An Ignoble Experiment

2. House OKs bills to deal with migrant children at border, goes on summer recess

A top researcher at RAND urged lawmakers and the Homeland Security Department to open up more data on border security to the research community and academia during a House hearing July 31.

"Border security is one of the great analytic challenges of the post-9/11 generation. It is a topic that can and should attract the best and the brightest minds, but it remains frustratingly difficult to work on the topic," said Jack Riley, the vice president of RAND's national security research division.

Riley said DHS restrictions on access to border security data and on publishing work related to that data impede outside research. But "good science demands public scrutiny and rigorous academic engagement," he said.

Analysis of data related to border issues could illuminate the threats and challenges at the border and also help understand the effects of border security measures on trade, Riley noted.

The hearing was held jointly by two subcommittees of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee: the subcommittee on research and technology and the subcommittee on oversight.

Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.), who chairs the subcommittee on research and technology, noted that it was difficult to schedule the hearing for a day that worked for both subcommittees and that DHS was not able to send a representative on the day it settled on. A DHS official is due to appear at another joint hearing in September.

Instead, the committees heard from researchers from nongovernment institutions.

Joseph Eyerman, the research director at Duke University's Institute for Homeland Security Solutions, emphasized that border technology efforts should make sure they consider the needs of the people who will end up using the technology.

"Failure to understand the customer can cause us to develop new technologies that are never adopted or never used to their full potential," he said.

One example relevant to Customs and Border Protection would be the use of biometric technology to identify passengers boarding planes at airports, which Eyerman's institute examined.

"The technology was quite ready. It was off the shelf. It was effective. The problem was the technology couldn't be integrated into the human systems," Eyerman said. "It would result in large delays at the airport, it was unclear who would be responsible for implementing the technology, and there were serious cost implications for the airlines."

For more:
- visit the hearing webpage (webcast and prepared testimonies available)

Read more about: Rand Corp., Biometrics
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By Zach Rausnitz

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3. House Intelligence Committee declassifies report on intelligence satellite cost-savings

The House briefly delayed its summer recess to pass two bills on Aug. 1 in response to the influx of unaccompanied minors crossing the southwestern border. Both bills appear destined to go no further.

One of the bills (H.R. 5230) would provide nearly $700 million in supplemental funds to a variety of federal agencies that have been overwhelmed trying to deal with the crisis of young migrants entering the country.

The major recipients of additional money in the bill include Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which would get a $334 million boost, largely for detention and deportation operations. The Health and Human Services Department would receive an extra $197 million to help it house and transport unaccompanied minors.

The other immigration bill (H.R. 5272) that passed the House would forbid the Obama administration from extending any more relief to undocumented immigrants, an attempt to block administrative moves like the Deferred Action in Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program that lets certain undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children remain in the country and work.

While President Obama established DACA more than two years ago, it applies to undocumented children who arrived before their 16th birthday and have lived continually in the U.S. for at least five years immediately before June 15, 2012. However, Republicans have blamed the policy for spurring the recent influx of migrant children.

The two bills passed with hardly any Democratic support, and the Democratic-controlled Senate has already departed for its August recess.

In the absence of new laws and appropriations from Congress, at least for now, one source of input for the Homeland Security Department is its inspector general's office. The OIG sent DHS a memo (pdf) July 30 reporting on its review of the department's handling of the border crisis.

The memo noted that the inspector general's office, ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and the DHS office of civil rights and civil liberties have investigations underway of alleged misconduct by DHS employees.

The inspector general also reported that many unaccompanied children in DHS custody have communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, chicken pox and scabies. CBP personnel in Del Rio, Texas, reported contracting scabies, lice and chicken pox, the memo said.

Government workers have made sacrifices beyond putting their health at risk: "DHS employees are purchasing food, in some instances with their own money, to supplement contract food supplies," the memo also noted.

For more:
- visit the congress.gov page for H.R. 5230
- visit the congress.gov page for H.R. 5272
- download the DHS OIG memo (pdf)

Read more about: DHS
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By Zach Rausnitz

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4. Gulf between Republicans and union over TSA privatization still vast

The U.S. intelligence community could save billions of dollars in satellite costs without compromising capabilities, according to a report from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

While the report is classified, the committee did publish an unclassified white paper (pdf) that summarizes the findings of the report.

The National Reconnaissance Office purchases intelligence satellites at a faster pace than it needs to in order to merely satisfy its mission needs—but it does that on purpose, to make sure that the satellite production industry remains stable.

However, the committee's report "concludes that those concerns are not fully justified and result in the excess purchase of satellites at taxpayer expense," the white paper says.

The committee recommended that the NRO start including multiple "paces" when soliciting proposals for satellite acquisitions.

Under the plan, the NRO could acquire satellites when it actually needs them without concerning itself about sustaining the industrial base. Even though the agency wouldn't necessarily purchase satellites according to that pace, it would be able to see how expensive satellites could actually become if the agency didn't buy an excess amount.

That would help the agency scrutinize its assumptions about the need to stabilize the industrial base, the white paper says.

Elsewhere in the white paper, the committee notes that those assumptions are especially risky because the intelligence community receives less oversight than unclassified federal acquisition programs. Additionally, most major satellite contracts are sole source, so the agency doesn't often glean insights from competition between contractors.

"We must always be good stewards of taxpayer dollars and take a hard look at the way we purchase very expensive satellites systems," said Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), respectively the chairman and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, in a statement.

The classified report, delivered to the NRO on July 31, was produced by the committee after reviewing satellite acquisition practices for more than a year. The committee unanimously signed off on the report.

For more:
- download the white paper (pdf)
- read the committee's statement

Read more about: Intelligence Community
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By Zach Rausnitz

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