DHS' Cut-and-Paste Bid for Online Snoops

When the Department of Homeland Security unveiled its plan to monitor terrorists' online chatter the other day, it sounded awfully familiar. The Director of National Intelligence's office, for example, has a similar program, to keep track of jihadis on the 'net. And private groups do much the same thing for all kinds of government clients. "This sounds a lot like what Rita Katz's SITE Institute does," Sharon noted.

More than she realized. Turns out that the DHS request for proposals is lifted, almost word-for-word, from the SITE Institute website.

Check it out. The DHS solicitation asks for...

Entire translated transcripts of terrorist leaders speeches, videos, and audio messages, as well as the original video and audio messages.

Translations of terrorist books, magazines, fatwas, and military training manuals.

Translations of terrorist communiqus [sic], including copies of videos and audio messages associated with the communication.

Translations of terrorist chatter discussing potential targets, methods of attack, and other relevant material.

Searchable archive of all historical material.

...While the SITE Institute promises:

*1. Entire translated transcripts of terrorist leaders’ speeches, videos, and audio messages, as well as the original video and audio messages.
*

*2. Translations of terrorist books, magazines, fatwas, and military training manuals.
*

*3. Translations of terrorist communiqués, including copies of videos and audio messages associated with the communiqués.
*

*4. Translations of terrorist chatter discussing potential targets, methods of attack, and other relevant material.
*

In addition, the SITE Institute offers a fully searchable archive of all of our historical material to ensure that you can find information quickly and easily.

Now, maybe this is just a case of time-pressed grant-writer, cutting a few corners. It happens more than you'd guess. But a Congressional source says, "The fact that the language was literally copied and pasted from SITE's website strongly implies that this is for them." A no-bid contract, in other words, under the guise of a competitive one. "Also," the source notes, "the solicitation only has a 5-day response time, not enough for a real competition."

In federal contracting, it's not at all uncommon for a project to be hard-wired for a particular company. A Powerpoint Ranger will basically say: We're gonna buy *Jane's *library of defense products. If there's anybody else out there with similar products, please bid.

But lifting the language word-for-word from a company's website -- and giving potential competitors just five days to bid -- that's not typical at all.

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* Terrorists Keep Blogs, Too
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* British Military Gags Blogs
* Army Audit: Official Sites, Not Blogs, are Security Threat