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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."
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
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..