- Fear can be a lucrative business. That, at least, is
what American companies selling security gadgets are finding out as the
US government continues to spend billions of dollars on a variety of different
Homeland Security programs. The only problem? Most of them are useless.
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- Clark Kent Ervin, 46, is one of those people on whom
the US president likes to depend. The staunch Republican is an old friend
from Texas who once worked for George W. Bush in the governor's mansion
and who, on Bush Junior's recommendation, managed to get a job in Bush
Senior's administration. Ervin is an amiable man who is usually quick to
smile. The exception? When you mention his last employer -- the two-and-a-half-year-old
US Department of Homeland Security.
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- The problems at the bureaucratic behemoth -- with its
180,000 employees -- are myriad, says Ervin, a graduate of Harvard. "I've
never experienced anything like it before," he says.
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- And now Ervin, appointed by his friend Bush to the position
of highest-ranking internal auditor on the homeland security front, is
suddenly without a job. His reports on the chaos, corruption and wastefulness
at the department were so thorough and full-throated that he became a liability
to the president. Since Ervin was forced out of the department, the gold
rush-like mood in the American security industry, whose excesses were at
the center of Ervin's complaints, has continued unabated.
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- The business of fear in the United States of America
has been booming ever since September 11, 2001 and the price tag for the
protective cordon of high-tech gadgetry intended to keep the US safe from
more terrorist attacks is enormous. Devices designed to detect nuclear
material in shipping containers will cost the US government $300 million.
The budget for the American Shield Initiative, a plan that calls for monitoring
the country's borders with sensors or drones, comes at the hefty price
of $2.5 billion. A further $10 billion is budgeted for a new computer system
designed to monitor visitors, while outfitting all 6,800 aircraft in US
commercial aviation with anti-missile systems will cost about the same
amount. The total 2005 Homeland Security budget weighs in at a whopping
$50 billion -- roughly equivalent to the gross national product of New
Zealand.
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- "The market is growing at an incredible rate,"
gushes the Security Industry Association at its "networking lunch"
with members of Congress and administration officials. Throughout the country,
conventions are being held where products like mobile emergency command
centers and Blackberrys that provide direct access to FBI computers are
on offer. Another popular item is "Fido," a cell phone-sized
device used to detect explosive material. Demand is high, especially now
that the going rate for a decent bomb-sniffing dog in the United States
has skyrocketed to $10,000.
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- "We'll call these the good old days in ten years,"
says an enthusiastic Ray Oleson, whose information technology company posted
a fifty percent jump in sales in the first quarter of this year. The American
newsmagazine US News & World Report calls the booming business "Washington's
version of a Turkish bazaar."
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- Ervin, the fired auditor, is wary of the current consumerist
climate and would have preferred spending funds more slowly and judiciously.
After all, much of what the industry is peddling as products designed "to
secure America's future" (an industry marketing slogan) has proven
to be insufficiently developed and prone to failure. To this day, the harbor
nuclear detectors are incapable of distinguishing between bombs and kitty
litter or bananas, leading frustrated customs officials to simply shut
them off. The new $1.2 billion explosives detectors for the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA), a part of Homeland Security, are equally
unreliable.
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- Another criticism of Homeland Security's money-spending
ways is that it isn't terribly focused. The security business is booming
in places like the Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Wyoming as well --
hardly places that come to mind as potential terrorist targets. But according
to the requirements stipulated by Congress, the Department of Homeland
Security's budget must be equally distributed among all US states and territories.
Last year, Wyoming spent $37.74 per capita on homeland security while the
state of New York had to make do with $5.41 per capita. The result? Every
police officer in Wyoming now has his or her own ABC protective suit.
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- To make sure that all this lucrative hemorrhaging of
American taxpayers' money doesn't come to an end too soon, the security
industry has taken a page from the defense industry and hired specialists
who are aptly nicknamed "rainmakers" -- political insiders adept
at selling their influence to the highest bidder. Tom Ridge, the former
Secretary of Homeland Security, is now lobbying on behalf of container
security, while many of his former top officials have set up shop on K
Street, Washington's magnificent mile for lobbyists.
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- Indeed, in the three years since it came into being,
the Transportation Security Administration has already gone through four
directors. Each of the current director's predecessors was simply unable
to resist the temptations of the industry. Richard Clarke, the former White
House Chief of Counterterrorism, warns that "we'll never have a competent
team if this goes on." According to a government study, thus far only
four of the Department of Homeland Security's 33 homeland protection programs
are considered effective, leading the new Secretary of Homeland Security,
Michael Chertoff, to promise Congress that he'll be taken a closer look
at how the department spends its billions. But despite Chertoff's promises,
the booming industry's prospects remain as rosy as ever. Indeed, the Secretary
recently told a gathering of 400 industry executives that the government
still depends on their help. "We need you to make America a safer
place," he said -- to roaring applause.
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- http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,360394,00.html
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