Only $3B? Like most government programs, it will run horribly over-budget, so maybe $7B by the time they are done.
Of course, it will also work properly around 50% of the time. For the 50% wrong side, you should prepare (mentally at least) to be nabbed for something you had nothing to do with.
Yes, you, that wheelchair-bound old white guy in Florida, will be mobbed by the SWAT teams from 17 ThreeLetterAgencies at 4AM, and arrested at gunpoint if you aren't executed.... er...... mistakenly shot 84 times. It doesn't matter that they are looking for Juan Valdez for a bank robbery in Oregon.

After public outcry over the "little whoopsie", congress will authorize another $5B to over-haul the system, as well as extend the invasive measures to ensure those mistakes don't happen again.

Don't forget, this system is not meant to harass normal upstanding citizens, only to help catch bad guys. Kinda like how DHS is just protecting us, and the PATRIOT Act is just for our own protection.

And whether or not it works has nothing to do with it's continued use. It's a huge payday for so many people it will never go away. After being such a huge money-sucker, it will be too embarrassing to kill it and admit to wasting so much cash.

I couldn't agree more with this.

There are many other OSs that my computer could be running, but I know how to make it run something other than Windows. I know many people who think they are "computer savvy" but they think even trying a LiveCD of Ubuntu is too hard and scary.

For the 1% of people who are comfortable installing and running the OS of their choice, installing the OS is fine. Otherwise, it had better come from the manufacturer, preloaded.

Now the horrible car analogy... Even though you can replace the engine and transmission in your car, choosing from a wide array of options, how many people will really do so? Even if the labor aspect was not there, most people will never do so. It came with the car, and it will stay there forever. If it breaks, it will be replaced with a new version of what was there in the first place.
Same with the OS.