The first phase of what is expected to be a lengthy and costly process to build additional segments of wall along the southwestern U.S. border ended as the deadline expired Tuesday afternoon for companies to pitch their ideas to the government.

The bidding process was to build 3-by-3-meter (10-by-10-foot) prototypes — some made of concrete, some of any other type of material — in San Diego, that the government will now evaluate for potential use along parts of the border, which stretches from southeast Texas to southwest California.

The government said it will spend two weeks selecting up to 20 competitors for a second round of competition for each type of wall. More than 400 companies showed interest in bidding, and several may win the chance to build the prototypes.

Phase two

If the schedule outlined by U.S. Customs and Border Protection is not delayed, the second phase will begin in mid-April, with companies submitting cost analyses and more specific design plans.

Construction on the prototypes could begin in June, according to bid documents.

The specifications for the wall indicate new portions could be as low as 5 meters or as high as 9 meters (18 feet and 30 feet) — “physically imposing in height,” and resistant to people chipping away at it, CBP described in a notice to interested contractors.

The process began in mid-March, pushed by President Donald Trump, who campaigned regularly on the idea of building a wall along the border. Fencing, walls, surveillance towers and other barriers — including natural, rugged terrain — already exist.

The overall length of the wall segments to be added to the border remain unclear. But they must be resistant to climbing and take more than 30 minutes to bore through, according to bid documents — enough time for border agents to locate the attempted breach.

They should also be “aesthetically pleasing in color” on the north, U.S.-facing side, the document specifies.

Other solutions

In a Congressional hearing Tuesday, two former CBP officials and a Texas professor testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee about border fencing in the Southwest; they agreed with several senators that a wall is not the only solution to illegal migration across the border.

“There is not a one-size-fits-all for the border,” said David Aguilar, former acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

He advocated for increased resources for CBP in the area, while Terence Garrett, a professor from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, advocated for improving conditions in the so-called northern “triangle countries” — Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — to curb the number of aspiring migrants traveling north.

The ongoing bid process focuses exclusively on the wall, but Ron Colburn, former deputy chief of the U.S. Border Patrol who also worked on the Arizona-Mexico border, told senators Tuesday that border security combines multiple techniques that change depending on what area is in question.

“Without tactical infrastructure, it’s too weak. Without the right amount of manpower, it’s too weak. And without the right mix of technology, it’s too weak,” Colburn said. “The links in the chain have to be equally strong. And it has to be the right mix.”

“It’s not going to be the same in San Diego as in Rio Grande Valley, South Texas,” he added.

Paying for the wall

Trump promised to make Mexico pay for the wall, a proposal that country rebutted. Instead, the administration has requested that Congress approve $1.5 billion this year to start building a wall.

Estimates for the overall cost of adding miles of wall to the border are as high as $21.6 billion, according to a Reuters estimate, and that funding will require congressional approval.

Additionally, the government faces continued legal wrangling along the border to secure the land, often from private owners, to build additional barriers.

WASHINGTON — 

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and daughter are holding onto scores of real estate investments — part of a portfolio of at least $240 million in assets — while they serve in White House jobs, according to financial disclosures released publicly late Friday.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser, resigned from more than 260 entities and sold off 58 businesses or investments that lawyers identified as posing potential conflicts of interest, the documents show.

But his lawyers, in consultation with the Office of Government Ethics, determined that his real estate assets, many of them in New York City, are unlikely to pose the kinds of conflicts that would trigger a need to divest.

“The remaining conflicts, from a practical perspective, are pretty narrow and very manageable,” said Jamie Gorelick, an attorney who has been working on the ethics agreements for Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

FILE – From left, President Donald Trump’s advisors Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, and Trump Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and other members of White House senior staff are sworn in at the White House, in Washington, Jan. 22, 2017.

Kushner began selling off the most problematic pieces of his portfolio shortly after Trump won the election, and some of those business deals predate what is required to be captured in the financial disclosure forms.

For example, Kushner sold his stake in a Manhattan skyscraper to a trust his mother oversees. Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and their three minor children have no financial interest in that trust, his lawyer said.

The Kushner Companies, now run by Jared Kushner’s relatives, are seeking investment partners for a massive redevelopment.

The White House on Friday began released financial disclosure forms for more than 100 or its top administration officials — a mix of people far wealthier, and therefore more entangled in businesses that could conflict with their government duties, than people in previous administrations.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer described the business people who have joined the administration as “very blessed and very successful,” and said the disclosure forms will show that they have set aside “a lot” to go into public service.

The financial disclosures — required by law to be made public — give a snapshot of the employees’ finances as they entered the White House. What’s not being provided: the Office of Government Ethics agreements with those employees on what they must do to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

Those documents will never be made public, White House lawyers said, although the public will eventually have access to “certificates of divestiture” issued to employees who are seeking capital gains tax deferrals for selling off certain assets.

Kushner, for example, received certificates of divestitures for his financial interests in several assets, including several funds tied to Thrive Capital, his brother Joshua Kushner’s investment firm.

He and Ivanka Trump built up companies the documents show are worth at least $50 million each and have stepped away from their businesses while in government service. Like the president himself, however, they retain a financial interest in many of them. Ivanka Trump agreed this week to become a federal employee and will file her own financial disclosure at a later date.

Jared Kushner’s disclosure shows he took on tens of millions of dollars of bank debt in 2015 and 2016, including liabilities with several international banks whose interests could come before the Trump administration.

Financial information for members of Trump’s Cabinet who needed Senate confirmation has, in most cases, been available for weeks through the Office of Government Ethics.

The president must also file periodic financial disclosures, but he is not required to make another disclosure until next year.

The vote by the U.S. Congress to repeal rules that limit how internet service providers can use customer data has generated renewed interest in an old internet technology: virtual private networks, or VPNs.

VPNs cloak a customer’s web-surfing history by making an encrypted connection to a private server, which then searches the Web on the customer’s behalf without revealing the destination addresses. VPNs are often used to connect to a secure business network, or in countries such as China and
Turkey to bypass government restrictions on Web surfing.

Privacy-conscious techies are now talking of using VPNs as a matter of course to guard against broadband providers collecting data about which internet sites and services they are using.

“Time to start using a VPN at home,” Vijaya Gadde, general counsel of Twitter Inc, said in a tweet on Tuesday that was retweeted by Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey.

Gadde was not immediately available for comment. Twitter said she was commenting in her personal capacity and not on behalf of the company.

The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives voted 215-205 on Tuesday to repeal rules adopted last year by the Federal Communications Commission under then-President Barack Obama to require broadband providers to obtain consumer consent before using their data for advertising or marketing.

The U.S. Senate, also controlled by Republicans, voted 50-48 last week to reverse the rules. The White House said President Donald Trump supported the repeal measure.

Supporters of the repeal said the FCC unfairly required internet service providers like AT&T Inc, Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc to do more to protect customers’ privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc’s
Google or Facebook Inc.

Critics said the repeal would weaken consumers’ privacy protections.

VPN advantages, drawbacks

Protected data includes a customer’s web-browsing history, which in turn can be used to discover other types of information, including health and financial data.

Some smaller broadband providers are now seizing on privacy as a competitive advantage. Sonic, a California-based broadband provider, offers a free VPN service to its customers so they can connect to its network when they are not home. That ensures that when Sonic users log on to wi-fi at a coffee shop or hotel, for example, their data is not collected by that establishment’s
broadband provider.

“We see VPN as being important for our customers when they’re not on our network. They can take it with them on the road,” CEO Dane Jasper said.

In many areas of the country, there is no option to choose an independent broadband provider and consumers will have to pay for a VPN service to shield their browsing habits.

Private Internet Access, a VPN provider, took a visible stand against the repeal measure when it bought a full-page ad in the New York Times on Sunday. But the company, which boasts about a million subscribers, potentially stands to benefit from the legislation, acknowledged marketing director Caleb Chen.

VPNs have drawbacks. They funnel all user traffic through one point, so they are an attractive target for hackers and spies. The biggest obstacle to their routine use as a privacy safeguard is that they can be too much of a hassle to set up for many customers. They also cost money.

“The further along toward being a computer scientist you have to be to use a VPN, the smaller a portion of the population we’re talking about that can use it,” said Ernesto Falcon, a legislative counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which opposed the bill.