Monday, March 20, 2006

NO E-MAIL FOR SOME FBI AGENTS

Not a joke. Not even close. The Associated Press reports:
Budget constraints are forcing some local FBI 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 Daily News editorial board meeting.

"We just don't have the money, and that is an endless stream of complaints that come from the field," he said.

FBI officials in Washington denied that cost-cutting was putting agents at a disadvantage.

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.
G-men without G-mail.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I call shenanigans!!!
Budget constraints? You can write a 5 line shell script that can create thousands of email accounts in seconds.
An email account is nothing more than a directory that houses a couple of text files and is linked to a network address through a configuration file.
The only cost of hosting an email account is that of storage and maintenance. Limit them to a few megabytes and automate the changing of their passwords and you have an investment of a few hours a month to manage the whole system with the storage cost limited to a few thousand dollars.
I am very curious as to why a government agency that is now one of the biggest recruiters of information workers is claiming they can't afford email addresses. for their employees.
wtf yo!?

Anonymous said...

Riiiiiight. Eliminate email for FBI agents to eliminate the budget deficit while the illegal pre-emptive war entered into based on lies costs continue to mount, latest projections will be to the tune of ONE TRILLION DOLLARS! Maybe if Bushie cut back on the illegal domestic spying program just a little FBI agents might be able to have email accounts.

This is so insanely stupid in so insanely many ways. Further evidence that GW Bush is the worst president ever.

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's time to privatize the FBI...

Anonymous said...

It makes a lot of sense. Bush has the FBI too busy reading other folks' e-mail..

Anonymous said...

Let it be noted that I am in 100% agreement with DocLarry ... the question anymore is not whether Bush is a bad president or not ... it is: just how bad is he?

Worse than Carter and Nixon? Yup. Worse than Warren G. Harding? Yup. Worse than Buchanan? ... that's a close one ... I have long predicted that in 10 years, the names Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney will be bywords for failure, deceit and infamy.

Anonymous said...

Whoa! kornzakrackin agrees with me? Will tomorrow's headlines having anything to do with an unusual cold spell in a typically very hot clime?

Anonymous said...

Yep, hell is freezing over and soon Palestinians and Israelis will join Shi'ites and Suunis in a great big Mideast lovefest!

Anonymous said...

This doesn't surprise me actually. I have heard all kinds of great stories about the state of our nations IT infrastructure (military included) from people that get to deal with it. I am amazed Big Brother's Minions can get all their spying done. This is what happens when you have people making IT budget decisions that don't understand what it is they are making the decision about, and people in charge of the IT departments that got their job through the good ol' boy network rather than through their qualifications... or at least... that is my opinion/guess/assumption.