Budget constraints are forcing some local Federal Bureau of Investigation agents to operate without e-mail accounts, according to the agency’s top official in New York.
“As ridiculous as this might sound, we have real money issues right now, and the government is reluctant to give all agents and analysts dot-gov accounts,” Mark Mershon said when asked about the gap at a New York Daily News editorial board meeting.
The patent leather pundits in Washington are now trying to impress us with their frugality — while they continue to spend billions on the war. And how does an email account suddenly cost so much? Yahoo gives them away for free. Maybe agents should use Yahoo. This would be like Army personnel having to buy their own body armor.
Spokeswoman Cathy Milhoan said e-mail addresses are still being assigned, adding that the city bureau’s 2,000 employees would all have accounts by the end of the year.
By the end of the year? How long does it take to give someone an email account? Hint: lastname.firstname@fbi.gov.
Maybe we should get together and pool some Gmail invites for them.
Gmail for Gmen? You gotta be kidding.
Don’t they have like… a database of employees or something? 20 minutes in java can have a program read all the entries and assign e-mail accounts to them. They could be done by the end of the day.
But, lastname.firstname wouldn’t work. I’m guessing they might just have multiples of the same name. You couldn’t even use lastname.firstname for all the people who read and post here. I’m pretty sure theres another james hill besides me posting here if nothing else. So, they’d need something like I don’t know… some sort of ID number maybe. And then maybe something that could work as a mask of some sort, that the employee might be able to set so that people can send an e-mail to an easy to remember addy and have it automatically redirected to the official account name. I bet that would be hard to… have already made by hundreds of companies and available under some sort of GNU or something. I dunno.
This is all BS.
This is the FED version of when a local government loses a tax issue and then closes down public parks to punish the public, while they continue to fund big money patronage jobs.
This is the G’s bid to set up a “Boo-hoo we have no socks” attitude so they can piss even more money at Haliburton. After all thats why Cheney was elected president.
This is a smoke screen. If there is no email, there is no email trail to follow. Think of it as covering your tracks. Paper can be burned securely, email is very hard to erase fully. There is more to this than “saving money” on email accounts.
Eideard,
I’m much less concerned about the money being spent on Iraq and Afghanistan today, than I am about the massive new medicare benefit passed two years ago along with the future outstanding obligations that will cause both it and the social security system to collapse down the road, taking our entire economy with it.
But at least we know where each other’s ideological biases lie.
I got it! firstname.lastname and when there’s another James Hill, add a number ie:
james.hill
james.hill1
It worked at State Univeristy Minnesota, and that was first five of last name follwed by first initial.
Mike, I prefer ideology grounded in fact rather than the sort that produces voodoo economics, for example. It’s really taken you this long to figure out that someone might oppose profligate sums wasted on imperial war — and support the needs of Social Security and Medicare? If they’re mutually exclusive, I’ll take the latter two any day?
Yes, every decision made in or around the white house revolves around how much money can be funneled into the coffers at Haliburton.
Wow, I’m surprised this line hasn’t gotten old yet. It’s really quite boring.
I can get a thousand Gmail invites, somebody tell me where to send them.
Probably running a M$ exchange server and can’t afford M$ licensing costs for so many users…
Actually, it is a bit more complicated than you folks can imagine. Everyone DID have email accounts, but there were lots of privacy issues, spam, spyware and the rest of the crap. So, they stopped all email accounts and reissued them with strong encryption standards and VPNs for access and what not. The delays are likely due to the time it takes to instruct all the agents how to use the new tools and to prevent further problems. Remember, the above quote is from the head of the office, not from the technical head of the office – he is still probably using the original notebook assigned to him (the one with the spiral wire at the top).
Mike. Are you really that much of a tyro or can we ever expect you to move beyond straw man arguments?
Yes, the government run ponzi scheme we call social security which, in 20 years, won’t even be able to fund its obligations is so much better than a war which, may or may not help contribute to a more stablized middle east down the road. I would prefer we scrap both.
I just couldn’t help notice your inability to resist getting your dig in about the war when posting about FBI e-mail addresses. As if supplimental appropriations bills that aren’t even a part of the regular federal budget have any impact on something so insignificant as the cost to provide email access.
Mike, I don’t mean to flame you; but, you are so ill-educated. If you want to bring in Ponzi schemes, then you’re back to what was referred to (above) as voodoo economics. The sort of public rationales offered by the whole range of White House thieves from LBJ to the current crook. It has required and will, again, a long haul of contributions by ordinary taxpayers to pay for mad war schemes. A bit more difficult this time with more of the tax based exempted.
Social Security in particular has survived several decades of Congress and it’s only taken the current ignorant generation and the aforementioned thug — for any concerted effort to remove a program that not only benefits a significant portion of the American public; but, has the highest efficiency rating of any economic administration associated with American government.
Little revision is needed other than (1) stop crooked politicians from stealing from the fund for their pet wars and (2) assure that higher income wage earners miss exemption and continue to contribute.
Okay the place I work at is negative tech to the point we use groupwise, and we pay PER email address.
Perhaps the feds are doing the same.
g.w. is worse than a tax-and-spend liberal he is a borrow-and-spend conservative. he lives in a fantasy world where he can spend trillions without ever paying the tab. (wish i could run my finances like that)
todd
“Wow, I’m surprised this line hasn’t gotten old yet. It’s really quite boring.”
Not to me Mike – it never gets old. That is the truth never gets old.
All I can say is that you’re going to have problems cleaning your ears when you finally pull your head from the neocon sand.
Peace!
Having the highest efficiency rating of any agency in government is like being the fastest runner out of a group of MD sufferers. But cheeky comments aside, there are a lot of things wrong with the current social security system.
First and foremost is the fact that it is a ponzi scheme. The government is collecting the money from one group to pay current benefits with a promise to repay them with some benefit in the future. Well, the Supreme Court has already ruled that a promised benefit from the government means absolutely nothing, as Congress is perfectly free to amend or repeal that benefit. Then you also have the nasty little fact that the number of people receiving the benefit is outgrowing the people from which the money is collected.
Secondly, the social security system has been changed over time to not only provide a benefit to workers and their survivors, but also to provide a benefit to those who are not or never were capable of paying into it in the first place.
Thirdly, the “trust fund”, is completely invested in treasury bonds. I suppose the interest earned is better than just letting it sit in a vault without accruing any interest, but all the money that is borrowed from the sale of a bond, at some point has to be paid back. In order for the system to collect on the value of those bonds once revenues no longer meet the benefit obligation, the government will have to either cut programs elsewhere, borrow more money, or raise taxes. That will sure be fun.
And last, it does not provide anything close to the return on investment that I could get from somewhere else. The only reason why people contribute to it at all is because the law compels them to.
The social security system is a broken system that has outlived the conditions that were once favorable toward its sustainability.
It’s not JUST email, there is a whole new re-security process review and training proceedure, end of the year is actually good timing.
Did Janeane Garofalo convince you that all conservatives are neocons? What a wacky girl, haha!
I usually hang out on more libertarian forums… when I don’t have something more productive to do that is.
Don’t insult Jeanine. She is one of the 500,000,000 or so women I’d stoup.
Actually I’d like to get both that right wing-nut Ann Coultier and Jeanine in a more “personal” setting? Just to exchange “ideas” with them.
Administrative costs for SSA programs = 0.6% according to the OMB. Golly gee, Mike, your own corporate world must be something special to beat that.
It’s nice to say that the annual surplus “borrowed” by the White House types for their own ends “must be paid back”; but, it ain’t happened in my lifetime. The Dems didn’t do it — though Clinton looked like he was on the way to doing it before the Republikans started burning money to heat Iraq. If you think The Shrub’s kids will — you’re dreaming.
The conditions that have always made it sustainable are the same that have existed for decades — as long as individuals and corporations live up to their tax responsibilities. And the Ponzi scheme whine is nothing new — though copouts called it something else in Roosevelt’s day. Probably something about class. Still doesn’t prove out in practice — over 70 years or so. Can’t you come up with a new whine?
Most of us grump about paying any share of taxes. That ain’t news. But, why are you complaining? Isn’t your man in the White House doing enough to keep you from having to contribute?
More to the point — folks DO remember the point, right? The inconsistency and hypocrisy of a government that proclaims fighting the “War on Terror” is the highest priority — and then craps on a nitpicking cost-cutting item like email for the FBI is simply handing out instant photos of their lies and deceit to be used against them.
True, we seem to have a bunch of disorganized louts in the White House who can’t figure out how to change political tactics at home or abroad when they aren’t working. Equally true, the “loyal opposition” is timid enough to hide from the shadow of that larger-than-life unpatriotic baloney. But, sooner or later, some of this hypocrisy should come home to roost.
Don, you can’t expect these aging hippies and hippy wannabes to actually realize there is an I.T. reason why this deployment is expensive and time consuming. They have Bush bashing to do. Please stop confusing them with facts.
So you are trying to impress me with an administrative cost percentage from a program that deals with HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars anually, and then try to compare it to a company who deals with figures in the millions? Quick question, does it take a comparable percentage of a millionaire’s income to live to somebody who makes 30,000?
Perhaps you just don’t like the term “ponzi scheme” because you know that it implies something illegal… except when run by the government of course. But that is exactly how the SS system is funded – I pay into the system to provide the benefit promised to the generations who paid into it before me, with the same promise that future generations will pay for me. And just like all ponzi schemes, when the system becomes insolvent, the last group to pay will get stuck holding the bag. And yes, at some point, the money borrowed from the “trust fund” will have to be paid back to the social security system… because the surpluses from the SS Taxes are projected to turn into deficits in the not too distant future.
Last time I checked, the White House doesn’t authorize any federal spending… that’s the Congress’ job. And you do remember that the Republicans (clever ‘k’ in place of the’c’ ommited) took control of that 2 years after Clinton’s term. That’s the Republicans of today show little resemblance to those from 1994 is only illustration of why term limits were a good idea. You don’t get so obsessed over maintaining power when you know it will automatically end after a certain time.
Bush certainly isn’t “my man” in case you were wondering. “Compassionate Conservative” has proven to be little different from the Great Society liberalism that can’t die soon enough; although we did get a tax break out of the deal. 😐
Sorry Mike, but those excuses don’t cut it.
This is a law and order government, yet that seems far down the list of priorities set by the Government. The Bush administration has several times returned to Congress asking for supplemental money for high priority projects. I believe they have gone two or three times for Iraq and twice for the Gulf Coast Hurricane relief. Yet, there is not enough money to be found to adequately provide law enforcement with the correct tools.
How can Congress justify so much of the “pork” that goes into each budget but miss funding the FBI. I know the Bush administration sent tens of thousands of troops to Iraq without body armor and unarmored Humvees, but that was just an oversight. They were only National Guard troops that always get the Regular Army leftovers. The FBI is a Federal agency.
And, BTW, the Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, sent in its budget request to the White House. The President passed it on to Congress. After Congress passed it Bush signed it. So somehow Bush and the Republican controlled Congress had a lot of input in this.
Hey, let’s do something constructive… let’s take away e-mail from ALL federal employees.
seriously if the Department of Homeland Security believes the FBI doesn;t need email, then DHS doesn;t need it either.
Hell, the government would be cripped without CrackBerries
as for email addresses, how about lastname.firstname.last4digitsofbadge@fbi.gov
No confusion that way as to who is who.