[hypewatch]

I’m disappointed that U.S. police departments would use such low a quality service with no focus on security. Looking at Netsential’s website, their services look very basic and inexpensive. There’s not even a mention of security on its site. It was only a matter of time before they were hacked.

https://netsential.com/default.aspx?menuitemid=280

[onion2k]

That website is ancient. The layout is done with tables and there are bits of code in there specifically for IE7.

That means it'll work on anything. The old desktop PCs that sit around in public offices for decades will display it with no problems. Compare that to a beautiful, modern website from a rival that plain won't load let alone render on that ancient computer.

The one with the working website wins the contract.

[hypewatch]

But there are many enterprise saas products out there with solid security, decent UX and support for older browsers.

I think that they won these contracts with more “who you know” advantages than technical.

[lozaning]

The trick for government procurement has always been to respond to the RFP with something that's like 98% a solid proposal, and then 2% stupid bullshit and gotcha style requirements that only you can fulfill. Then should they accept your proposal, and move to RFB, you've already won even before pricing comes into play.

[johnmarcus]

If only we funded the police with trillions of dollars, then they could use that funding to update their computer systems. Awe well, guess it comes down to the old saying "you can't have your assault vehicles and system security too"

[dependenttypes]

> then they could use that funding to update their computer systems

But why? It seems like a waste of money.

[thephyber]

I interpreted your parent as pure sarcasm. The US government did throw hundreds of billions of USD at state and local police, anti-terrorism, and surveillance (including fusion centers for each state). They have no excuse for screwing up the security of their intelligence exchange (except we have come to live with low expectations for government organizations).

[dependenttypes]

I interpreted said post as sarcasm that implied that the US police should have gotten rid of their older computers and get new ones that can run fancy JS and electron. Nothing to do with security, only about wasting money.

[aj3]

If they current pcs cant run electron, they likely can't run latest office either. It's probably still the age of win7 there, might be 32bit as well. With ancient Acrobat reader as well.

This has everything to do with security. They are one click away from getting whole department pwned.

[dmix]

What does table based HTML have to do with functional and web-accessible websites? Especially in the age of mobile which represents ~50% of traffic .

[onion2k]

What does table based HTML have to do with functional and web-accessible websites? Especially in the age of mobile which represents ~50% of traffic.

Lots of things.

- Screen readers expect HTML tables to be tables. If there aren't things like a caption the screen reader can inform the user of a problem.

- In a lot of cases the table won't inline in to a logical structure for reading out. A screen reader will read cells out from left to right, which interleaves content from one column with content from another when that isn't the intent. CSS layout will usually read better.

- Table-based layouts use a lot more code than CSS layouts, which is more to download and more to parse.

- In the case of that website in particular, there's a ton of inline styling which is more unnecessary data to download.

- Using tables for layout makes it much harder to develop truly responsive layouts for mobile; doing things like hiding download/battery intensive page elements is much harder (especially if those things span several cells). That site does have some media queries for controlling styles, but it could be doing more.

[dmix]

That missed the point of my comment. Wasn't arguing 'for' table designs.

[coding_lobster]

As the poster above hinted a lot of public offices have outdated hardware and software that is not a consideration for a lot of developers. Mobile represents ~50% of traffic among the public - not among the people who were selecting the developer using the "archaic" technology that they have in their offices.

[yread]

What's wrong with making your landing page render for everyone? Mine also sort of works in ie7

[Raidion]

There is a difference between using CSS/HTML from 2005 and using server and network security from 2005.

[stjohnswarts]

Yeah it was kind of cool that the page loaded in like a couple hundred milliseconds.

[onion2k]

Nothing, and you really should, but companies don't because they want to make all modern shiny stuff without putting the effort in to make something that does progressive enhancement properly. That's why contracts for police websites go to companies whose websites look like crap.

[LordDragonfang]

It actually doesn't render properly for everyone, and in fact renders incorrectly in chrome: the nav links (Home, Features, Support) overlap with and intersect behind the main content.

Of course, you probably won't notice this unless you're using a dark mode extension like me, because under normal circumstances, those links are invisible, since they render white-on-white.

Also, tables play poorly with mobile and are usually the opposite of responsive.

[Hitton]

>The layout is done with tables

You'll be amazed to see how is layout done here on HN.

[wonderwonder]

Looking at that website, there is a close to zero chance that the owner is not a family member / friend of someone with a ton of influence. No other way they landed this contract.

[hypewatch]

My thoughts exactly! And apparently they won many contracts over several years. From the article:

> Netsential, a web services company used by multiple fusion centers, law enforcement, and other government agencies across the United States

[aerostable_slug]

Note the connection may have gotten them in the door initially, but their further contracts could have resulted from the fact that they were the only vendor that could respond to an RFP with proof of a similar prior project. Then they get two fusion centers, then three, then it's like buying IBM/Cisco for the LE leadership that doesn't really understand IT and just wants it all to work.

This kind of vendor lock-out is unfortunate as it effectively keeps startups out of the picture. The majority of contracts I've worked on in this space (barring defense, and that's because we worked in R&D) required similar attestations of experience.

[jobigoud]

There is a glaring typo in the first title. "Does Netsential have want you need?"

I clicked on the first link to get a description of features, but it leads to an empty page.

[stjohnswarts]

On their what's new page it's completely barren aside from the header and footer lmao.

https://netsential.com/default.aspx?menuitemid=283&menugroup...

[gaulinmp]

Did you check out their Software Updates Blog? https://netsential.com/default.aspx?menuitemid=289&menugroup...

[walrus01]

I feel like I just took a short trip in a time machine to the year 2001.

[justin_oaks]

But it is running HTTPS!

I once had a sysadmin (!) that said to me, "We're running SSL so aren't we secure?" I went on to explain things like SQL injection and XSS. I mentioned how simple authorization bugs can ruin your security. I think he got the picture... I hope.

[WalterSear]

I'm disappointed but not surprised.

[shadowgovt]

For all the talk of "defund the police," state and local police departments don't actually have the budget to hire someone who knows which way is up in choosing third-party contractors for online services (much less the budget to contract with services that aren't lowest-bidder).

Actually, this is yet another example of why defunding the police is so important---they don't even spend the budget they have well.