Don’t Abandon SBInet

SBInet tower

Just weeks after lawmakers slammed the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for their handling of the technological aspects of the SBInet security system deployed on the U.S. border with Mexcio, the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank, issued a memo arguing that the system should not be scrapped.

“Securing America’s southern border is more important than ever,” writes the organization’s homeland security policy analyst Jena Baker McNeill. “Yet the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preparing to drop key border security technologies that it has been developing since 2005. This is a decision that makes no sense. Given some of the [technological] problems that have occurred… a review could help improve the program. Abandoning SBInet altogether, however, would be a complete waste of resources.”

On May 16, DHS Secretary Janet Napalitano issued a statement in which she announced, “The system of sensors and cameras along the Southwest border known as SBInet has been plagued with cost overruns and missed deadlines. Effective immediately, the Department of Homeland Security will redeploy $50 million of Recovery Act funding originally allocated for the SBInet Block One to other tested, commercially available security technology along the Southwest border… Additionally, we are freezing all SBInet funding beyond SBInet Block One’s initial deployment.”

But McNeill believes that the keeping SBInet is not only important to protect the border, but it is an opportunity for DHS to get a handle on homeland security. “Going forward, DHS needs to improve its ability to oversee implementation of large-scale technological solutions like SBInet while fixing problems that plague successful program implementation,” she wrote.

McNeill does not entirely blame the current administration or the current DHS secretary for SBInet’s failures that, she believes, were a result of  “the previous Administration [which] over-promised its abilities as well as the rate at which the program could be deployed, treating it as a one-stop solution for border security technology” as well as whom “moved forward with an ambitious expansion plan that simply did not mesh with the legal and regulatory obstacles that would inevitably stem from the program’s deployment.

“Furthermore, the program faced real problems in terms of gaining feedback from operators on the ground as well as from technical snafus,” she added.

But scrapping the $1.1 billion program all together would be, in McNeill’s words, a “colossal waste.”

McNeill advises that SBInet remain part of the “programmatic mix” given “the program’s ability to provide targeted enforcement at the border.” But she also advises the government stop looking at SBInet – and other technological security programs like it – as a “silver-bullet solution.” McNeill believes the only real solution going forward is to “revamp DHS management of large programs” and “improv[e] the requirements process and making key reforms would help to improve large program management.”

The advice came just days before President Barack Obama sent 1,200 National Guard troops to the border U.S.-Mexico border after badgering from lawmakers, especially those in Arizona, where Mexican drug gang violence has exploded and the kidnapping and killing of Americans have escalated over the previous months.

And perhaps, not a moment to soon. DHS recently alerted authorities to be on the lookout for a member of the Somalia-based Al Shabaab terrorist group, who might be attempting get into the U.S. from the border with Mexico. The warning follows an indictment unsealed in May in a Texas federal court that accuses a Somali living in America of running a “large-scale smuggling enterprise” which brought hundreds of his countryman into the U.S from Brazil.

The Texas based Somali smuggler is just one of two such cases. In a second smuggling case, Anthony Joseph Tracy of Virginia, is being prosecuted by the federal government for participating in an international smuggling ring that brought more than 200 Somalis across the Mexican border into the U.S. illegally.

But with America’s resources focused on the south, GSN: Government Security News, asks who is watching the border to the north? On May 22 Richard Fadden, head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), announced that his country – which shares the world’s longest border in the world with the U.S. – was tracking hundreds of people linked to Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations within Canada’s borders.

In a rare appearance from the Canadian spymaster, Fadden stated before a parliamentary committee, “Confronting the threat from al Qaeda, its affiliates and its adherents remains our number one priority. As of this month CSIS is investigating over 200 individuals in this country whose activities meet the official definition of terrorism.”