Crapaganda.com

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.”

The fence, initiated in 2005, was to be a network of cameras, ground sensors and radars that would be used to spot incursions or problems and decide where to deploy Border Patrol agents. It was supposed to be keeping watch over most of this nation’s southern border with Mexico by this year.

Instead, taxpayers ended up with about 53 miles of operational “virtual fence” in Arizona for a cost of at least $15 million a mile, according to testimony in previous congressional hearings.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said the SBInet concept was unrealistic from the start. Napolitano’s decision “ends a long-troubled program that spent far too much of the taxpayers’ money for the results it delivered,” said Lieberman, I-Conn.

The high-tech fence was developed as part of a Bush administration response to a demand for tighter border security that arose amid a heated immigration debate in Congress.

The Bush administration awarded Boeing a three-year, $67 million contract. Then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said at the time the department was “looking to build a 21st century virtual fence.”

But the fence had a long list of glitches and delays. Its radar system had trouble distinguishing between vegetation and people in windy weather, cameras moved too slowly and satellite communications also were slow. Although some of the concept is in use in two sections of Arizona, the security came at too high a cost.

DHS and Boeing officials have said that the project called for putting together the first of its kind “virtual fence” too quickly by combining off-the-shelf components that weren’t designed to be linked

Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, top Democrat of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the committee held 11 congressional hearings on the fence project and commissioned five reports by the Government Accountability Office, which blasted the project. Thompson, who chaired the committee until Republicans took over the House this month, called the project a grave and expensive disappointment.

Last January, Napolitano suspended spending on the project beyond work on two phases of the fence in Arizona. She ordered a study to determine whether SBInet could be fixed so it worked effectively and fulfilled its original goal. She also asked for a study to come up with lower cost, equally effective alternatives. She used $50 million meant for the fence to buy other technology and Border Patrol vehicles.

Boeing was the contractor for SBInet. Despite the problems, the Homeland Security Department granted Boeing a second one-year option on a three-year contract to work with the department for maintenance and upkeep of the two Arizona sections that are operational. That agreement continues through September 2011.

Some technologies from the project, such as stationary radar and infrared and optical sensor towers, will be used in future border security that will largely rely on mobile surveillance systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, thermal imaging devices and tower-based remote video surveillance systems. Money that was provided in an interim spending bill for the high-tech fence will go to the proven technologies.

The agency said in a report that it does not intend to use the existing Boeing contract to buy other technology systems for future southwest border security. It also said it will conduct “full and open competition” for elements in the new border security plan.

The Homeland Security Department has been studying other areas of the southern border to decide what technology and other resources would best beef up security in those areas. An initial proposal of technology needed to monitor three sectors — El Paso, which includes New Mexico; San Diego and the Rio Grande Valley of Texas — was to be done by this month. Proposals for border security technology for other sectors should be available by March, according to the report.

Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, criticized the administration for taking too long to make its final decision to cancel SBInet and too long to decide what to do next. He wants a comprehensive border security plan that provides staffing, fencing and technology.

In a statement, Boeing said it is proud of the accomplishments of its team and the “unprecedented capabilities” delivered in the last year to assist the Border Patrol. The company said it appreciates that Homeland Security Department recognizes the value of the fixed towers Boeing built as part of SBInet.

Source: Yahoo News

Police running scared from drug gangs in one of Mexico’s deadliest cities are using bizarre rituals involving animal sacrifice and spirit tattoos to seek protection from raging violence on the U.S. border.

In secret meetings that draw on elements of Haitian Voodoo, Cuban Santeria and Mexican witchcraft, priests are slaughtering chickens on full moon nights on beaches, smearing police with the blood and using prayers to evoke spirits to guard them as drug cartels battle over smuggling routes into California.

Other police in the city of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, tattoo their bodies with Voodoo symbols, believing they can repel bullets.

“Sometimes a man needs another type of faith,” said former Tijuana policeman Marcos, who left the city force a year ago after surviving a drug gang attack. “I was saved when they killed two of my mates. I know why I didn’t die.”

Violence has exploded along the U.S. border since President Felipe Calderon set the army on drug cartels in late 2006. Turf wars have killed 19,000 people across Mexico over three years.

Badly-paid Mexican police have long prayed to Christian saints before going out on patrol in Mexico, the world’s second-most populous Roman Catholic country after Brazil.

Cops are part of a messy war between rival trafficking gangs and the army as cartels infiltrate police forces, offering officers cash to work and even murder for them or a bullet if they say no. More than 150 police are among those killed in Tijuana and the surrounding Baja California state since 2007.

Army raids on homes of police working for cartels have found ornately adorned Santeria-type altars covered with statues and skulls stuffed with money paying homage to gods and spirits.

“We all know that guns and body armor are useless against the cartels because they are well-armed and can attack any time. But this is something we can believe in, that really works,” said a Tijuana-based policeman called Daniel.

BLACK MAGIC

A battle between top drug lord fugitive Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman and the local Arellano Felix drug clan has wrecked tourism in Tijuana and shuttered manufacturing businesses.

Small groups of police in the city started turning to strange rituals about 18 months ago, a practice spotted when municipal cleaners found a trail of dead chickens on beaches.

Priests and police say the animal sacrifices release life to rejuvenate spirits that will shield officers against hitmen. They believe the effects are intensified on full moon nights.

Many police see a need to shield themselves from witchcraft used by drug gangs who mix Caribbean black magic and occultism from southern Mexico using things like human bones, dead bats and snake fangs to curse enemies and unleash evil spirits.

Others worship the Mexican cult of “Saint Death”, a skeletal grim reaper draped in white and carrying a scythe.

The rituals are carried out by sometimes shadowy Mexicans who have menial day jobs and are priests by night. They claim to be trained in Voodoo, Santeria and other religions from time spent in the Caribbean and in Mexican towns like Catemaco, a center for witchcraft on the Gulf of Mexico.

Police have the quiet support of their superiors.

“We know some agents use charms, saints and other methods for their protection,” said Baja California federal police chief Elias Alvarez. “They look for something to believe in.”

Mexico’s often poorly armed police are intimidated by hitmen with automatic rifles, grenades and rocket launchers and despite low wages of around $300 a month some pay up to $160 for a tattoo of a Voodoo spirit like the three-horned Bosou Koblamin who protects his followers when they travel at night.

Source: Mexican police ask spirits to guard them in drug war (Reuters)

The British government has notified Mexico that a handheld device widely used by the Mexican military and police to search for drugs and explosives may be ineffective, British officials said.

Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat has spent more than $10 million to purchase hundreds of the detectors, similar to the “magic wands” in use in Iraq and Afghanistan, for its antidrug fight. Although critics have called them nothing more than divining rods, Mexican defense officials praise the devices as a critical part of their efforts to combat drug traffickers. At the military’s National Drug Museum, one of the devices is on display, with a plaque that describes its success in finding hidden caches of drugs.

Mexican military officials say the black plastic wands, known as the GT 200 and manufactured by the British company Global Technical Ltd., are widely used nationwide at checkpoints to search for contraband inside vehicles as well as to canvass neighborhoods in drug hotspots for drug and weapons stash houses.

As of April 20, 2009, the army had purchased 521 of the GT 200 detectors for just over $20,000 apiece, for a total cost of more than $10 million, according to Mexican government documents. Police agencies across Mexico have made additional purchases, records show.

“We’ve had success with it,” Capt. Jesús Héctor Larios Salazar, an officer with the Mexican Army’s antidrug unit in Culiacán, said recently. “It works with molecules. It functions with the energy of the body.”

But the British government, which is considering legislation to stop exports of the device, notified Mexico and other countries around the world last month that it may not work. That followed reports in The New York Times and on BBC that a similar product used in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ADE 651 manufactured by ATSC Ltd., another British company, was considered ineffective.

“Exports to Mexico have already taken place, and the most urgent task was to warn the Mexican government and military, which we have done,” Katy Reid, a British diplomat in Mexico, said in a statement on Friday. “It is now up to the Mexican authorities to take whatever steps they think appropriate.”

The Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington said it did not use the handheld detectors. And the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, which does testing for the Defense Department, has not found such devices to be effective.

Mexican defense officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. E-mail messages and calls to Global Technical and to Segtec, the Mexican-based importer of the GT 200, were not returned.

Controversy over the GT 200 has played out in recent months in Thailand, where the army has said it will continue to use them even though testing by government scientists found them far less effective than specially trained dogs. “I respect the scientific tests, but at this stage there is no banning order by the government, so the army will continue to use it,” Gen. Anupong Paochinda, the Thai Army chief, told reporters.

Human Rights Watch issued a statement in February calling on the Thai government to stop arresting people based on evidence gathered using the GT 200, which it said “performs worse than a roll of the dice.”

Informed that Mexico was using the same unit, the human rights group said Friday: “It’s troubling that Mexico is using this ‘magic wand’ technology given the serious doubts that exist about its reliability. And if people are actually being arrested and charged solely on the basis of its readings, that would be outrageous.”

Promotional materials on the Internet describe the GT 200 as a high-tech unit that enables law enforcement agencies to search large areas quickly. Using special cards provided by the manufacturer, the detector can supposedly detect all types of narcotics and explosives by homing in on their molecules from afar.

The device is so sensitive, the manufacturer says, that it can detect not just stockpiles of illegal drugs but people who have used cocaine or heroin as far back as two weeks before.

After the critical reviews in Thailand, Global Technical released a statement on its Web site defending the detector. “We can say that previous tests carried out by independent bodies, and the experience of the large number of users of this product all over the world, confirms that the GT 200 is effective and because of this, we would ask that you treat with caution any reports to the contrary,” the company said.

In Culiacán, a city in Sinaloa State where Mexican drug traffickers have a strong presence, the military showed off the GT 200 in December. Canvassing a residential neighborhood, soldiers walked up and down the street with a GT 200 waiting for the antenna to point toward a suspicious residence. There were no discoveries.

But the soldier trained to operate the detector walked by one of the army’s armored vehicles and the antenna swung quickly toward the high-caliber machine gun sticking out the top. He took several steps back and walked by again. The antenna pointed again toward the gun.

“See?” he said.

But in November, at a checkpoint on the highway leading from Mexico City to Monterrey, the same device pointed at a Volkswagen containing a man, a woman and a child. Soldiers surrounded the vehicle and a search was conducted for illegal drugs. But all they found was a bottle of Tylenol — evidence, the soldier operating the device said, of how sensitive the GT 200 was.

Source: Mexico Is Warned on Drug Detector (NY Times)

Thai Soldier Opening GT 200

California’s Governor, in an attempt to  to save the state billions of dollars, has suggested that they build cheaper prisons south of the border.

“We can do so much better, in the prison system alone, if we can go and take inmates – for instance, the 20,000 inmates that are illegal immigrants that are here – and get them to Mexico,” Schwarzenegger said.

“We pay them to build a prison down in Mexico and then we have those undocumented immigrants be down there in the prison,” he added. “Half the cost to build the prisons and half the cost to run the prisons. That is money, again, a billion dollars right there that can go into higher education. That is an example of one of the things we do that is unnecessary spending.”

Schwarzenegger asks: Why not build prisons in Mexico? (Sacramento Bee)