Good question.  Coincidently, just yesterday I found myself mulling similar things....  We have so much technology that could resolve or improve on so many things, yet no deployment.

It reminds me of the deveolopment of the Gattling Gun in the civil war era.  The thought of Gattling was that the weapon would be so devastating, that after usage a few times in battle, the Rebs would just give up.  But the Union official in charge of weapons procurement opted out - it's too expensive and we have plenty of soldiers.  Pretty sickenning....  Some were put into service via procurement by individuals.  BTW, Custer, in the Indian wars (Little Big Horn) had two Gattlings dedicated for his use.  He opted not to bring them along, as they would slow his movement.

One thing, that I was thinking about yesterday, has to do with effectively identifying people (border control, anti-fraud - many applications).  A company I invested in some 10 years ago - NRID, National Registry (it's since had a name change) - had an effective fingerprint ID system.  They did sell the system for use in imigration control (to Puerto Rico, I believe), but the focus up front was to put it on keyboards for user ID.  Ten years ago!  And we listen to all this "we can't effectively identify people flowing through checkpoints at our borders/airports".  What a crock!

Frustrating!

SGE