The US Secret Service's computer network is so bad that it is only fully available for 60 per cent of the time.

According to ABC News  the Secret Service is so plagued by computer problems that the agency invited the National Security Agency to formally review its information technology systems.

Part of the problem is that the spook's technology is so outdated that it all depends on a mainframe that was build in the 1980s when an Atari was considered top of the range. Apparently the database system is so outdated that users are at times unable to conduct searches from one system to another.

It was all designed in the days when the US's main opponent were the Russians and at the time their computer systems were not much better. Now it looks like a terrorist armed with a netbook has comparable processing power.