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Raytheon dropped from border control contract.

Dreamer | 25.07.2010 16:22

How to wasre money while increasing human suffering.
As regular readers of this website will know Raytheon have office on Bristol Business Park, Coldharbour Lane. Opposite UWE Frenchay Campus.

It has long been targeted by anti-arms trade protestersnot least because of its manufacture of cluster bombs and its arms sales to the Israeli military.

Its also emerged that Raytheon trade closely not only with the M.O.D. but also EDO, MBM, ITT who secretly ship beryllium ore in missle crates for them.
But this posting is not about Raytheons evil doing regarding the arms trade but its evil doing concerning immigration control.

Home Office sacks Raytheon-led electronic border control consortium.
Government says it has no confidence in Raytheon.
e-Borders system at least a year behind schedule

The government has ended its £750m contract with a consortium led by Raytheon, the US defence group, to put in place an electronic system to check travellers leaving and entering Britain.

The Home Office said that it had "no confidence" in the Massachusetts-based company because the programme was running at least 12 months behind schedule.

Raytheon won the contract in 2007 and so far the government has spent £188m on it. The Home Office said that it would seek another company to deliver the system "as a matter of urgency". It was meant to be operational by 2014.

The e-Borders system is supposed to vet travellers entering or leaving the country by checking their details against police, security and immigration watch lists.

A Home Office spokesman said that Raytheon had failed to deliver the target of having the technology in place to check 90% of all passengers this year. "They're nowhere near that. The government decided enough is enough," he said.

The Home Office said in a statement: "The home secretary has no confidence in Raytheon, which since July 2009 has been in breach of contract. With critical parts of the programme already running at least 12 months late, we have taken the decision to terminate the e-Borders contract with [the consortium].

"The government is determined to get value for money from its major contracts and requires the highest standard of performance from its suppliers. We will now be seeking alternative providers [for] this project as a matter of urgency."

Raytheon's UK representatives were not immediately available for comment.

Other members of the consortium include Serco, Accenture, Detica and QinetiQ. A spokesman for Serco, which was responsible for the infrastructure and service management of e-Borders, stressed that the company had fulfilled its part of the contract: "It's important to make clear that Serco delivered all of its commitments under its sub-contract."

Serco hoped to be part of future arrangements, the spokesman said.

Dreamer says:
While this report is great news for those who have always known that this company has blood on its hands from profiteering from mass human suffering as a result of constant wars initiated by the USA and Britain, the thought of this line of work being continued at all, let alone another bunch of bastards like Serco is a cause for grave concern.
UK and Europe:

Serco manages the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Aldermaston as part of a consortium with Lockheed Martin and Jacobs. AWE is one of the most advanced research, design and production facilities in the world, developing the sophisticated materials, quantum physics and computer modelling vital to the safe and effective maintenance of the UK's nuclear deterrent.

Serco also enables the training of national security personnel through its services at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, the MoD's world class institute responsible for educating the military leaders of tomorrow; we train all of the RAF's helicopter pilots at the advanced training facility at RAF Benson; and we manage the Cabinet Office's Emergency Planning College, the government's training centre for crisis management and emergency planning.
http://www.da.mod.uk/

Dreamer
- Original article on IMC Bristol: http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/692768