Forgive me for being cynical here, but this sounds a little contrived. Who, praytell, is going to trudge through the Defense budget dollar-by-dollar to make sure they aren't funding it? Congress doesn't do that. Hell, the Pentagon doesn't do that!
Projects get "dark" funding all the time, without any sort of oversight. It would come as no shock to me, if two months from now, the same people are working on the same project with a different name. At best, this means the FBI won't get to use this toy, just the NSA and probably CIA (although for that effect alone it's almost worth the price of admission).
I did consider what you suggest, but this has been such a public fiasco and it's so rare that the person in charge gets so much publicity that it seems to me enough politicians are invested in blocking this that it's unlikely we'll see it happen. I may be unduly credulous, I wouldn't bet it won't happen, but I am hopeful. (Of course, all those points could be turned around: it will have to become a top secret project with no congressional oversight and years down the road, when someone asks about it, we'll be told that obviously it's had no horrible consequences.)
Forgive me for being cynical here, but this sounds a little contrived. Who, praytell, is going to trudge through the Defense budget dollar-by-dollar to make sure they aren't funding it? Congress doesn't do that. Hell, the Pentagon doesn't do that!
(http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2002/n02202002_200202201.html)
Projects get "dark" funding all the time, without any sort of oversight. It would come as no shock to me, if two months from now, the same people are working on the same project with a different name. At best, this means the FBI won't get to use this toy, just the NSA and probably CIA (although for that effect alone it's almost worth the price of admission).
Posted by Yuri Guri | Link to this comment | 07-16-03 7:26 AM
I did consider what you suggest, but this has been such a public fiasco and it's so rare that the person in charge gets so much publicity that it seems to me enough politicians are invested in blocking this that it's unlikely we'll see it happen. I may be unduly credulous, I wouldn't bet it won't happen, but I am hopeful. (Of course, all those points could be turned around: it will have to become a top secret project with no congressional oversight and years down the road, when someone asks about it, we'll be told that obviously it's had no horrible consequences.)
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 07-16-03 9:05 AM