Have you pulled the plug on any $42-million, never-operational IT projects yet today?
Didn't think so, although I must point out that it's still early afternoon here on the East Coast.
Committed any invasion of privacy travesties?
No there, too? Good work, even though it looked like a couple of you flinched on that one.
I ask because the Department of Homeland Security has just copped to doing both.
Known as ADVISE and begun in 2003, the Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement program was developed by the department and the Lawrence Livermore and Pacific Northwest national laboratories for use by many DHS components, including immigration, customs, border protection, biological defense and its intelligence office.
Testing of the program had been quietly suspended in March after questions arose over its compliance with privacy rules. Since then two internal Homeland Security reports found that tests had used live data about real people rather than made-up data for one to two years without meeting privacy requirements; one report also found that department analysts found the system time-consuming to use.
That won't be the case any longer because ADVISE has died, taking 42 million taxpayer dollars along with it.
Among the human beings treated as testing fodder were: those on the domestic no-fly and special-inspections lists, a notoriously unreliable hunk of data if ever there were one; the owners of 3.6 million shipping records; foreign exchange students; and, those who may have overstayed their visas.
Congressional Democrats back in January made noises about providing closer oversight of federal data-mining projects. Two things have become clear since then: They have their work cut out … and they haven't done much of it yet.
