File under Holy Crap
Thousands of airline passengers unexpectedly found themselves stranded in line at U.S. border checkpoints in August, after a Department of Homeland Security computer crashed.
At Miami International, some 4,500 frustrated travelers waited in cramped conditions. Airport staff handed out bottles of water and coloring books with crayons for children during the wait for the computer, which checks identities, to come back up.
“This incident was extraordinary,” said Greg Chin, an airport spokesman. “In other cases when the computers have been down, it has only been for less than half an hour.”
Here is one of the reasons why DHS is having computer problems:
The holdups can be attributed in part to the Homeland Security Department’s antiquated computer systems. The agency’s mainframes do not share data and are accessible only by some offices. An upgrade to Microsoft’s Windows 2000
operating system failed because of application incompatibilities, which meant one division had to undertake a cumbersome reversion back to Windows 95.
Windows 95!? Man, aside from scaring the crap out of me, articles like this one are really making it difficult for me to suspend disbelief when watching movies like Enemy of the State or TeeVee programs like Threshold that portray government agencies as having actual technology and stuff.