Post-9/11 DOJ Tech Project Dying After 10 Years? 115
gManZboy writes "A secure, interoperable radio network that the Department of Justice has been working on for more than a decade and that has cost the agency $356 million may be headed for failure, according to a new report by the agency's inspector general. Called for in the wake of 9/11, the Integrated Wireless Network (IWS) project has already been repeatedly scaled back. Today, the Department of Justice continues to rely on several separate land mobile radio systems, some of which are unreliable, obsolete, and fail to interoperate with one another. Agents often have to swap radios, share channels, or refer to a book of radio frequencies and manually switch between those frequencies to stay online. Radios remain insecure, as much of the current equipment fails to meet encryption requirements. Much of the agency's equipment is more than 15 years old and is no longer even supported by the manufacturer."
Project 25 is still alive and kicking (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Project 25 is still alive and kicking (Score:5, Informative)
Not modding you down but rather informing: APCO P25 come in to existence October of 1989. It had nothing to do with Katrina.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_25 [wikipedia.org]
Re:The point was to employ contractors (Score:5, Informative)
"By and large, the 'public' doesn't have access to police communications;"
Really, so Radio Shack is a place that sells thief tools? They sell scanners that in most towns let you listen to police communications.
Some cities have switched to digital, but most still have analog unencrypted clear voice communications and the list of the frequencies is readily available everywhere.