Use It or Lose It

If you know anything about the way budget allocations work, you know that a governmental or corporate department that is granted a certain amount of money and finds itself with surplus funds when review time comes around will find a way to spend those funds, even creating need where none previously existed. Why? Because many budget allocations are on a “use it or lose it” basis — if you wind up with extra money at the end of the year, that means you didn’t need it in the first place, so you’re not going to need it next time. So the temptation there is to use the funds, to manufacture a need for which the funds can be used in order to justify hanging onto the budget.

And so it is with homeland security funds. As you know, I’ve complained that New York City’s DHS antiterrorism funds were cut by 40% in this year’s budget (notwithstanding the “use it or lose it” rule). But there are numerous small locales — particularly in Republican districts — that were showered with Homeland Security funds early on. And they have manufactured a need for extra policing to fit the budget rather than to fit the actual level of crime.

Digby has some examples from Ted Stevens’ Alaska:

My spouse is up in Alaska right now working. Apparently, the place is crawling with police, everywhere, and the local daily police blotter is much bigger than it’s ever been despite no population growth. They have received a lot of homeland security money from Uncle Ted Stephens.

Digby then provides an example of a town that decided to use its funds for extra surveillance:

This is the Alaskan bush at its most remote. Here, tundra meets sea, and sea turns to ice for half the year. Scattered, almost hidden, in the terrain are some of the most isolated communities on American soil. People choose to live in outposts like Dillingham (pop. 2,400) for that reason: to be left alone.

So eyebrows were raised in January when the first surveillance cameras went up on Main Street. Each camera is a shiny white metallic box with two lenses like eyes. The camera’s shape and design resemble a robot’s head.

Workers on motorized lifts installed seven cameras in a 360-degree cluster on top of City Hall. They put up groups of six atop two light poles at the loading dock, and more at the fire hall and boat harbor.

By mid-February, more than 60 cameras watched over the town, and the Dillingham Police Department plans to install 20 more — all purchased through a $202,000 Homeland Security grant meant primarily to defend against a terrorist attack.

80 cameras for 2400 people. I went shopping on Flatbush Avenue not too long ago, where there were at least 2400 people out on the sidewalk, and I know there weren’t 80 cameras watching us. And I live somewhere where cameras are expected — and nobody’s making raincoats out of walrus intestines.

So we see that excess funds will not be kept in reserve, but will be spent. What about information?

Same thing.

Wanna freak yourself out? Consider the Big Brotherly implications of blogging:

New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon’s National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology – specifically the forthcoming “semantic web” championed by the web standards organisation W3C – to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.

Gee, I can’t imagine how that capability might possibly be abused.

Remember, too, that the NSA has been creating a massive database of every call placed on most of the telephone carriers in this country. They say they’re not going to use the information unless there’s evidence of a crime, but do you believe that for a minute?