The stupid ... it BURNS!

[unixronin]

The United States has outsourced the manufacturing of its electronic passports to overseas companies — including one in Thailand that was victimized by Chinese espionage — raising concerns that cost savings are being put ahead of national security, an investigation by The Washington Times has found.

The Government Printing Office's decision to export the work has proved lucrative, allowing the agency to book more than $100 million in recent profits by charging the State Department more money for blank passports than it actually costs to make them, according to interviews with federal officials and documents obtained by The Times.

The profits have raised questions both inside the agency and in Congress because the law that created GPO as the federal government's official printer explicitly requires the agency to break even by charging only enough to recover its costs.

[ FACEPALM ]

"We have n00 s00p3r s3kur3 biometric RFID passports to FOIL TERRORISTS!  We're going to outsource the manufacturing to a Thai company that's already been compromised, so that we can make a bunch of money in violation of our charter!"

This isn't security theater.  It's security farce.

Comments

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

The Washington Times might not be familiar with GPO policies, the GPO has, for years, charged cost plus 20% to the ordering agency for it's services.

That in part is what pays for it's personnel and equipment. Most GPO jobs are outsourced, although when I was a GPO contractor in the 70s, nothing went out of the country and bloody little went out of an area between Kingsport TN and Philadelphia PA.

Presumably the "questions raised in Congress" were raised by those incapable of adding the cost of administration (and defraying the cost of the Congressional Record) to material/subcontracting costs (i.e., yes, sir your job had ink and paper costs of $12k. It also had composition costs of $1.5k for labour on a machine that cost the taxpayer $500k. The 20% is your share of that machine's cost and overhead, plus administration fees for supervising the contract we let to print it and other jobs).

One wonders at the State Department's costs that inflate the charges made for a passport to $100+ from net costs of approximately $15.

Possibly Congress should ask the Secretary of State to explain this $85/unit gross profit.

That said, WTF? Contracted with a foreign firm to print sensitive material?