Slashdot Mirror
Texas to Provide Online 'Bordercams'
Dr_Barnowl writes "The BBC reports that Texas intends to erect a network of online webcams at its border to Mexico. The intention is apparently to use viewers as a kind of distributed processing network, with a free phone number to report border-jumpers." From the article: "'A stronger border is what Americans want and it's what our security demands and that is what Texas is going to deliver,' Mr Perry said. The cameras will cost $5m (£2.7m) to install and will be trained on sections of the 1,000-mile (1,600km) border known to be favoured by illegal immigrants " Hey, it's working for Britain, right?
The tags for this article: xenophobia, stupid (tagging beta)
It seems that the sole use of the tagging system is to allow the "editors" to further "editorialize" the articles.
P.S. If protecting your border is xenophobic and stupid, the US is in a lot of good "xenophobic and stupid" company (i.e. almost every other country in the world).
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
This is a good start. Just couple this with zoneminder http://www.zoneminder.com/ and have it page the border patrol when activity is detected and you have a realtively inexpensive monitoring solution. That way you don't have to rely on potentially bogus phone calls to alert the border patrol.
Really surprised the news media has not positioned cameras and broadcasts the illegal crossings on the news. Oh, right, most of the media is to the left and welcome the illegal aliens. Guess they are trying to get enough votes to actually win an election next time around.
"While the world's attention has been focused on the Israeli security barrier sealing off the West Bank, India has been building a far longer fence to keep out Islamic militants, thwart cross-border smuggling and stop human trafficking."
This sentence is enfuriating.
I don't understand why can't even a 3rd grade journalistic source tell the difference between an apartheid/concentration camp* like system in Israel sealing off the West Bank, and a border.
The two cannot be even compared, because they are totally different things. The West Bank is so chopped up into little pieces, zones and now the "fence", that it can take a day to travel 25 miles because of the endless checkpoints, cordons and fences.
*Israel's policy of separation closely resembles pre 1994 South Africa and also resembles pre world war II Germany, (first) making second class citizens out of jews.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
That's not the issue I have with the act. I never said we should get rid of border patrols. If they instituted a law that ordered border patrol officers to shoot anyone that tried to cross illegally, that'd be trying to secure the borders too. But the method/fashion by which they're trying to achieve that objective, and the extent to which they're willing to go is a little ridiculous. I mean c'mon, having thousands of border patrol officers isn't enough, we need to get citizens to sit in front of their computers and watch for people trying to sneak in?
Personally, I'm against such a closed-border policy as we already have. I think that in itself is wrong and fosters/reflects a really unhealthy cultural attitude within our society. I'm one of those people who truly believes in the Thomas Paine quote "[My] country is the world, and my religion is to do good." But it's not the act of watching the borders with video surveilance that I'm particularly opposed to in this case. It's the fact that this act seems to encourage individuals to sit at their computers watching for people crossing the border illegally and be government informants. I mean, how is anyone going to tell that some illegal immigrant is a "terrorist"? They can't. And what are the chances that this is actually going to catch any terrorists? Probably close to nil. Do you know how many people we have patroling the Canadian border? Do you honestly think that terrorists will try to hop the Mexican border rather than simply forge a fake passport or come in from Canada? And what kind of people do you think are actually going to waste their time with this border-watch nonsense?
The kind of people this will encourage are what I'm worried about. It's sorta like if the government started offering money to people to report illegal immigrants. You could argue that it's to secure our nation, but that's a stretch. Sure it's just enforcing our borders, but the social consequences of encouraging people to rat out a really quite benign segment of our society just because they were born in a different country and wanted to make a better life for themselves here is much more detrimental to our society than any terrorist attack.
I just think that not bombing the shit out of other countries and exploiting developing nations would do much more for our national security than having the public monitor the borders. This act just perpetuates unfounded fears that merely serve as a political distraction while the real threats go unnoticed.