AT&T Scores $1 Billion Contract To Rebuild DOJ Systems

from the blurred-lines dept

AT&T is increasingly becoming one of those companies that's so bone-grafted to the government, it's getting harder to determine where the telecom giant ends and the government begins. Reports have already explored how AT&T is effectively fused to the NSA; the company provides the government widespread access to every shred of data that traverses its network, and its employees can often be found acting as government intelligence analysts.

Granted after some early concerns about corruption, AT&T has also been tasked with building the nation's $47 billion emergency communications network, FirstNet. And this week the company also netted a new $1 billion, fifteen-year contract to rebuild the Department of Justice's computer systems:

"AT&T has won a $984 million, 15-year contract to help upgrade the US Department of Justice's technology systems. The deal will see AT&T move more than 120,000 DOJ employees in 2,100 offices to a new communications platform for mobile voice and data, cybersecurity and cloud services. While it doesn't cover 5G for now, the next-generation networking service could be added on later."

Aside from that whole DOJ lawsuit against the Time Warner merger (which was likely more about pleasing Rupert Murdoch than reining in corporate power), AT&T has been having a hell of a run under the Trump administration. It not only got to effectively hand pick the head of the FCC, it then was showered with incalculable billions in regulatory favors (like killing net neutrality and broadband privacy rules), before getting showered in billions more in favors thanks to the Trump tax cut.

The problem of fusing a historically anti-competitive monopoly to government should be fairly obvious. Especially given AT&T's repeated ethical challenges. This is a company that in just the last few years AT&T has been: fined $18.6 million for helping rip off programs for the hearing impaired, fined $10.4 million for ripping off a program for low-income families, fined $105 million for helping "crammers" (by intentionally making such bogus charges more difficult to see on customer bills), and fined $7.7 million for turning a blind eye while drug dealers ran a directory assistance scam on its customers.

That's before you even get to AT&T's routinely anti-competitive behavior, concern over which has been widely sidelined given the laser-like focus on "big tech." Recent tech policy conversations almost exclusively focus on Silicon Valley giants, yet oddly exclude the threat of telecom monopolies from the conversation, another Trump era favor to AT&T. Of course telecom lobbyists are more than happy to have the entirety of recent policy conversations fixated on "big tech" and not telecom, given the latter is trying desperately to disrupt the former's stranglehold over online advertising.

Which is all to say that maybe at some point in addition to trying to fix the problems with "big tech," we could shift at least a portion of the tech policy conversation back to unethical, anti-competitive telecom monopolies we're happily bone-grafting to the US government? Just a thought.

Filed Under: computer systems, doj
Companies: at&t

NYPD Says Software Built To Track Seized Property Can't Actually Do The One Thing It's Supposed To Do

from the planned-obsolescence-hurried-along-by-planned-opacity dept

It's not like the NYPD's earned enough trust to be given the benefit of a doubt, but it's latest excuse as to why it can't come up with requested data sounds about as believable as a soaking wet teen's explanation as to why the family car is currently lying at the bottom of the backyard pool isn't his fault.

The New York City Police Department takes in millions of dollars in cash each year as evidence, often keeping the money through a procedure called civil forfeiture. But as New York City lawmakers pressed for greater transparency into how much was being seized and from whom, a department official claimed providing that information would be nearly impossible—because querying the 4-year old computer system that tracks evidence and property for the data would "lead to system crashes."

The system that "tracks" this information (apparently by tossing input into a pile of unsearchable bits) was considered top of the line in 2012. Sure, technology moves fast but certainly not fast enough to turn something the NYPD claimed would "revolutionize" evidence/property tracking into a hulking pile of sullen, un-queryable data four years later. As Sean Gallagher of Ars Technica points out, the system was submitted for consideration for the 2012 Computerworld Honors, which hands out awards to leaps forward in information technology.

NYPD officials, responding to city's Public Safety Committee, explained that the top-dollar tracking system wasn't actually a system at all.

NYPD's Assistant Deputy Commissioner Robert Messner told the New York City Council's Public Safety Committee that the department had no idea how much money it took in as evidence, nor did it have a way of reporting how much was seized through civil forfeiture proceedings—where property and money is taken from people suspected of involvement in a crime through a civil filing, and the individuals whom it is seized from are put in the position of proving that the property was not involved in the crime of which they were accused.

Where accountability is needed most, it almost always seems to go missing. Asset forfeiture -- in multiple, mostly-nefarious forms -- is a law enforcement tool seemingly handcrafted for abuse and exploitation. When the NYPD isn't seizing cash and cars simply because Officer Smith thought he spotted a fleck of marijuana somewhere in a three-mile radius, it's taking ownership of people's personal belongings (phones, cash, etc.) simply because they happened to be in their pockets when they were arrested.

The NYPD's inability to quantify its sketchy takings isn't surprising. There's nothing to be gained from keeping a tracking system like this in working order. The more data the NYPD can provide to overseers, FOIL-wielding citizens, and meddling defense lawyers, the more likely it is that someone will uncover abuse of the forfeiture process.

The NYPD isn't satisfied with simply being a closed book -- it's actively engaged in removing pages. At some point, someone on the inside must have needed some information and found the tracking system unworkable. But the cost of fixing it -- both in terms of the money paid to contractors and the potential "harm" done to a very profitable program -- was likely considered too much of an expense to bear. So, when faced with demands for data, the NYPD excuses its lack of info production with "the database ate our homework."

What data has been pried loose from the unwilling NYPD already shows it willingly lies to city officials about its asset forfeitures, as the Village Voice reports.

The NYPD's testimony was also disingenuous: As part of a FOIL request filed by the Bronx Defenders, the NYPD had already compiled and released figures that show the staggering amounts that it has seized.

[...]

At the hearing, the NYPD claimed that it only legally forfeited $11,653 in currency last year — that is, gone to court and actually made a case as to why the NYPD should be taking this money.

[...]

In the accounting summaries which the Bronx Defenders submitted as part of its testimony, the NYPD reports that as of December 2013, its property clerk had almost $69 million in seized cash on hand. This amount had been carried over from previous years, showing an annual accumulation of seized cash that has reached an enormous amount. The documents also show that each month, the five property clerk’s offices across the city took in tens of thousands of dollars in cash, ultimately generating over $6 million in revenue for the department.

And where did the Bronx Defenders get its numbers? The same software the NYPD claims can't produce these numbers.

The report that the NYPD released appears to have been generated through the same use of their database that the department now claims is technologically impossible.

At the point of the database's inception, the NYPD claimed it would provide "cradle-to-grave" tracking of seized property. Apparently "cradle-to-grave" is about as meaningless a phrase as "unlimited data:" both terminate far sooner than their descriptors would indicate.

It may be the software can't handle complex queries encompassing the entirety of its seizure records, but that's not an acceptable excuse. The problem should have been caught and fixed by this point. I'm pretty sure the NYPD has some way of tracking seized assets since it seems to have few concerns about bouncing checks when spending the proceeds. But it's sure as hell not going to turn this over to opponents of its sketchy seizure programs without a fight. So when it became apparent the database would provide next to nothing in terms of accountability, the NYPD considered that a feature, rather than a bug.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, computer systems, nypd, software

Texas Pulls Voting Reg System From IBM After Multimillion System Can't Recover Lost Data

from the that's-not-good dept

EFF points us to yet another massively expensive computer system that can't do some rather basic things. Apparently the state of Texas has pulled its election systems from an $863 million computer system project it had with IBM, after failures and glitches in the system took down the voter system and lost data, which was unrecoverable. State officials realized that if this had happened during an actual election, the state wouldn't have been able to verify new voters, in violation of federal law. So, it dumped IBM and set up its own system that (gasp) actually has multiple backups of the data. I guess things like redundant backups aren't included in the $863 million package.

Filed Under: backup, computer systems, texas
Companies: ibm

Botched Software Install Means LA Teachers Not Getting Paid (Or Getting Paid Too Much) For Months

from the nice-work,-if-you-can-get-it dept

It always amazes us when we hear about big software systems that organizations pay millions (or sometimes hundreds of millions) for end up making life a lot worse. Remember when the Federal Technology Service (irony alert) spent a ton on a system that required 15 steps to save a document. Or the system that turned processes that used to take minutes into ones that took weeks. Then there was the city of Tacoma, where the city spent $51 million of taxpayer money on a new budgeting system that couldn't create a budget. It looks like we can add the Los Angeles Unified School District to the batch. They're in the middle of a big ERP project that apparently has been screwing up how much teachers are paid for months with no clear end in sight. The district claims that most of the problems are with teachers getting overpaid, but some were underpaid and others not paid at all apparently.

There certainly are many such installations that work just fine, so you have to wonder what the folks doing the installation and integration work did wrong when you hear about these stories -- and whether or not they're still getting paid the full amount (apparently $55 million to systems integrators Deloitte Consulting in this case). The real kicker, though is how long the problem has been going on and how much longer it's expected to continue. There have been errors at least as far back as June and potentially earlier (the article isn't clear). While the district keeps saying it'll get better "next month" prior to the latest payroll, the district also issued the following statement: "Tomorrow is payday for certified employees. We will have payroll errors tomorrow and the majority of those problems will be overpayments. I urge anyone who thinks they may have been overpaid to not spend the money, as overpayment errors will need to be corrected by the end of the year." By the end of the year? Ouch.

Filed Under: computer systems, erp