10 ms·
U.S. border surveillance towers have always been broken
- bell-cot 2y agoIs there some better way to say "a security theater sculpted out of political pork"?
- marcusverus 2y ago"United States Federal Government"
- djbusby 2y agoWaste.
- thfuran 2y ago"Fraud and corruption"
- bregma 2y agoI dunno. That phrase sounds like poetry to me, why improve it?
- neilv 2y agoIn the photos, are those normal people's homes around those dystopian towers? Or are they government-owned buildings, like on a military base?
- VectorLock 2y agoSounds like Palmer Luckey is putting that Oculus money to good use. Article mentions Anduril Industries.
- advisedwang 2y agoI wonder whether they are simply having cables cut, getting painted over, shot at or any of the other obvious ways to disable an unguarded camera.
- moomin 2y ago[flagged]
- grbrr 2y ago[flagged]
- throwme2024 2y agoThis article complains a lot about previous-generation, cancelled projects, but doesn't really investigate what's going on with the current surveillance towers or investigate anything at all, really. The linked NBC article explains that the FAA (WTF... yes, the airplane FAA) administer some surveillance towers, and that border patrol agents are mad that there's a big ticket backlog of broken ones to fix. That's pretty much it. Nobody investigated enough to figure out things like: * Why the FAA administer the towers and what the actual hold-up is towards getting a fix? Certainly at least the backstory should be public information. * Why the towers are broken. This is probably sensitive information but I'm sure some of the disgruntled border patrol agents would be willing to have a chat about it. * Is it a specific generation of tower that's broken? Is it some kind of backend issue, or just rot from deploying electronics into a hostile desert environment full of people trying to destroy them? * How do the new "AI" towers work? They're probably just drawing boxes around people and items, no? This is a disappointing and silly article, in my opinion. It doesn't convince me at all that border surveillance overall is a bad idea or a waste of money, just that some old programs turned into pork-barrel debacles. There's no fresh information or anything that would convince me either way on this issue.
- BoingBoomTschak 2y ago[flagged]
- runako 2y ago> impression it was just about software/computer freedom This is an article about computer software being used to surveil civilians. (Many people consider government surveillance to be a freedom issue.) This kind of concern has aligned with the EFF's mission for as long as it has been around.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- throwme2024 2y agoThis seems in line with the EFF's principles - they've always been strongly against the use of electronics for surveillance. I agree with you that this article left me with a weird taste, though - in this case, I think that the thesis is flimsy and the research is poorly done, so it comes off as grinding an axe rather than taking a stand.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago[flagged]
- pvg 2y agoIt's a political advocacy organization so it would be very strange if it was not politically 'biased'.
- modeless 2y agoThis article is a little schizophrenic. It calls the cameras "wasteful" and "snake oil", yet the referenced NBC article calls them "a crucial tool". It quotes reports about failures of old systems from Boeing and General Dynamics, then implies without evidence that the same criticisms apply to the newer Anduril "AST" systems. There is no allegation that the AST systems are broken at all.
- refulgentis 2y agoIn the NBC article, "crucial tool" is a non-technical phrase by the article writer, it is not the memo. [1] The EFF article's expressed intent is first, that there's a history that goes beyond the NBC report. Then, that the history shows reports written by various governmental & non-governmental entities that the tools are not effective. I'm genuinely curious why that felt schizophrenic. ex. to me, even if "crucial tool" was in a government memo, I'm not sure why the EFF would be schizophrenic for disputing that. [1] "Nearly one-third of the cameras in the Border Patrol’s primary surveillance system along the southern U.S. border are not working, according to an internal agency memo sent in early October, depriving border agents of a crucial tool in combating illegal migrant crossings."
- vkou 2y agoOne third of cameras not working might mean that there is no camera coverage (because the only working cameras are all pointed at a single storage shed), or it might mean that there is 100% coverage (because of redundancies in coverage.) Its a data point, but without further context, you can't draw meaningful conclusions. If I were to take a wild guess, one third of all security cameras in the world are probably not fit for purpose, and yet, the world keeps adding more and more of them. Smile, comrade.
- refulgentis 2y agoI'm replying to reinforce that I'm curious about the schizophrenic interpretation. I don't think working through this further conversations or sheds light. IMHO it creates the same problem as the initial comment, though the avenue is different ("its too confusing to discuss because the EFF says they're ineffective, but the NBC article contains 'crucial tool" vs. "its not worth discussing because the memo in the NBC article can't be trusted, broken could mean anything")
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago[flagged]
- BadHumans 2y agoMany countries don't have 2000 mile long borders.
- runjake 2y agoMany don't but many countries do. Take a look at a world map and then note how many other countries have such long borders with countries with whom they have some sort of adversarial risk with. I took a very quick look and stopped after a couple dozen and still had plenty to go. This is a problem not remotely unique to the US.
- jcranmer 2y agoThe only land borders longer than the US-Mexico border are: US-Canada, Russia-Kazakhstan, Russia-Mongolia, Mongolia-China, Russia-China, Chile-Argentina, Bolivia-Brazil, India-China, and India-Bangladesh. Furthermore, the disparity between the US and Mexico in GDP per capita is pretty stark--over a 3x difference, far more than any other pair of countries with such a long land border. The next largest difference is India-China, and that's not a pairing that's conducive to economic migration, unlike the US-Mexico border.
- nathancahill 2y agoAre you looking at single country pairings for the border size? The closest comparison, both in border length and economic gap is EU/non-EU, when you look at the size of the border along the Mediterranean and the Balkans. Another close comparison is South Africa, 4,862 km border (compared to US-Mexico at 3,145 km). Huge economic gap and even larger migration numbers.
- hombre_fatal 2y agoHere's an example I've seen with my own eyes. An onsite oil rig chemical engineer for https://www.slb.com/ https://www.slb.com/ starts at $17k/year in Mexico but $150k in USA for the same job doing one month on, two week off land rig rotations. You make more money in the US working minimum wage than you do in most jobs in Mexico as a high skilled graduate of a good university like https://tec.mx https://tec.mx.
- doe_eyes 2y agoI generally side with the EFF, but I find the article weirdly duplicitous. It's framed as a criticism of government waste, but would the EFF be happy if the government built a more effective surveillance system at the border? Of course not. If they wanted to make some sort of a precise argument against border surveillance, they failed to do so in this write-up. "Public contracts are rife with grift, so the government shouldn't be doing stuff" isn't likely to change too many minds.
- Animats 2y ago> I generally side with the EFF, but I find the article weirdly duplicitous. It's framed as a criticism of government waste, but would the EFF be happy if the government built a more effective surveillance system at the border? Of course not. Right. Israel has towers like this. But theirs have guns.[1] [1] https://www.globalresearch.ca/israels-remote-occupation-women-drone-jockeys-kill-gazans-remotely/5378975 https://www.globalresearch.ca/israels-remote-occupation-wome...
- jncfhnb 2y ago> Well, one reason may be that treating problems at the border as humanitarian crises or pursuing foreign policy or immigration reform measures isn't as politically useful as promoting a phantom "invasion" that requires a military-style response. Another reason may be that tech companies and military contractors wield immense amounts of influence and stand to make millions, if not billions, profiting off border surveillance. The price is paid by taxpayers, but also in the civil liberties of border communities and the human rights of asylum seekers and migrants. They are claiming it is an ineffective solution to the problem, conceptually, that is perpetuated by bad political and lobbyist incentives. The position is not that it does not work well enough. The position is that it would not be a viable solution regardless of the quality of execution. Therefore we should stop allowing corrupt and fear mongering politicians from manipulating public optics to support these surveillance companies.
- llamaimperative 2y ago> The position is not that it does not work well enough. The position is that it would not be a viable solution regardless of the quality of execution. That's definitely the implication, but it doesn't really substantiate this, as far as I can tell. "Past iterations were filled with pork, therefore future ones must be as well, therefore this conceptually cannot work." For example, the RAND study that they said showed "strong evidence" that IFTs were having no effect actually... doesn't say that at all. IFTs actually lowered apprehension levels, to which RAND says, "we conclude that there is strong evidence for the presence of a deterrent effect as migrants choose to avoid areas surveilled by IFTs—a proposition for which there is also qualitative evidence outside the data." Then it goes onto say that for every other technology type, they increased apprehension levels, i.e. they worked. They didn't seem clear on why IFTs behave differently.
- autoexec 2y agoI'm a big fan of the EFF but this article basically comes down to "X Y and Z were designed to solve problem A and they were implemented poorly therefore problem A is unsolvable and no one should even try to address problem A" This is especially ridiculous when the failures of X Y and Z came from administration issues (failures of oversight), picking shitty contractors, buying faulty equipment, etc. all of which are solvable/preventable. The takeaway of these past failures shouldn't be that securing the border is impossible and not worth even attempting. The takeaway should be that programs need to be meaningfully and intelligently invested in (maybe going with the lowest bidder or your personal friends/donors isn't always a good idea), and that there needs to be oversight and accountability to make sure that those funds aren't being wasted or pocketed by corrupt public servants and private contractors to ensure that systems are implemented correctly and maintained. Of course it's going to take "record-level funding" to implement a massive solution when previous attempts were entirely half-assed, designed to attract and allow for corruption, and then neglected. Congressional leaders and the American public should be shocked and outraged at the money that's been wasted and they should be working to design a system that avoids those pitfalls and actually does the job right. Ideally we should also be tracking down the people responsible for those past failures and holding them accountable too where it's possible.
- jncfhnb 2y agoThe thesis of the article is: > Surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico border is a wasteful endeavor that is ill-equipped to respond to an ill-defined problem. This article cites efforts of doing this all the way back to 1997. The critical problem is not that the cameras are literally broken, although they seem to have struggled with this, but the fact that the cameras have not shown to improve operational results. An intelligently designed program would try to learn from these decades of trying the same thing unsuccessfully and try something else. Before confidently claiming that the problem was the quality of the execution, you should try to present some evidence that this solution is a sensible one. Claiming it would work if it was better is something you can do indefinitely with no evidence.
- autoexec 2y ago
- TimTheTinker 2y agoSounds like a job for the NSA. With their surveillance apparatus, data lake, and analysis tools, they'd be able to make quick work of tracking and apprehending illegal border entries... That would be a much better way to spend their time and money than invading the privacy of actual US citizens.
- niggerman5000 2y ago[dead]
- smittywerben 2y ago[flagged]
- wormlord 2y ago[flagged]
- bitcurious 2y agoIt’s incredibly frustrating that at a certain size non-profits seemingly loose the ability to focus on the issues that built them. The EFF no business chiming in on immigration policies - sick to tech and information freedom.
- tech_ken 2y ago> sick to tech and information freedom Do you not understand that the tools the government uses to control non-citizens are turned inward all the time? Military tech is tech, surveillance tech is tech. They are not chiming in on 'immigration policies', they are chiming in on technology used to actually implement those policies. If all you care about is not having tracking pixels in your personal consumer browser you're going to miss the most dangerous encroachments on your freedom.
- Cheer2171 2y agoThese are selfish self-centered statists who cosplay as libertarians because they just want to buy weed and watch porn without the government knowing.
- EasyMark 2y agoI donate fairly regularly to EFF but I don’t really have a problem with the government having cameras on the border to spot illegal migrants. That’s the kind of surveillance we actually need rather than combing through gmail and SMS messages between teenagers.
- bitcurious 2y agoYou are under the misapprehension that the US government is held back from tyranny by shitty technology. This is false - you could build a totalitarian dictatorship with near-absolute control with 1940s technology. Other states did. >Military tech is tech I want the US military to have the best guns, best tanks, best nukes, best drones, best planes, best satellites, best boats. And spoilers: they do. Yet somehow that has not encroached on our lives. Adding “best surveillance of our foreign borders” does not for a dictatorship make. >They are not chiming in on ‘immigration policies’ I’m not sure how else you can read this statement in the concluding paragraph: “Well, one reason may be that treating problems at the border as humanitarian crises.” Agree or disagree, this is pure domestic politics.
- tw04 2y agoThe whole thing is kind of silly IMO, and all political theater. What is the problem statement? If the problem statement is: people are coming into this country illegally, and we need to stop that, then the next question is: why are they coming here? If the answer is: to find work because there are no opportunities at home - that's easy to solve. Anyone caught employing illegal immigrants gets mandatory prison time. You would find the work would very, very quickly dry up removing the basic reason for coming here. Folks fleeing political violence aren't illegal, they have a valid political asylum claim and will be processed much quicker when the illegal folks are no longer flooding the border.
- Yeul 2y agoYou can have a undocumented immigrant from Nicaragua mow you lawn or hire a fully compliant landscaping company- who will probably still employ an undocumented migrant. I myself have paid handymen under the table.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 2y agoI think the OP's point was that you are part of the problem, and that the landscaping CEO should go to jail. I'm an American who has lived and worked in Mexico. I found it quite funny that the Mexicans i worked with always complained about the Guatemalans coming over the border and how they needed better border security. i'm of the opinion that freedom and abortion rights are more important to Americans than being at population replacement rates so our only hope of surviving as a nation is with a huge influx of legal immigrants. We need to build a border & make it much easier to become a US citizen while making it a felony for hiring an undocumented immigrant.
- 1024core 2y agoThey (Congress? GAO? DHS? ) should have a separate department certify and monitor these sensors. Make it this department's sole job to keep this sensor network running properly.
- tcdent 2y ago> Boeing was the main contractor blamed for SBINet's failure Why is this not surprising anymore?
- Zigurd 2y agoNet migration between the US and Mexico is small. Pew research numbers: An estimated 870,000 Mexican migrants came to the U.S. between 2013 and 2018, while an estimated 710,000 left the U.S. for Mexico during that period. That translates to net migration of about 160,000 people from Mexico to the U.S., according to government data from both countries. That's 160,000 net in-migration from Mexico over 5 years. How much would you spend to bring that to zero? You might think a bunch of tech people would profile performance before deciding what to optimize.
- mhuffman 2y agoIf you mean people that lived in Mexico, that may be. If you mean people that crossed from Mexico into the US across the Southern Border, those numbers are dwarfed. These are just the numbers that we know for sure from observation or interaction[0] [0]https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-enc...
- tim333 2y agoI'm not American and a bit bemused by the US border but I note that when last year Texas put razor wire on the border to stop people crossing there was outrage from the federal government who sent people to cut it. The issue seems to be politics and policy as to whether you want people crossing or not rather than tech. I was also surprised to see on 60 Minutes coach loads of middle class Chinese crossing the Mex/US border who'd bought some fly to the border and claim asylum in the US package. Immigration can be an odd business.
- barryrandall 2y agoImmigration and abortion are favored as political wedge issues because the targets of the policy don't get a say in elections, and unlike veterans, can't speak out against the politicians who use them as political props.