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Patrolling the US Border Via Webcam
The BBC features a story today on a controversial effort to patrol the border between Mexico and Texas by means of 21 hidden cameras, the output of which is streamed online for viewers at home, who can then report suspected illegal border crossings; more than 130,000 people have registered to observe the streams, from as far afield as "Australia, Mexico, Colombia, Israel, New Zealand and the UK."
Could it be that Mexicans have registered for the purpose of locating the cameras?
... or to continuously report a bunch of fake border crossings all the time so that the real events drown in a sea of fake ones.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
I wonder if something like this couldn't be used to provide more effective protection than the police currently provide for witnesses, abused women, and others under threat. All too often even when such people get some protection it takes the form of a patrol car driving by now and then or officers posted outside the front door, often for limited hours and not for very many days. Providing really effective protection takes a lot of manpower that is hard for police to provide. And then there are cases where te police are unsympathetic or consider that there isn't enough hard evidence of a threat. If cameras could be set up to monitor building and in some case apartment entrances and exits and streamed to sites where volunteers would monitor them, that could provide a large increase in the manpower available.
I think we have bigger problems than illegal immigration and trying to patrol the border, which is an arguably worthwhile endeavor, is really not the most effective technique at our disposal. It would help, for starters, if the country they were fleeing wasn't such a cesspool of corruption, crime and poverty. Notice that we don't have nearly as much trouble with Canadians fleeing their country. I can hardly blame those Mexican immigrants for wanting to get the heck out of there.
Exactly! All this talk of "criminals" and "drugs", calling large swaths of people "illegals"...its a terrible thing! They are still human beings you know...
This idea of having people watching computer screens for desperate people trying to make a new life in another country, its revolting to me. I also feel sorry for those who have grown up on the other side to see these people as a "pest".
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After being on hold for 30 minutes: "Officer, i saw a crossing, 50 miles from any human post.. "
By the time they mobilize, all the cameras will do is allow us to count how many crossed over, for the census.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Really, if some impoverished people want to come to your country, is it such a bad thing for you, as a "rich" person?
Put that way its not really a bad thing but spare a thought for the great number of people from poor countries who do the right thing by applying through channels, filling out the forms and working hard to qualify. Letting asylum seekers through does two bad things IMHO:
I 1997 I visited friends in the US. They had an apartment in Manhattan and during the day I made use of the laundry in their building. The demographics in the laundry and the attached playground were totally different from elsewhere generally in the building. The clothes were being washed and the children were being cared for by middle aged women from central America. It was actually a lot like Malaysia (my wife's native country), where many families have Indonesian servants.
If you want to retain your identity, migration has to be slow. I am sure that India or Sri Lanka could dump enough people on NZ in one year to create a new majority. I doubt that even the past immigrants from those countries want that to happen. And it is a sad fact I think that population pressure has to be used to reduce population growth. Its sad because starvation is implied in that equation.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Please. This isn't even slightly tricky. Time the sunset / shadows. That gives you the east-west position (and very accurately, too.) Local noon identifies local midnight (and every other local time) perfectly. So does sunset. Since the cameras are on the border, that reduces the problem to a very small one -- what portion(s) of the border match those times. Then go there (using GPS and holding a pic of the POV of the camera)... walk right up to it, grab it, throw it in the 4WD. Rinse, repeat. If the cameras are observing places where people can go, they're in places where people can get at them.
Also, borders aren't "square miles", they are linear miles. The problem is not as intractable as you want to think it is.
Offer me fifty grand per camera, as well as guaranteed legal immunity, and I'll go down there and hand the vast majority of em to you in a dusty heap in, oh, a couple of weeks or so. It'd be fun. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I always thought we could just consolidate all US military bases into one, long skinny one along the border. :-)
The whole controversy is weird. It's like we're not allowed to have a border. You'd think it was Kashmir, but even India and Pakistan mange to have a little fun with it.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1689795,00.html
I can't think of any other border where people act like it's an offense against the universe. Meanwhile, you see all sorts of anti-illegal immigration laws being tightened around the world and you don't hear boo about them.
You contact the webcam base in the USA and the call the feds with the location.
So, essentially, you could spam the authorities and tell them where to go. I guess that could never be abused by drug smugglers or illegal immigrants, could it?
... and then they built the supercollider.
1. Wear a Bigfoot costume and approach the border.
Since I first heard of this strange setup, I too have wondered why nobody has played with the cams, the potential for harmless shenanigans making fun of the security loonies is limitless.
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