highway rest stops last year
and slashing social services to cover shortfalls in the 2010-2011 budgets. “Closed
for stabilization” notices are pasted on the doors of public buildings. Rows of
orange barrels block entrance to now-shuttered rest areas along the interstate
highways.

At the
same time, though, the governor, encouraged by the state’s radical Republican
leadership, was channeling federal stabilization funds into new state
border-security initiatives.

A month before signing Arizona’s
notorious papers-please anti-immigrant law, Gov. Jan Brewer burnished her
border-security credentials by dipping into the state’s ARRA funds to ply
border law enforcement agencies -- already awash in Homeland Security funding
through DHS’s Operation Stonegarden -- with another $10 million.

“A government’s principle [sic]
responsibility to its citizens is to provide safety and security. However, the
federal government has failed miserably in its obligation and moral
responsibility to its citizens regarding border security,” declared Governor
Brewer on April 22 when announcing state’s the launch of the state’s Border
Security Enhancement Program.

Brewer took a page out of Texas
Governor Rick Perry’s playbook by asserting that the federal government’s
failure to protect Arizona against illegal immigrants, border crime, and drugs
obligated the state to secure the Arizona border with Mexico – all the while
downplaying that the state’s border security program is underwritten by
stimulus funds intended for the state’s fiscal stabilization. Like Perry,
Brewer planned to ride the anti-immigrant backlash and border-security
bandwagon to victory in November 2010 gubernatorial contest. 

Brewer claimed she was responding
to “murder, terror, and mayhem” as a result of the federal government’s failure
to secure the border. The stimulus funding, according to the program’s
guidelines, must be used by border law enforcement to
“combat criminal activity associated with or directly stemming from the
international border…specifically: illegal drug trafficking, human smuggling,
illegal immigration.” But FBI crime statistics told another story: steadily
declining crime rates along the border and throughout Arizona.

Brewer tapped her
office’s newly created State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, established with ARRA
funding from the U.S. Department of Education, to create her new border security
program.

The objective of the State Fiscal
Stabilization Fund is to “help stabilize state and local government budgets in
order to minimize and avoid reductions in education and other public services.”
Primarily intended to keep states from cutting their education budgets, the
stabilization fund does allow discretionary funding for “Other Government
Services.” Brewer has used this opening to plug a hole in the state’s prison
budget in addition to creating the politically motivated Border Security
Enhancement Program.

Get-tough sentencing laws and the
practice of imprisoning illegal drug users (more than half of the state’s
prison population) have created a higher-than-average incarceration rate in
Arizona, contributing substantially to the Arizona’s severe budget crisis.
Unable to pay the wages of the some 1,300 state corrections officers, Brewer
dipped into the fiscal stabilization funds for $50 million to cover the prison
payroll shortfall last year – which was her first use of “Other Government
Services” portion of the ARRA stabilization program.

Next:
Border Security Politics and Federal Funding in Cochise County.

This
series was made possible by a grant from The Nation Institute.