Boeing Group Gets U.S. Border Pact

$2 Billion Contract for a Virtual Fence 

ROBERT BLOCK / Wall Street Journal 20sep2006

"SBInet is expected to use technology such as motion sensors, cameras, unmanned aircraft and cellular telephones to create a "virtual fence" to monitor the border and help law-enforcement agents catch illegal immigrants sneaking across the frontier." Mindfully.org note: Once again we ask, Who is this going to protect? And how?  The way we see it, technologies such as these are pushing people into an even more alienated position such as portrayed in the movie I, Robot.  The reality is that its constant malfunctioning will be concealed by both Boeing and the government hacks that made it possible.  We pity the innocents who are caught in its nasty net. We do not look forward to being secured by this ridiculous scam. For it is nothing more than a money-maker for Boeing and its subcontractors.

The Department of Homeland Security is expected to announce today that it has awarded an estimated $2 billion contract to help secure America's southern border with Mexico to a team of companies led by defense contractor Boeing Co., according to industry officials and congressional staffers.

The contract is for the first phase of the department's three-pronged Secure Border Initiative, or SBI, a comprehensive plan to protect the frontier and reduce illegal immigration. The first part of the program, called SBInet, is expected to use technology such as motion sensors, cameras, unmanned aircraft and cellular telephones to create a "virtual fence" to monitor the border and help law-enforcement agents catch illegal immigrants sneaking across the frontier.

Government officials have declined to attach a value to the overall program, but the entire border plan is expected to be the biggest Homeland Security program since the department in 2004 awarded a contract to Accenture Ltd. to monitor foreign visitors. Known as U.S. Visit, that program could amount to $10 billion over a decade.

Boeing said in a statement that it is awaiting an announcement, adding "we feel that Boeing proposed a secure border solution that will meet the government's requirements at the best value." Boeing beat out teams led by other defense companies Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon Co.

The Boeing-led SBInet team includes DRS Technologies Inc.'s Surveillance & Reconnaissance Group, Elbit Systems of America's Kollsman Inc., L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., Perot Systems Corp., and Unisys Corp.'s Unisys Global Public Sector.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency, part of Homeland Security, is the agency in charge of the Secure Border plan. The first phase of the program will concentrate on the Arizona border with Mexico, industry officials said.

SBInet has attracted defense companies looking for new revenue sources as Pentagon spending growth slows, but they have been frustrated by the slow development of opportunities in the homeland-security market after it was initially trumpeted as a growth area following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S.

According to defense-industry officials and congressional staffers the various plans of how to make SBInet were varied, in part because the Department of Homeland Security left it up to the various companies to decide how to best protect the border, giving them unusually wide sway over a critical national security issue. Michael Jackson, deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department, told the competing firms this year he wanted them "to come back and tell us how to do our business."

Previous attempts to use technology to control the border have been checkered, and new tools, such as unmanned planes, face hurdles in how they will be deployed. Northrop Grumman's tack was to use unmanned drones. Boeing's proposal included lining the borders with 1,800 high-tech towers that could feed live video to Border Patrol agents carrying wireless hand-held receivers. Lockheed Martin's approach was to use blimps.

SBInet is billed as "a signature effort" for the department. An audiovisual presentation released this year depicted crowds of illegal aliens storming urban border crossings both in trucks and trudging in long columns along rural trails. The presentation showed how the geography of the southern border funnels illegal human migration into three main routes.

When Boeing announced in May its intention to put together a team of companies to pursue the contract, Jim Albaugh, president and chief executive of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, called the program an "an initiative of national significance."

This wouldn't be the first big Homeland Security contract Boeing has won. The company was involved installing airport explosive detection systems for the Transportation Security Administration shortly following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, equipping more than 400 airports in fewer than six months.

---- J. Lynn Lunsford contributed to this article.

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