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US Customs supervisor busted for stealing hardware from Homeland Security PCs
- 1970-01-01 19d agoBured lede: i7 CPUs for border patrol.. why?
- deleted 19d ago[deleted]
- arcfour 19d agoIt's just a typical enterprise PC configuration. Probably because nobody writes efficient software these days.
- deleted 19d ago[deleted]
- hypercube33 19d ago45 security apps cut the ram and CPU performance in half out of the gate, then you have Win11 with its web gui and users who complain about any slowness so i7 or r7 is about the norm most places / bulk big 3 oems make for business.
- Scoundreller 19d agoand rowhammer etc mitigations microcode updates personally I have an i7 in the lab that turned into a crawl on Youtube because they started sending VP9 video by default, but i7 doesn't have hardware decode for it. Got a plugin to force h264 (h264ify) and it's back to normal. Then you have situations where a software update adds a CPU instruction dependency and straight up doesn't work anymore. Had to install and force-retain an old version of Spotify client on a bench lab PC because the new versions require AVX-1/2. It's a streaming audio player...
- hulitu 16d ago> because the new versions require AVX-1/2 Well, an 128kbit MP3 requires at least a 486DX2-66 but you also need to run the OS. /s
- kube-system 19d agoFor the same reasons fortune 500s will spec the same for their office workers. Labor is expensive compared to hardware. It is often cheaper to spend a little bit more on hardware to avoid supporting multiple configuration, exceptions, more frequent updates, support tickets from power users, etc If you pinch pennies buying a spec that exactly meets today’s needs, and next year MS Teams releases a new update that requires more resources, you don’t want to buy a whole building full of new computers.
- formerly_proven 19d agoYou seem to live in a bit of a bubble, personally I've never seen anything other than penny-pinching on corporate laptops and everybody everywhere complaining about the same. (I don't mean that IT departments hand out bottom-of-the-barrel plastic laptops which break every five minutes, but rather fairly low-spec Thinkpad/HP/Dell business laptops with just enough RAM that their bloated Windows 11 installs are barely not swapping when idle and just enough SSD space that Windows Update doesn't fail)
- theandrewbailey 19d agoI work in e-waste recycling. Most of the PCs and laptops I see are corporate IT decommissions. Most of those have i5 CPUs, and only a handful are i7. Few are cruel enough to afflict their wage slaves with an i3 or less.
- kube-system 19d agoPoorly run IT organizations certainly exist, even in F500. I’m telling you why it’s done, not that it universally is.
- nortlov 19d agoBorder Patrol’s IT department more forward looking than the rest of the government..? sign me up! I’ve been using the same laptop for nearly 5 years now. It’s painfully slow and does not meet the needs of the latest Teams updates.
- akerl_ 19d agoAt a certain scale, the relative complexity (both in terms of inventory management and dealing with upgrade requests / approvals / etc) tends itself towards picking a baseline spec that can work for the overwhelming majority of your fleet.
- goku_vegeta 19d agoi7 CPUs have been used for all sorts of PC configurations. Your standard library at a university or college, the office worker desktop who does nothing but use web based applications for their job, and so on. The pricing difference between an i5 and an i7 aren't really that big when you go to Dell and tell them I need 4,000 desktops. DHS isn't paying the same pricing difference as we would be when purchasing a boxed CPU.
- tomasphan 19d agoBecause it runs Windows hehe
- Ekaros 19d agoAt certain point people just don't care about saving money. You get a budget and then get quotes and pick one that matches what you are allowed to spend. If there is multiple with same spend go for one with bigger numbers.
- phendrenad2 19d agoIsn't Palantir a webapp? Full of maps and lists of stuff? Seems like a recipe for "chrome has stopped responding..."
- walrus01 19d agoI would also say in general that the federal government's software contractors are likely building tons of complex HTML5 / WebRTC / webassembly software packages that will choke a cheaper desktop PC. Ever viewed 20 cameras simultaneously in one browser tab in Frigate and seen the CPU usage? Now imagine something like that but for watching border sensor cameras and stuff...
- dlcarrier 19d agoThat's usually a RAM limit, and only six computers had RAM swapped out of them.
- jerlam 19d agoCustoms and Border Patrol has been granted huge budget increases this year. Bureaucracies generally need to spend all their entire budget to show that they "need" it to avoid losing it next year, so they are certainly going to spend it. (Also, expect increased corruption)
- like_any_other 19d ago[flagged]
- Sarkie 19d ago"But it's not really relevant" correct
- earth-tattoo 19d ago[flagged]
- walrus01 19d agoIf you've ever driven through the land crossing border in either direction at Calais, Maine (and St. Stephen, NB), they're both really tiny and sleepy places. It's astonishing to think that he wouldn't get caught. Like, you cripple the PCs of a place where your colleagues use them on a day to day basis and think nobody is going to notice? Real genius move there, bud.
- hammock 19d agoThe border guys are there are really aggressive too. I canoed the st croix up around there and you are warned not to paddle north of the halfway line in the middle of the river… agents will literally pop out of the woods and start reproaching you
- Scoundreller 19d agoobviously this isn't official advice, but are they misinformed and don't like you doing legal things that bother them? > Any small pleasure vessel leaving a United States port into international or foreign waters, without a call at a foreign port, does not satisfy the foreign departure requirement. Therefore, certain fishing vessels, cruises to nowhere, or any vessel that leaves from a United States port and returns without calling a foreign port or place, has not departed the United States. Dunno how much emphasis to put on the word "port" https://www.cbp.gov/travel/pleasure-boats-private-flyers/pleasure-boat-overview https://www.cbp.gov/travel/pleasure-boats-private-flyers/ple... While it's a more inland water, Large vessels effectively can't transit through Windows/Detroit shipping channel without multiple border line crossings: https://i0.wp.com/niche-canada.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Lower-Detroit-River-scaled.jpg?resize=956%2C2048&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/niche-canada.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/1...
- snypher 19d ago>but are they misinformed and don't like you doing legal things that bother them This is generally law enforcement all over. Given the power imbalance people don't question it due to fear of arrest/violence.
- pushcx 19d agoMany years ago, I arrived to my half-height cubicle at a Fortune 100 company to see that my desktop PC case was ajar. I set the CRT aside, opened it, and realized that the RAM had been removed. My neighbor explained what must have happened: another employee must have needed to double their RAM from 8 to 16 MB. Requisitioning an upgrade was a weeks-long bureaucratic process that required approval by one's manager and IT, perhaps prompting a review of per-team resource allocation. Repairing a broken PC was a trivial help desk ticket; my PC was restored in an hour or two.
- slumberlust 19d agoThis was common at our East coast Amazon site circa 2019 as well, but for monitors.
- walrus01 19d agoReminds me of the kids in my high school who stole individual 4MB 72-pin SIMMs out of a bunch of computer lab desktop PCs to upgrade their approximately equivalent generation motherboard/CPU home systems to whatever was their max capacity, in an era when a 16MB RAM desktop PC was a high performer. Shortly after all the PCs got locks on them.
- Scoundreller 19d agothen they learned how to pick/shim locks
- peddling-brink 19d agoWas this explanation given with a wink and a nod, or did your neighbor always have 16MB of RAM?
- saghm 19d agoSounds like the neighbor could have just taken the RAM from their own computer out and claimed someone stole it and then called IT to provide them with replacement and then opened it back to and put theirs in. Seems pretty selfish to disrupt someone else's day for this instead of your own; they could have gotten back up and running before you did since they could have put in a help desk ticket before you even got in.
- geetee 19d agoWhy in the world is U.S. Customs and Border Protection hiring foreign nationals?
- walrus01 19d agoI'm fairly sure you need to at least be a Permanent Resident to get hired, which makes you a US Person (it's a distinct legal definition). Permanent residents are also able to join the military and have been able to do so for a long time. There's enough of them that during the peak of the Iraq War they even held in-country citizenship ceremonies at major bases for people who had filed and completed their citizenship paperwork.
- thatfrenchguy 19d agoUS person is a tax definition, folks without permanent residency that meet the substantial presence test are also US people. For immigration purposes you use resident alien / nonresident alien.
- lightedman 19d agoUS Person is not a tax definition, it is a security definition. holds up access badge with US Person written on it Taxes do not care if you're an American or not, you're still paying them.
- jeffbee 19d agoFor the same reason that foreign nationals can join the military, including the Coast Guard that has an overlapping mission: it's a nation of immigrants and for centuries until very recently most Americans readily recognized the value and necessity of recruiting foreign people into various posts.
- like_any_other 19d ago> for centuries until very recently most Americans readily recognized the value and necessity of recruiting foreign people into various posts. You forgot to mention that, for those centuries, US immigration was effectively whites-only, until the 1965 Hart-Celler act (that politicians promised wouldn't change this!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart-Celler_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart-Celler_Act
- londons_explore 19d agoAnd how much did this investigation cost, when you account for all the hours spent by investigators, lawers, judges, etc? My guess is it was a huge net loss for the taxpayer. The more effective move for the nation would have been for this guys boss to have confronted him and said "computer parts keep going missing on your shift. You have 2 weeks to make sure all the computers are back to their exact original config or we're gonna investigate and you could end up in prison".
- genidoi 19d agoIt’s obviously not about the cost of the parts, there just can’t be any tolerance for criminal conduct in government agency employees.
- trebligdivad 19d agoIMHO a bigger worry is if they were opening the case then they could have modified it for spying or changing contents. I'd have thought stuff like this should have case alarm notification and inventory change alerts.
- rotringlvr 19d ago[dead]
- toss1 19d agoSure, that'd be more "cost efficient", and for a small one-off, probably better. But law enforcement and justice is not a profit center. Merely making the threats like you specify and even having it restored encourages more crime by making the crime effectively zero-risk — either he gets away with it, or simply needs to restore things to the way they were and the only cost to the criminal is the wasted effort. Makes it so crime pays. And no, the investigation of watching a bunch of videos to observe the perp opening the computer cases, and writing up a complaint, is probably lower cost than the multiple thefts.
- taf2 19d agoI remember my parents working for a company in the 90s and the mailroom was one the most common places things went missing… aka theft. I recall my mom had her purse stolen at her cube… theft from within similar to security exploits from within seem to be the most real security vulnerability to be focused on. That sshd that can only be accessed from a few specific ips with the right port knocking is not how you get hacked… at least not normally
- stephenlf 19d agoRobin Hood?
- muragekibicho 19d agoSelling 105,800$ worth of compute for 39*200=7800$ is similar to theft I've only encountered in the third world. My boiler's copper water supply lines were vandalized for scrap. Their total value was 1540$ but the thief sold the copper for a grand total of 20$. The police and I went to the local scrap market, asked for anyone with a great deal on copper supply lines, and the perp was caught.
- thenthenthen 19d agoNot only in the third world i would say?
- Scoundreller 19d agoSame but for a flexible thin-wall a/c refrigerant line :(
- AnotherGoodName 19d agoThe copper theft thing happens in western nations too. There's videos of people driving up in cars, license plates and faces showing and just to add to the stupidity they use bolt cutters to remove live power cables from EV charging stations. The damage they do is well over $1000 from the multiple they hit so a major federal charge qualifies. The scrap value once you pull out the copper is less than $5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqmythK_b6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqmythK_b6Y The amount of effort to reward doesn't come near even a minimum wage job. Similar to the above. The guy sold $7800 over the course of more than a year and not to factor in this was a swap so he bought replacements. Stupid.
- sellmesoap 19d agoGeez $5 is the gas to drive up, reminds me of Zorg's chaos is productivity speech.
- arjie 19d ago[deleted unsubstantiated text]
- sdenton4 19d agoThis does not appear anywhere in this article. Just sowing misinformation?
- arjie 19d agoHmm, I just googled and used what I thought was a local newspaper https://www.themainewire.com/2026/09/chinese-national-accused-of-illegally-modifying-homeland-security-computers-at-maine-canada-border-station/ https://www.themainewire.com/2026/09/chinese-national-accuse... But you’re right. That’s poor reasoning because this kind of thing is easy to create fake news around. I’ll delete original. I shouldn’t have relied on it.
- 2b3a51 19d agoHang on, 105 800 / 46 = $2300 per machine. Good heavens, when I was partially responsible for hardware refreshes in a UK public sector organisation with around a thousand endpoint PCs we budgeted something like £600 a box. Have prices really gone up that much in a decade or so, or is this some maximalist prosecution claim? RAM thefts: Birmingham UK, Jewellery Quarter, St Paul's Square. Some may remember the solicitor's office on the corner that had 'RAM removed from PCs overnight' etched on the street level windows pre-millenium. Has been converted into posh flats now.
- PorciiVorbesc 19d ago>when I was partially responsible for hardware refreshes in a UK public sector organisation with around a thousand endpoint PCs we budgeted something like £600 a box. Same here in EU mainland, at every org I worked we used to get budget notebooks to do SW dev on, also in the 600-800 Euro range. I think because the US is so much wealthier and can afford to spend more on tech without breaking a sweat. Hence the "Europoor" meme where Europeans can't comprehend the material abundance and spending power of the US.
- dlcarrier 19d agoThere's been ~40% inflation accumulated over the last decade. On top of that, storage and RAM prices have recently doubled or even tripled, as demand has outpaced supply. A quick look on Dell's web page shows an entry-level Core i3-14100T system with 8 GB RAM for $747.74, which would be under £600. A $2,230 system from their Alienware brand currently gets you a Core Ultra 7 265F, GeForce RTX 5070 and 32 GB of RAM. I can't imagine most office workers would need more than the entry-level system, although corporate purchases are known for overprovisioning, especially so when it's a government body, so it wouldn't be unheard of to spend $2,300, especially so if that includes paying an IT worker to set it up.
- deleted 19d ago[deleted]
- sva_ 19d ago> One camera recording showed Liu using a screwdriver to scrape thermal paste off a processor Double crime
- avadodin 19d agoI thought this would be about GPUs. Corporate computers often have a 4 or 8 GB VRAM brand GPU that sits idle only running the desktop animations. If you have an HDMI port for the iGPU or however the monitor connection for laptops work, it is almost a victimless crime. Maybe even one stick of ram in two stick setups. If you steal the CPU yeah someone is bound to notice even if it is an atom.
- mangoclimb 19d agohttps://www.apnews.com/article/gold-bars-cia-official-virginia-8bdb5d45c65b3a6be0715f1ff3dbe00b https://www.apnews.com/article/gold-bars-cia-official-virgin... It turns out white people are the bigger thieves.