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US State Dept. Loses Anti-Terrorist Program Laptops

Posted by timothy on Wed May 07, 2008 02:51 PM
from the around-here-someplace-gimme-a-minute dept.
Security Data Storage Portables United States Hardware
Stony Stevenson writes "It has surfaced that the US State Department can't account for up to about 1,000 laptops, perhaps as many as 400 of which belonged to the department's Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program. Internal auditors found that the department lost track of $30 million worth of computer equipment, 'the vast majority of which... perhaps as much as 99 percent,' were laptops, according to one official. Another official calculated that the average State Department laptop costs US$3,000 and figured that meant as many as 1,000 laptops might be astray — not 10,000 laptops as the US$30 million figure suggests. They're obviously not very good at maths."
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Submission: US State Department loses Anti-Terrorism laptops by Stony Stevenson (954022)
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US State Dept. Loses Anti-Terrorist Program Laptops 50 Comments More /

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  • Blame Iran (Score:5, Funny)

    by Trigun (685027) <evil@NoSpam.evilempire.ath.cx> on Wednesday May 07 2008, @02:52PM (#23328728)
    They're using them and a bunch of XBoxes to create a supercomputer possible of calculating what wacky thing the president is going to do next.
  • laptops it is?

    I mean, seriously :)

    Who they want to fool?
  • Seems like that is the most effective thing right now.
    • Yes, at first thought that works, but then we would see gov't. employees missing along with the laptop.
      My solution would be to chain the employees to a welded down desktop so the whole building would have to be lost/misplaced/sold in a pawn shop.

      After seeing SO many of these articles, I can only surmise that giving them laptops in the first place is a poor choice.
  • now they have to scrap the whole program and start from scratch thanks to poor training and human error.

    your multi-billion dollar system is rendered useless by one incompetent employee.

  • eBay? (Score:5, Funny)

    by VincenzoRomano (881055) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @02:57PM (#23328794) Homepage Journal
    I would give eBay a try to find them out!

  • Math issues resolved (Score:5, Funny)

    by Qzukk (229616) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @02:57PM (#23328798) Journal
    Obviously the problem is in assuming that all of the laptops were "worth" the same. Actually, there were 999 laptops that the government paid about $1,000 each for, which had important documents containing SSNs, medical and employment records, etc of every single person in the united states who was not a member of the Department of Homeland Security, as well as various secret anti-terrorist initiatives, identities of government moles working within terrorist groups and so on, totaling a value of about $999,000.

    The other $29,001,000 is due to the loss of one laptop containing the SSN and medical records of the director of the Department of Homeland Security.
  • Call in Jack Bauer, I'm sure he'll have them back within 24 hours.
    • You want Captain Jack, from Torchwood. Y'know, the world's mot famous secret organization, beyond the government, outside the United Nations, second left over the flyover, straight on at Budgens, first right at the lights then first left at the Kwiksave. He should have them back before they were taken.

  • Filed away accidentally? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aeonite (263338) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @02:59PM (#23328848) Homepage
    Were they MacBook Airs? Perhaps they're stuck inside some manila envelopes.

  • $3000 for a laptop?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by piojo (995934) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @03:03PM (#23328886)
    A state department laptop costs an average of $3000? That's completely insane! No (non-gaming) laptop costs that much unless you're just trying to burn money. This further reduces my faith in the abilities of the national government (and makes me feel really great about my taxes). =/

    • Re:$3000 for a laptop?? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mazarin5 (309432) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @03:09PM (#23328972) Journal
      I presume that price includes software, created by government contractors at high price for a specific purpose, divided amongst the few thousand computers that have it installed.

      • Re:$3000 for a laptop?? (Score:5, Informative)

        by mcmonkey (96054) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @03:38PM (#23329378) Homepage

        I presume that price includes software, created by government contractors at high price for a specific purpose, divided amongst the few thousand computers that have it installed.

        Software would be a part of the purchase price, but not the calculation of the value of the lost property.

        After all, software is licensed not bought. When a computer gets lost, they still have the license, right? It's not like they have repurchase the same software for the replacement computers.

    • Re:$3000 for a laptop?? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by corsec67 (627446) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @03:13PM (#23329048) Homepage Journal

      This further reduces my faith in the abilities of the national government (and makes me feel really great about my taxes). =/


      If you got all of your money by stealing it from people, I don't think you would care too much about wasting some of that money.
      In government, where is the incentive to not waste money?

      • MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Insightful)

        by InvisblePinkUnicorn (1126837) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @03:33PM (#23329296)
        I was about to reply with the same thing. This is yet another example of why it is ridiculous to say it is better to "just let the government handle it". Not only is there no incentive to be cost-effective, secure, OR efficient, but the exact opposite becomes the case - government employees get their jobs through friends and family, ie cronyism, so because they did not need to prove their competence to get their jobs, there is also no incentive for them to be competent in their positions.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Abcd1234 (188840)
          This is yet another example of why it is ridiculous to say it is better to "just let the government handle it"

          You are correct. In some cases. But only a blind fool would believe that's universally true.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by TheLink (130905)
          Right, and "just let private corporations handle it" will be better?

          You think corporate employees don't get their jobs through friends and family or cronyism? There are efficient government run systems.

          The problem is not "because it is done by government". It all depends on the people you have, it doesn't matter if it's "private or gov". Some stuff governments just do better than private corps. The idea is governments try not to do too much stuff that they're not good at, and regulate the private corps (esp

    • Re:$3000 for a laptop?? (Score:5, Funny)

      by rujholla (823296) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @03:25PM (#23329190)
      Ya but we feel confident that they can do a good job with health care!!

    • Re:$3000 for a laptop?? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 07 2008, @03:34PM (#23329320)
      As a scientist working for a US-government research lab, these stories make me die a bit inside.

      Where I work, we are very budget conscious. We could never justify spending $3000 on laptops. In fact we have to make a very solid case before we can get our desktops upgraded to even modern commodity levels (despite the fact that, as you might guess, we do plenty of work that pushes a desktop machine to its limits). Moreover, we have a very strict inventory system. All equipment (including computers) is accounted for, and has to be barcode-scanned annually to make sure it's still accounted for. Even computers that are so old no one would want them are still meticulously tracked.

      I always assumed that this was standard for government agencies... but I guess some agencies are able to bend and break these rules more wantonly than others. It makes me sad to think of the wastage in one branch when we are diligently following the rules, and barely scraping by, in another...

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mckorr (1274964)
        The DHS machines aren't any better than yours. I seriously doubt the laptops cost the government more than the roughly $1000 you would normally expect them to pay. The additional money actually goes to fund operations and projects which are kept off the books. It's the same with the $300 hammer or $10k toilet seats for the military. They pay the same price you do, and the extra money goes to "black ops". Special Forces operations in foreign countries, counter-terrorist measures, anything that has to be

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by couchslug (175151)
      "No (non-gaming) laptop costs that much unless you're just trying to burn money."

      Itronix and Panasonic semi-rugged and rugged units routinely cost far more than that.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Vellmont (569020)

      A state department laptop costs an average of $3000? That's completely insane!

      I'm not sure I'd start jumping up and down just yet. You're basing this all one one minor fact that some dumb journalist likely got wrong, or took out of context. And as we all know, journalists never make factual errors except when you have personal knowledge of the story.

    • Re:$3000 for a laptop?? (Score:4, Informative)

      by AK Marc (707885) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @06:08PM (#23331284)
      A state department laptop costs an average of $3000? That's completely insane! No (non-gaming) laptop costs that much unless you're just trying to burn money.

      Ok, buy a laptop. Put the most popular business OS on it. Put the most popular business office suite on it. Put "standard" software on it, Acrobat, virus scanner, CALs for email, SQL, and such. Now look at the cost. Having bought a number of computers for companies, the hardware costs $500-$1000 for the desktop, and $2000+ after all the software. And yes, they essentially throw out all the licenses when they get rid of the computer, but by then the software is usally obsolete as well. Not to mention that a laptop order here is usually for someone "special" with special needs. With the cost of the one laptop was an extra battery, an extra charger, a monitor, a stand, a dock, a case, a mouse, a keyboard (invariably wireless) and sometimes even things like printers. The "laptop" was half accessories or more.

      So when they "cost" $3000, that's probably not the cost of the hardware laptop only, but includes other expenses.
      • Large organisations like to restrict the numbers of their suppliers as far as possible, this means there is little or no competition for vendors, who are then able to charge as they like.

        I don't know which MBA came up with that concept, but there you go.

         

      • Re:$3000 for a laptop?? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by mapsjanhere (1130359) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @03:27PM (#23329228)
        Actually these were special DHS laptops with the ultimate security feature:
        An ultraslick teflon outer coating to prevent the employees from writing down their automatically generated 16 letter+capital+number+special changing once a month passwords on sticky notes and glue them to the notebook.
  • If you see anyone who looks like this [slashdot.org] then the laptops have fallen into the wrong hands.

    Sorry, had to do it. :)
  • The guy said he was a drug dealer down on his luck. Now I understand why it had these pictures [slashdot.org] in it.

    I smoked a joint and got all paranoid and shit and threw it in Lake Springfield. Sorry.

  • Things to keep in mind... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 07 2008, @03:09PM (#23328974)
    1) They've only done one pass of their inventory. Once this has become public, the supervisors will get pushed on from their bosses to make sure that more equipment is accounted for in the second and third passes.

    2) The reason that many of these laptops are listed as worth ~$3,000 is probably that some of them are 10+ years old (when laptops were really really expensive). That also explains why some of them can't be found; they're shoved in the back of filing cabinets or in the bottom of desk-drawers because they haven't been used in years and years. Their practical value is probably nothing, but -- on paper -- they're worth thousands because that's what they were bought for all those years ago...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by budgenator (254554)
      Somewhere along the line there is going to be a break in accountability and sooner or later, if you signed for 100 laptops, you had better be able to produce 100 laptops or 100 signatures on equipment issue receipts. If you can't your going to pay for the shortage and if your lucky they'll be able to depreciate them down but 10 cents on the dollar can really add up.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Red Flayer (890720)

        If the government uses generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) like almost any other organization in the US, ten year old laptops should be listed as worth next to nothing. The depreciation schedule is about 3 years, I think.

        Well, first off, the US government doesn't comply with GAAP across the board, it picks and chooses where it wants to comply. There's plenty of questionable accounting practices, despite efforts to clean it up (see GAO annual report).

        And as for ten-year-old laptops, while it's

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by AK Marc (707885)
        Er, no. Not quite. They should have a value that's written-down across years like vehicles. But that's a "should" and often doesn't get taken care of until you do a big inventory showing loss like this one. The next released figures will show a huge percentage of "found" laptops that are actually written off this way. A portion of that will be legitimate ("/That/ old Thinkpad? I tossed it years ago.") and a portion will be coverup to deal with this embarassing headline.

        Unless there's a reason to suspect t

  • Papertrails (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TibbonZero (571809) <TibbonNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday May 07 2008, @03:10PM (#23328984) Homepage Journal
    I haven't worked for the government ever asides from working as an intern for a local County government's IT department, so I really don't know the answer to this.

    What in the world happens with these things as far as papertrails go? This question comes to mind every time they "lose" weapons or laptops. Isn't there anyone that has their name on these items as being responsible? Surely either the shipping departments, the departments that they were assigned to, or the people that they were assigned to could be held responsible right?

    I imagine for example that in moving of large arms shipments around the Middle East for our troops that there's someone always in charge of the stuff, or that last touched it. Wouldn't a great place to start (and place the blame) be the last person that signed off on something like this? In anything bigger than a really tiny company, there should be very clear paper trails like this right?

    Doesn't someone have to answer? Isn't it the auditors job to know who last touched them?

  • Government accounting (Score:5, Funny)

    by athloi (1075845) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @03:10PM (#23329000) Homepage Journal
    Cost of laptop: $3000

    Cost of personnel to procure it, insurance, shipping, paperwork, legislation, research, etc on a per-item basis: $8000

    Total cost in taxes, per laptop, to you: $11000

    Cost of laptop, out of back of 10-year-old SUV with motor running, on street, from some guy named Joey with methamphetamine acne: $400

  • We need new Math Textbooks (Score:4, Funny)

    by captainjamie (956435) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @03:11PM (#23329006)
    They're obviously not very good at maths

    9/11 changed everything... even multiplication.

  • The 'sensitive data'... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tatsh (893946) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @04:52PM (#23330420)
    will end up on Wikileaks! I will wait patiently.

  • They were found yesterday (Score:4, Informative)

    by bloody_liberal (1002785) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @05:33PM (#23330892) Homepage
    At least according to this website: http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=hsnews-000002717866 [cqpolitics.com]
    • They were probably Dell D6X0 series laptops with encrypted hard drives. Getting a basic one right now (1GB RAM, 1.73GHz Dual-Core Processor, Encrypted Hard Drive) _would_ cost me about $1,100 if I could buy direct from Dell, but thanks to 8(a) contract purchasing obligation, it'd run me over $2,500 from the reseller (who adds zero benefit). Aren't you glad we're supporting small, disadvantaged, minority, woman-owned businesses at the cost of your (and my) tax dollars?

      • Re:$3000? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by boris111 (837756) on Wednesday May 07 2008, @03:20PM (#23329114)
        Aren't you glad we're supporting small, disadvantaged, minority, woman-owned businesses at the cost of your (and my) tax dollars?

        Yep sounds like my old company of 20 people doing contracts for the government. The President and VP co owned the company... guess who was the president: the minority woman. Guess who did most of the contact establishment, contract negotiation, and assembled the technical know how, and basically ran the company... the white bread male VP. She was useless, and started to get bitter when she began to realize this. Not saying this is a reflection of her nationality or sex, just that she was nothing more than a figurehead for the company so we could get more contracts.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by TheLink (130905)
          "She was useless"
          "just that she was nothing more than a figurehead for the company so we could get more contracts"

          If that meant you actually got more contracts then she was not useless at all.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by lelitsch (31136)

        Aren't you glad we're supporting small, disadvantaged, minority, woman-owned businesses at the cost of your (and my) tax dollars?

        I wasn't aware that Lockheed Martin [lockheedmartin.com] was a minority owned business.

        To quote from their PR materials: Lockheed Martin is the largest provider of IT services, systems integration, and training to the U.S. Government. [...] with approximately $21.4 billion in 2007 sales.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by skiflyer (716312)
      Don't forget warranties and service contracts and markups from resellers... it's easy to tip $3k a laptop if you try.

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