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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."
of the homes of each member of congress, the judicial branches, and the whitehouse, and lets see how many of the 1000s caught have cousins that already are working here illegally paid under the table with tax dollars?
Maybe we could learn a few lessons from the Soviets and the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
Speaking as a New Zealander, living on an island far away from other countries, whats the point in patrolling the border? To stop "criminal activity"? Isnt that really no different than all the Patriot act BS Security Theatre?
If you are so concerned about criminal activity "crossing the border", why not do what that lovely man in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City suggested for florida, build a moat! Start digging, and pretty soon you'll be sailing across the Caribbean sea, singing kumbya in the sunshine! No school! No tax! Free BBQ and pinball for everyone! We will have a rollercoaster for every family!......
In all seriousness though, surely a large enough moat would be the best thing to do, if you have such a problem with crime. Its pretty much eternal (unless "global warming" dries it up!) , so surely it would pay itself off over time? Oh, if only it had been done a hundred years ago! Think of all the "crime" and "drugs" that would have been stopped, the lives that would have been saved!
Check out the logo on TFA's linked site, here, imagine some obese guy with a tattoo of that on his left manboob watching his Dell hour after hour for starving families "trying to break in"...
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Obama wants to create a citizen snitch force, and you guys post nothing on that. But this is a "your rights online"? Seriously? I might just avoid reading those joke articles for a while to spare myself the 10 minutes I'll be laughing at it after I wasted time reading it.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
What we need now is an additional camera every, oh, quarter mile. Figure $250 per camera installation (small ARM network board, camera, connectivity). That'd be a good start.
Then put autocanons on them designed to only shoot south.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
You have nicely lined out how much the drug prohibition costs.
But to be complete you would have to answer other question too: how much would cost NOT having drug prohibition?
Thinking of all those good-willed, but stressed workers running to drug-lords and not pay anymore taxes seems like tremendous cost to me. Unless you would tax those operations taxable, too.. (... already happening? legal drugs..)
So, you cannot call it 'complete failure' yet..
WTF? You WANT these a-holes sneaking into the country? Why?
I don't think between the area not being that wide and slight variations of terrain you are going to have much luck with that sun/shadow thing.
Most of the cameras have some sky in the shot. Light curves are easy to take, which will give you a very good idea of camera longitude. Being on the US/Mexican border gives you the latitude.
You might have to take data over a few days to narrow it down to a mile or so, but beyond that, who cares? Avoid those 21 miles of the border and you're good to go.
These things are basically self-locating.
Mexicans who can figure this out are more than welcome to join our society in my book..