Welcome to the Conspiracy, where we study all the factors that lead to a freer society: economics, politics, history, theory, and culture. In this production, take a listen to Gardner Goldsmith exploring the fact that the nominee to head the TSA has used his former post at the FBI to snoop into, yeah, you got it, someone’s private information… Nice to know the Obamites are so interested in privacy, huh?

But what about those nasty immigrants? Did you know that an eeeeevil woman has organized a group of Arizonans to alert each other to immoral and actions made by cops who want to arrest “illegal immigrants”? She must be evil. Right? We’ll look at the moral and economic arguments, as well as the Constitutional arguments (for those who want them). Check it out!

Be Seeing you!

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Last July, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted a raid of a home allegedly looking for a fugitive alien. Instead, they found a Customs and Border Protection officer.

K-9 officer Jim Slaughter, a seven year veteran of CBP who works at the San Luis, Ariz., border crossing, told KSWT-TV that five ICE agents entered his home without a warrant, but immediately backed off when he told them he was a CBP officer.

His wife, Sheila, asks the important questions:

“Here they invaded my home, think of this, my children weren’t home. What if my husband hadn’t of been home? What would they have done to me?” says Sheila. — KSWT-TV

The Slaughters now believe that ICE agents simply had the wrong address, but he is suing the Department of Homeland Security because, he says, ICE refused to apologize or even explain the incident.

Unfortunately I’m afraid the suit, which cites the Fourth Amendment, isn’t likely to go anywhere. Courts have repeatedly ruled that when police raid the wrong house, citizens have no recourse, as long as the police simply made an “honest” mistake. Police being honest? When does that happen? And this bizarre miscarriage of justice is a direct result (you might say unintended consequence) of Richard Nixon’s war on drugs.

It’s that time again, time for outgoing government bureaucrats to make room for fresh new faces and to say goodbye. Today, outgoing Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff said goodbye to the country in a video. Of course, the government can’t seem to do anything right, and now we can add making simple videos to that list.

“I’m here at the Freedom Center, one of the many facilities created after the Sept. 11th attacks to protect our country from terrorist threats and to improve coordination during major disasters and emergencies,” Chertoff says to introduce himself. “In this case, threats to our aviation system.”

Formerly known as the Transportation Security Operations Center, it was renamed last year to the Freedom Center. The operations center is responsible for virtually all of the Transportation Security Administration’s day to day activities, including preventing infants and Congressmen from boarding planes and responding to other threats to aviation security.

You may as well just watch the video. I’ll warn you now, it’s rather poor quality. It’s not YouTube’s fault; this is how it was received from DHS. Apparently even Windows Movie Maker is beyond them.

Someone get this man a glass of water!

Chertoff says we are “far better protected and far better equipped to deal with 21st-century threats” than before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Of course this says absolutely nothing about whether the American people are actually any safer, and it can be argued that we are not.

“We’ve completely overhauled our aviation security system,” Chertoff reminds us, as if we hadn’t noticed. “Today, more than 20 layers of security protect air travelers, from hardened cockpit doors and Federal Air Marshals to 100 percent screening of passengers and bags.”

Which of those layers of security actually works? Fake boarding passes, guns and bombs — real ones — getting onto planes, rigged internal tests, and more show that aviation security remains as fragile as ever. Your kids could probably hijack a plane, if it ever entered their mind.

And then there’s the border. Chertoff boasts about the hundreds of miles of new border fencing, a few spots of which he welded himself as a publicity stunt, the new surveillance technology, thousands of new Border Patrol agents, and hundreds of thousands deported. Yet the border remains porous since it’s easy enough to go over, under, through — or most frequently, around — the few spots where fences exist. And it’s easy enough for at least some people to evade thousands of Border Patrol agents, too.

Not to mention what is bound to happen when illegal immigrants build sections of the fence.

“There’s a transformation taking place in border towns and communities that were once plagued by drug smuggling and overrun with illegal immigrants,” Chertoff says. The transformation, of course, is that different border towns and communities are now overrun with illegal immigrants. Sort of.

It seems that over the last year, fewer people have been immigrating to the U.S. illegally. “This is a direct result of heightened security and enforcement,” according to Chertoff. According to the illegal immigrants, it’s a direct result of the U.S. economy going straight to hell. With so many people out of work, we need those jobs to go to Americans, right?

“We’ve cracked down on employers who blatantly violate immigration laws,” Chertoff says, “while giving businesses better tools, like E-Verify, to maintain a legal workforce.” After all, those millions of people in Michigan who need a job are going to travel halfway across the country to work in a meat packing plant, right? Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Of course, to ensure the workforce is legal, the workforce has to be identified. “We’ve implemented new standards for secure driver’s licenses across the United States to prevent the use of fraudulent or stolen documents,” Chertoff says. That’s the much-maligned REAL ID Act.

Nobody is required by law to have an ID in this country. Unless they want to do things like open a bank account, or get a job, or travel. It’s a distinction without a difference, since virtually everyone is thereby forced to carry their papers just to live from day to day, and in most circumstances, forced to show them on demand. And the requirement to show your ID at the airport doesn’t even make you any safer. Chertoff even admitted as much.

Chertoff goes on to mention new regulations on chemical facilities and transportation of chemicals by rail, as well as deployment of “early-warning surveillance systems to 30 major metropolitan areas under our BioWatch program” to warn of a biological attack. In 2005, those sensors went off in Washington, D.C., right in the middle of an anti-war protest. It appears to have been a malfunction.

“Finally,” Chertoff saves the best for last, “we’ve integrated lessons from Hurricane Katrina and other disasters to ensure the federal government is fully prepared to support our state and local partners and the American people during a major disaster.” Chertoff says he’s given FEMA more power, improved emergency communications somewhat, and improved coordination with other government agencies and the private sector. It remains to be seen what the results will be, but if you’re in an area that has natural disasters, I wouldn’t place my bets on the government being there to save you. Government is, after all, the world’s largest man-made disaster.

Chertoff is clearly proud of what his department has accomplished over the four years he has been at its head. He’s managed to spend countless billions of dollars creating and growing a bureaucracy the sole purpose of which is to take Americans’ essential liberties and trade them in for a false sense of security, all the while maintaining almost the lowest morale of any government agency through poor — or nonexistent — management.

To give credit where credit is due, Homeland Security actually has managed to do some things right. I just can’t think of what they are right now.

A three-week trial program where illegal immigrants could voluntarily leave the country without being arrested has ended with only eight people signing up.

Under the program, Operation Scheduled Departure, which ran from August 5 through Friday, illegal immigrants without criminal records who had been ordered deported could turn themselves in at Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Ill., Phoenix, Ariz., San Diego and Santa Ana, Calif., agree to leave the country within 90 days, and in some cases receive assistance in paying for transportation.

Jim Hayes, acting director of the ICE Office of Detention and Removal Operations, said that none of the eight people, an Estonian, two Indians, two Guatemalans, a Lebanese, a Mexican and a Salvadoran, have yet left the country.

Hayes blamed immigration advocacy groups for the low response to the program, saying they urged people not to participate in protest of immigration laws. But the advocacy groups say there was no organized effort to undermine the program and that it was doomed from the start.

“Plenty of us said it was a silly idea and not going to work, that the undocumented may be illegal but they are not stupid,” said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Mr. Hoyt suggested that the agency used the program to justify more hard-line tactics.

“A cynic would say they are going to say, ‘See, we tried to be nice,’” he said. “‘We don’t abuse people. Now we’re going to get tough because they didn’t come forward when we tried to be nice, so now we’re going to be mean.’” — New York Times

Don’t be upset at the program’s $41,000 price tag, though. Hayes said it actually saved the $13,000 the government would have spent detaining those eight people. He also made a few other crazy statements, such as suggesting that allowing immigrants to stay in the country would lead to “anarchy.”

Meanwhile, illegal immigrants are leaving on their own in droves, without even waiting for a government raid, because of the faltering economy. When they find it better to leave the U.S. and go elsewhere, you have to stop and take a hard look at where your country is going, and consider whether that’s a direction you really want it to go in.

The federal government has tried almost everything in its various bids to get undocumented immigrants out of the country. Now it’s trying something simple and unusual: just asking them to please leave.

Under “Operation Scheduled Departure,” a pilot program set to run tomorrow through August 22 in Charlotte, N.C., Chicago, Ill., Phoenix, Ariz., San Diego and Santa Ana, Calif., illegal immigrants who have been ordered deported and who have no criminal records will be able to turn themselves in at local Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in those cities.

Anyone who does so, ICE officials say, will not be arrested and will be given 90 days to wrap up their affairs and leave the country. In some cases, they may be required to wear electronic tracking bracelets. Such individuals would be able to avoid the risk of being picked up in a raid and going through the government’s convoluted, time-consuming, often unjust excuse for a justice system while their families starve.

[ICE director Julie Myers] said the idea derived from a common complaint voiced by immigrant detainees: If given the opportunity, they’d rather just go home than be holed up in immigration prisons. . . .

“It’s pure fantasy,” said Doug Rivlin, spokesman for the National Immigration Forum in Washington. “An attempt to entice people to sign away their rights and get out of the country as quickly as possible before even talking to a lawyer.”

If people truly wanted to leave on their own, they’d buy their own bus or plane ticket home without checking in with ICE first, Rivlin said.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the country’s largest anti-illegal-immigration lobby group based in Washington, said he’d have to concede that point.

The government would have to offer some kind of incentive to entice immigrants to sign up, such as telling them that by leaving voluntarily they would be allowed to apply to come back legally, Mehlman said. — San Antonio Express-News

Interestingly, this plan might actually work. Word has certainly gotten around by now about the injustice perpetrated on the immigrants picked up in the May 12 Agriprocessors raid in Postville, Iowa, where hundreds of illegal immigrants were railroaded into pleading guilty to trumped-up charges in an on-site temporary court which resembled an assembly line.

This may be part of the reason why illegal immigrants are now leaving the country on their own in droves. From August 2007 to May, the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the country dropped from 12.5 million to 11.2 million according to the Center for Immigration Studies. CIS “seeks fewer immigrants but a warmer welcome for those admitted,” according to its Web site.

Another part of the reason may be economic. Despite claims to the contrary, the U.S. economy was already headed south in mid-2007 and the pace of decline is only accelerating now. And when jobs leave, the workers must follow.

“The problem is it’s difficult to know what’s causing a change like this,” says Tamar Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, an organization of employers nationwide lobbying for comprehensive immigration reform. “But the one thing we know for sure is that the country is in a deep economic downturn, if not a recession, which means there’s much less need for workers, especially those providing services for the middle class.”

“Immigration is a market-driven phenomenon and that’s why immigration is beneficial to the economy,” she says. “When we need them, they come; and when we don’t, they go home. Has enforcement had some effect? Perhaps. But there’s no question that the economic downturn would in and of itself have a huge effect in attracting fewer [illegal immigrants] and sending more home.” — Christian Science Monitor

ImmigrationWorks USA, a federation of pro-immigration business coalitions, lobbies against anti-immigration legislation which it says hurts small business owners.

The truth is likely to lie somewhere in between. Rats jump off a sinking ship before the captain even knows anything is wrong. Immigrants leaving the country on their own is either a sign of hard economic times ahead, or stepped-up worksite enforcement, or perhaps some of both.

How many of the estimated 572,000 illegal immigrants who qualify for Operation Scheduled Departure actually leave will give a good indicator as to which is the major cause of illegal immigrants heading south. Though I’ll predict in advance that, as someone once said, it’s the economy, stupid.

Go Brooklyn. A jury in that fair borough has found Emmanuel “Toto” Constant guilty of mortgage fraud and grand larceny. Emmanuel Constant is the former founder and leader of FRAPH, the Haitian paramilitary group that in the early 90’s systematically tortured and murdered thousands of supporters of deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Gang rapes and mutilation by ax were FRAPH specialties. The majority of victims lived in Haiti’s slums. Aristide, a Catholic priest enamored of liberation theology, was prone to totalitarian temptation. Some say he dabbled in drug traffic. Still, he was democratically elected by a desperately poor populace.

Try telling that to the CIA.

During the Clinton years Toto Constant got CIA jack. When Aristide returned to power (briefly) Toto snuck out the back. Entering the USA through Puerto Rico on a tourist visa. When Toto’s stateside presence was discovered it was kinda embarrassing for the Clinton admin. Threats of deportation were made. Supposedly Toto beat that rap by offering to reveal the details of his CIA deal on TV. Whatever. The Bloody One settled down in a lovely home on a quiet street in Queens. Though his residence in the USA remained legally dicey neither Clinton nor Bush deported him.

Eventually Toto became a licensed Realtor and mortgage broker. (In New York State having a rep for paramilitary excess doesn’t disqualify a person from becoming a real estate pro.) By the beginning of the new millennium Toto’s mortgage fraud career was flourishing. He was working with several overlapping groups of organized white collar criminals based in New Jersey and New York — zeroing in on low-income and/or Caribbean immigrant neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens. Toto also flipped out on Long Island, a regional hot spot of the national mortgage biz. Constant & crew employed all the tricks the FBI has been hollering about for years. Straw buyers, collusive bank officers, phony appraisers, forged docs, invisible rehabs, etc. One player bragged that their fraudulent appraisals had inflated the values of an entire down-at-the-heels neighborhood. Turning it into a pair of Manolo Blahniks. On paper.

Some of the biggest names in the mortgage game went for paper cranked out by Toto and his twisted business associates. One prime example: EMC Mortgage, son of Bear Stearns.

You can read all about Bloody Toto in Mortgage Fraud Land at Blogger News Network or NowPublic. Detailed trial coverage can be found at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Incidentally, Toto was warned about intimidating witnesses. He’d been making creepy phone calls. You can take the boy out of FRAPH but –

Carola Von Hoffmannstahl-Solomonoff
Mondo QT

“Se bon ki ra”
Good is rare
Haitian proverb

Send comments or confidential tips to:

mailto:editor@mondoqt.com

You check in at the airline ticket counter. But instead of a boarding pass, you get shackled with an electronic bracelet which tracks your every move, contains all your personal information, and can shock you senseless. This vision of the future of air security is being floated around the Department of Homeland Security’s research and development office.

According to a video promoting the so-called EMD Safety Bracelet, all airline passengers would be required to wear it “until they disembark the flight at their destination.”

The device, in addition to storing all of your sensitive personal information and tracking you with GPS, would allow someone to activate it remotely and immobilize the wearer for several minutes. This is EMD, or electro-muscular disruption.

And the Department of Homeland Security is interested in buying them.

According to a letter from Paul S. Ruwaldt of the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, the department is interested in using them to control illegal immigrants as well as “prisoner transportation, detainee control and . . . to improve air security, on passenger planes.”

Would every paying airline passenger flying on a commercial airplane be mandated to wear one of these devices? I cringe at the thought. Not only could it be used as a physical restraining device, but also as a method of interrogation, according to the same aforementioned letter from Mr. Ruwaldt.

Would you let them put one of those on your wrist? Would you allow the airline employees, which would be mandated by the government, to place such a bracelet on any member of your family?

Why are tax dollars being spent on something like this? Is this a police state or is it America? — Washington Times

While you’re celebrating your paid day off work today, government officials are hard at work looking for new and innovative ways to take away your freedom. You thought they were protecting your freedom?

Here’s what will happen if these things ever get used on airplanes. First, a lot of people will simply refuse to fly. Who can blame them? A lot more will refuse to fly when the first reports of how these things get used surface. One “unruly” passenger starts making noise on the plane and the crew, who have this nice shock collar device, aren’t going to spend a few minutes looking up which of the 87 passengers he is, especially if they “feel threatened.” They’re just going to shock everyone on the plane. Including you and your kids.

But, you asked for security and gave up your freedom for it, and now you’re going to get it.

(Via)

Update: DHS spokesman John Verrico denies that these bracelets will be used for air passengers. See his full statement below.

President George W. Bush on Friday signed an executive order requiring federal contractors to verify the employment eligibility status of federal contractors and subcontractors.

The order marks the first time any group of employers has been required to screen their employees using the E-Verify system, formerly known as Basic Pilot, which has been voluntary since 1996. It’s not likely to be the last.

The E-Verify system queries Social Security and immigration databases to determine if a person is authorized to work in the United States. If the system cannot confirm eligibility, for instance due to an error in one of the databases, the employee must rectify the error or risk being fired — or perhaps deported, despite being a citizen.

The excuse given in the executive order is that “contractors that employ illegal aliens . . . inevitably will have a less stable and less dependable workforce than contractors that do not employ such persons.”

Under the order, contractors will have to screen existing employees who work on any new federal contracts and will have to screen any new employees they hire.

Hoping to address concerns about the accuracy of the system, the Department of Homeland Security said Monday that over 99.5 percent of queries through the system have cleared immediately. Over 69,000 employers currently use the program on a voluntary basis, though over 200,000 employers could be covered under the executive order.

“It will have a huge impact,” said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations for NumbersUSA, a group that favors reduced immigration. “This is the first time the federal government is ensuring that it will not be responsible, directly or indirectly, for hiring illegal aliens.”

Ms. Jenks said concerns about the accuracy of the Social Security database were overblown. She said many errors in the database came from women who had married and failed to notify the Social Security Administration of their name changes, and from immigrants who had become American citizens. These problems could be easily remedied with requests to Social Security or immigration agencies, she said.

But Mike Aitken, director of governmental affairs for the Society for Human Resource Management, a trade association, said the E-Verify system remained vulnerable to cheating by immigrants who used real identity documents belonging to other people. Without new money and more staff members, Mr. Aitken said, the Social Security Administration could be overwhelmed by inquiries from federal contractors. — New York Times

Easily remedied? These people have never dealt with the Social Security Administration or with Citizenship and Immigration Services — or perhaps with any government bureaucracy. Easy is not in their vocabulary. Neither is efficient, nor fast. Getting an error in government records corrected is difficult at best.

This country was built by immigrants, and you have an immigrant to thank for some aspect of everything in your life as you know it. Hard working immigrants who contribute to our economy are not the problem, yet the problem was created by the government not allowing enough immigrants to come in to the country in the first place. This E-Verify system encourages “illegal” immigrants to come here and sign up for welfare benefits rather than working, which compounds the problem. The solution to immigration is simple: allow anyone to come here who wants to work, and get rid of welfare.

Unless and until this is done, the federal government will continue this crackdown on ordinary Americans in the guise of fighting illegal immigration. It’s only going to get worse for you and your family.

This is the first big step on the road to handing the federal government total control over who works and who doesn’t. It’s also a big step toward a national identification system in which your picture and perhaps other biometric data is tied together from your driver license, passport, Social Security card, and other government sources into a giant centralized government database where any federal bureaucrat on a power trip can find out anything he wants about you.

And once that happens, you are as good as dead, and if the government doesn’t kill you, it will enslave you. That’s how it works.

New York State will begin issuing new versions of so-called secure driver licenses as well as a version specifically for undocumented immigrants, Gov. Eliot Spitzer said last weekend.

New York joins three other states which have announced plans to comply with the requirements of the REAL ID Act of 2005, which allows the Department of Homeland Security to set standards for state driver licenses and identification cards, or the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which requires everyone to present a passport or approved alternative document when crossing the U.S. border.

One license for New Yorkers would incorporate “facial recognition technology, central issuance procedures, and advanced document verification systems,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said at a joint press conference with Spitzer.

The second would also incorporate additional security features, such as RFID technology, to comply with requirements for the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and allow holders to use it instead of a passport to cross the Canadian border.

The third version of the license, to be provided to undocumented immigrants, would be marked as not valid for federal identification.

“Besides being a massive defeat for the governor, I can’t imagine many — if any — illegal immigrants coming forward to get the driver’s licenses, because they’d basically be labeled as illegal,” said New York Rep. Peter King, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee.

New York has between 500,000 and 1 million undocumented immigrants, many of whom are driving without a license and car insurance or with fake driver’s licenses, Spitzer said in September when he announced his executive order. — Associated Press

It’s a brilliant move for those concerned with illegal immigration: Such people either get the license and have their addresses on file so the government can easily round them up at their convenience, or they don’t get the license and sooner or later get arrested for not having one.

The federal government has not finalized the standards for REAL ID compliant licenses, but is said to be two to three months away. DHS issued draft regulations in March, and Chertoff has said he will push forward with REAL ID despite widespread opposition.

And for you Americans, your turn to be rounded up comes later.

Since September 11, 2001, getting in to the U.S. as a foreign visitor has become a harrowing experience. So much so, in fact, that foreign tourism is down 17% as many tourists choose to spend their holidays elsewhere rather than be poked, prodded, searched, fingerprinted and verbally abused by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

Not to fear, though; the Department of Homeland Security and Department of State have done something about it.

The first Americans that foreign tourists run into upon arrival are Customs agents. Of course, what they’ve done doesn’t at all involve training Customs agents to be less abrasive and more welcoming.

Instead, Homeland Security and State have partnered with Walt Disney Parks and Resorts to produce a video to show to foreign visitors in international airport arrival areas and make them feel welcome, while they wait their turn in line to be shaken down. The government calls this a “multimedia initiative to welcome international visitors to the United States.”

“Disney commissioned the project as part of the Rice-Chertoff Initiative that seeks to secure America’s borders while welcoming legitimate visitors to the United States,” according to a CBP news release.

“America’s arrival for its foreign visitors really needs to be a welcoming experience,” said Walt Disney chairman Jay Rasulo in an accompanying video about the making of Welcome: Portraits of America. “We know that in the first one hundred steps when people leave an airplane is when we have a chance to really make an impression about what a welcoming place they’ve arrived.”

Now it’s true that after people manage to get past Customs and into the country, Americans are some of the most friendly, generous, welcoming people in the world. And this video showcases this fact. But it does nothing to assuage the fears of foreign tourists: that they’ll never get into the country in the first place, that they will be denied entry, or detained for hours for no reason, or even tortured.

A DHS spokesman last year called “flawed and self-serving” a 2006 survey which found that international visitors to the U.S. worried more about Customs agents than terrorists and that one-third found them so rude and abrasive that they planned never to return to the U.S.

The video began playing last Monday at Washington Dulles International Airport and Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, and will be rolled out to international airports nationwide, according to DHS. No word yet on whether Customs agents will begin treating visitors with dignity and respect.

In the four years since its creation, the Department of Homeland Security has fallen far short of expectations, according to an extensive Congressional audit released last week.

DHS failed to meet more than half of 171 performance expectations during the department-wide review, conducted from March to July of this year, according to the Government Accountability Office report (PDF) dated August 17 and released Thursday.

The department was created in 2003 to merge 22 separate government agencies with the overall mission of preventing and responding to terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

The report, broken down by mission and management areas, stated that DHS had made the most progress in maritime security, and little to no progress with emergency preparedness and response, science and technology, human capital management and information technology management.

Not coincidentally, these are the areas in which DHS has had its most publicized failures.

Most notably, GAO’s chief auditor told Congress (PDF) that DHS could not take credit for the lack of terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001.

“I don’t think we can take comfort in the fact, necessarily, that we haven’t had another attack,” Government Accountability Office Comptroller General David Walker told senators Thursday . . .

During congressional testimony Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff defended the department’s progress.

“But if you ask me is the job of keeping us safe done, the answer to that is no,” Chertoff said. “It is not done. And it may not be done within our lifetimes.” — Associated Press

Chertoff also told Congress that the department suffered from too much Congressional oversight and that oversight should be consolidated.

Chertoff said the department reports to 86 committees and subcommittees, and will likely spend a total of about 15,000 work hours this year supporting formal congressional hearings.

“Moreover, the number of very detailed written reports required of DHS by Congress is proliferating at an alarming rate,” Chertoff said.

“Arguably, the most important step Congress can take to improve operational effectiveness at DHS at this juncture is to streamline congressional oversight of DHS,” he added. “This would allow DHS to focus our time and resources much more effectively on our critical missions, while preserving an appropriate level of congressional oversight. I urge Congress to implement this vital reform.” — Congress Daily

I suppose he forgot to mention that the department itself is growing at an alarming rate. Is it any wonder that it can’t get everything done?

Speaking of Chertoff, he’s calling for shared sacrifice in the name of security, calling for all Americans to accept “minor inconveniences” like the REAL ID card, holey border fences and blue-gloved customs agents poking ordinary Americans trying to get home from Canada.

Chertoff says he is frustrated by the growing number of “people who say, ‘Yes, protect us, but not if it inconveniences me.’ ”

In an interview shortly before the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Chertoff said he considers it one of his “biggest obligations” in his remaining 16 months in office to eliminate the “not-in-my-backyard attitude” when it comes to relatively small costs and inconveniences.

He says he will launch a campaign to spread a message of shared sacrifice “in as plain English as I can, as often as I can and in as many places as I can” from now to January 2009, when his tenure will end with a new presidency. — USA TODAY

Of course, DHS officials disagreed strongly with GAO’s conclusions, citing “flawed methodology,” according to DHS undersecretary for management Paul Schneider. The methodology, of course, was to study the legislation, presidential directives, and controlling regulations, and determine whether DHS was doing what it was supposed to be doing. In so many areas, it failed to live up to that simple criterion.

Maybe we’re safer now than before 9/11, as Chertoff repeatedly says, but I doubt it. “Homeland security” has become yet another pork-barrel bonanza for government contractors, state and local governments and well-connected insiders who get hundreds of billions of dollars for new toys we don’t need. And with Homeland Security’s track record, we’d likely get much better security by just buying every American a rifle and sidearm and training. Come to think of it, that would save hundreds of billions of dollars, too.

The state of Arizona will join Vermont and Washington state in creating a secure state identification document which can be used for travel within Canada and Mexico and will also likely meet the requirements of the REAL ID Act.

The so-called “3 in 1″ driver license will satisfy the requirements of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which requires citizens to carry a passport or alternative document approved by the government when re-entering the country from abroad, as well as the requirements of REAL ID and as proof of employment eligibility, according to a statement (PDF) from Gov. Janet Napolitano’s office.

“Arizona’s new driver’s license is poised to be one of the nation’s first to comply with REAL ID requirements,” according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security. And to think a few people didn’t believe me when I said this would be a back door to REAL ID implementation for border states.

“I applaud the leadership of the state of Arizona who came forward to join us in our effort to bolster security through secure identification,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “This partnership helps us strike the right balance between security and facilitation, incorporating 21st century technology and innovation.”

Oh, what a wet dream for the bureaucrats, and what a nightmare for the rest of us.

The Arizona project will require approval from the legislature, which Napolitano has said she will seek.

“Arizona has been a leader among the states on issues related to border security and immigration,” Napolitano said in a stateemnt. “My hope is that this project will lead to an effective permanent program that can be implemented nationwide.”

We already have one of those; it’s called the REAL ID Act of 2005. States which fail to follow a Homeland Security implementation plan for REAL ID risk having that state’s IDs refused at airports, courthouses, national parks and for other federal purposes.

A bill in the Arizona legislature which would have opted the state out of REAL ID passed the state Senate earlier this year but stalled in the House.

The state of Vermont has partnered with the Department of Homeland Security to develop a new driver license document which will be accepted in lieu of a passport for border crossings, the department announced Tuesday.

Following the lead of Washington state, which announced plans earlier this year to develop a secure identification card which would be acceptable for land border crossing under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, Vermont plans to have the licenses available by the end of 2008. Residents would have to provide proof of identity and citizenship and pay an extra fee, not yet announced, for the card.

“I applaud the leadership of the state of Vermont who came forward to join us in our effort to bolster security through secure identification,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “This partnership helps us strike the right balance between security and facilitation, incorporating 21st century technology and innovation.”

That’s right; it was apparently Vermont’s idea to join the national ID program.

Next summer, people returning to the U.S. will be required to present a passport or other proof of citizenship approved by the Department of Homeland Security under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. The requirement has already taken effect for people returning by air, leading to months-long backlogs in passport applications.

In the Washington state pilot, the driver license/border crossing cards will contain RFID chips readable from as much as 30 feet away. Though the chips contain only a single number referencing a DHS database entry, the technology could be used by terrorists to pick Americans out of a crowd.

But DHS spokeswoman Laura Keehner said that the specific technology to be used in the Vermont card has yet to be determined.

DHS has not determined whether the Vermont passport will be using the same radio frequency identification tag technology as in Washington State’s hybrid driver’s license/border crossing card, Keenher said.

Washington State officials have said they will place on the cards Generation 2 RFID tags that can be scanned at 30 feet. Critics also contend those types of RFID tags cannot be encrypted and can be easily cloned. To protect privacy, DHS and Washington State have said the RFID tag will transmit wirelessly only a reference number, which must be matched to a database to obtain personal information. DHS is planning to use a similar technology in its People Access Security Services identification card to be created for people who frequently cross the borders.

For Vermont, the technology decisions for the identification card are not yet final, Keehner said. “We are still determining the technology,” she said. “We are working together to finalize those details.” — Washington Technology

“I’m pleased we will be able to provide this more reasonable option for Vermonters who travel frequently to Canada,” Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas said in a statement. “As we move forward with this innovative project, we must continue to include our northern neighbors whose economic and security interests are linked directly to our own.”

Douglas spokesman Jason Gibbs said the governor is pushing for Quebec to adopt similar identification for Québécois visitors to the U.S.

DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said that the secure licenses would “take that use of fake IDs off the table for terrorists, as well as for other criminals.”

It doesn’t, of course, take identity theft off the table. Today, identity theft is easier than ever, and this sort of “secure” document will make it even more attractive to terrorists and other criminals.

For the moment, as in Washington, the new Vermont ID and passport card is voluntary. But it, like REAL ID, lays the groundwork for nationally standardized identification documents which everyone may eventually be required to carry at all times. And like all bad government programs, it will cause additional expense for ordinary people through duplication of effort with the REAL ID program, and will make people who accept it even less secure. The only thing made secure by this program, and others like it, is the government — secure from We the People.

Getting security right is a challenge for the best of us. But when you put security in the hands of government, getting it right is a virtually insurmountable obstacle. Here are a few ways government made you less secure and wasted your money over the last couple of weeks.

At Orlando (Fla.) International Airport, the Transportation Security Administration disposed of hundreds of “sensitive security information” documents by tossing them in the trash. Without shredding, burning or anything. Some of the documents were described as “excellent . . . for terrorists planning an attack.” A dumpster-diving teenager found them and turned them in to police.

And at O’Hare International Airport near Chicago, Ill., an ongoing investigation by CBS affiliate WBBM-TV found 47 “more” airport ID badges missing. The report says the station has discovered a total of 3,807 missing badges, that employees who complained about the missing badges were fired, that airport employees are not searched when entering the facility, and that some people “piggyback” or follow another employee into secured areas without swiping their ID badges.

Down on the border, Mexican officials are upset that a 2½ mile section of border fence in New Mexico was accidentally built on the Mexico side of the border due to surveying errors. Mexico wants the fencing removed from its territory “as quickly as possible,” which will cost at least $3 million.

Back inside the Beltway, Pentagon officials shut down 1,500 computers serving the Office of the Secretary of Defense after discovering a successful penetration into the office’s unclassified e-mail system. Unlike his underlings, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is unaffected, since as he says, “I don’t do e-mail. I’m a very low-tech person.” (Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff has also said he doesn’t use e-mail.)

But would we be any better off if government could somehow be more effective and efficient? Likely not. The White House Office of Management and Budget published its annual Program Assessment Ratings Tool which measures the effectiveness and efficiency of some 1,000 federal programs. And Congress is going to spend some $1 trillion of discretionary spending on programs which aren’t even moderately effective. “The main activity these programs are really efficient at is spending your money in new and interesting ways on things they shouldn’t be spending your money on in the first place,” says Cato Institute director of budget studies Stephen Slivinski. “Slapping the ‘efficiency’ label on certain federal programs is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig.”

The Bush administration has suspended a pending rule which would have required travelers re-entering the country from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean by land or sea to present passports at entry.

The Department of Homeland Security will delay the requirement until summer of 2008, though by January citizens will be required to present a photo ID and proof of citizenship, such as a birth certfiicate, when entering the country.

The change comes after the State Department became so backlogged with requests for passports that people are having to wait for several months even to obtain expedited passports.

The administration previously waived until September 30 the requirement that U.S. citizens present their passports when re-entering the country by air, requiring proof of application for the passport.

Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff said that the more stringent requirements, part of the so-called Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, would eventually come into effect and that they were required to secure the country.

“Those who believe we should continue to allow 8,000 documents and oral declarations [of citizenship], are playing with fire. They are gambling with the security of this country,” he said.

Critics said the new timeline is unrealistic because of what they called the Bush administration’s abysmal implementation record.

The House Rules Committee chairwoman, Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.), whose district includes Buffalo, called the proposal “premature” and “not grounded in reality.”

Roger Dow, head of the Travel Industry Association, said: “This two-tiered approach for land and sea will only make things more confusing for travelers.” — Washington Post

Confused yet? If you have travel plans, you probably are. So here’s how things stand now: If you enter the country by air, you need your passport or proof of application, until September 30. If you enter by land or sea, you need photo ID and proof of citizenship, until July of 2008, when you’ll need your passport.