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I'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

I'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 ago
The 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
  The fact that past programs failed to collect good data or failed to make good use of the data they were getting does not imply that having data is unlikely to improve operational results. I think it's plainly obvious that if your goal is to stop people from illegally crossing the border, then monitoring that border is a necessity. We could hire humans to stand all day in watchtowers and scan for people sneaking in with just their human eyes, but (working) cameras have a lot of obvious advantages. There is plenty of evidence and data showing that cameras can be a highly effective part of solutions to the problem of monitoring. There are countless companies, governments, and individuals using cameras right now with great success. Cameras are not an unproven technology and their usefulness is not theoretical. I don't think that anyone would be opposed to a better option that would eliminate the need for cameras and sensors, but if one exists I've never heard of it. Cameras and sensors seem to be the best options we have. The cameras and sensors (when they were functioning) were never the problem with past systems. Those past problems were more like "We paid for a bunch of cameras but we never budgeted for anyone to respond to them, or to maintain them, or to maintain the systems we need to collect data from them". Those are all very solvable problems which shouldn't have happened in the first place.
  - michaelt 2y ago
    Seems to me if you see someone crossing the border illegally that’s only really useful if you can apprehend them before you lose track of them. How would you propose to respond to detections, if the cameras all worked?
    - autoexec 2y ago
      By sending border patrol out to collect them. As much as people hate the idea of a wall, and the entire concept has become politicized, it would make that process a lot easier, but the truth is that if you're going to monitor a border and prevent people from illegally crossing it, that will involve humans having to drive/fly out to wherever there are people who are illegally crossing in order to turn them away or arrest/process/deport them.
ajross 2y ago
In the interests of optimization: maybe we could just not? Seems like the Occam solution here would just be to (1) rigorously enforce employment eligibility for all employers (not employees!), something that is done routinely at the salaried level already and has an existing bureaucracy in place and (2) hand out green cards like candy for people working positions for which there are openings. Problem solved, QED. No border towers needed, and "illegal" migration stops at exactly the level where it's required, because migrants obviously won't come in excess of the jobs available. Obviously that's not the actual problem you're trying to solve, because the actual problem is political and ethnographic (c.f. Musk's thread that this will be the "last election" because of something to do with demographic change). But this is HN, and it seems like it's worth discussing actual solutions.
- autoexec 2y ago
  The illegal immigration problem can't be solved purely by making sure that anyone coming into the country illegally cannot be employed. Too many jobs are paid under the table and while almost all of the people entering illegally today are economic migrants looking for higher paying jobs, in the very near future we'll be looking at floods of climate refugees who literally won't have homes to go back to. Having otherwise open borders or just handing out green cards to anyone who asks also fails to address security concerns. No matter what, we need to be able to monitor and regulate who is coming in to the country and what they are bringing in with them (drugs, weapons, human trafficking victims, etc). I agree that we should be strongly enforcing employment eligibility as well and that it would do a lot of good, but doing that won't mean that we can just leave our borders open and unmonitored.
  - ajross 2y ago
    > The immigration problem can't be solved Seems, again, like you need to first define what "the immigration problem" really is. I mean, if you mean it like I think you mean it, the truth is a lot of us don't think that's a problem worth solving at all. This isn't the forum, obviously, but maybe step back and have some discussions across the aisle before planning out policy.

jncfhnb 2y ago

The 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
The fact that past programs failed to collect good data or failed to make good use of the data they were getting does not imply that having data is unlikely to improve operational results. I think it's plainly obvious that if your goal is to stop people from illegally crossing the border, then monitoring that border is a necessity. We could hire humans to stand all day in watchtowers and scan for people sneaking in with just their human eyes, but (working) cameras have a lot of obvious advantages. There is plenty of evidence and data showing that cameras can be a highly effective part of solutions to the problem of monitoring. There are countless companies, governments, and individuals using cameras right now with great success. Cameras are not an unproven technology and their usefulness is not theoretical. I don't think that anyone would be opposed to a better option that would eliminate the need for cameras and sensors, but if one exists I've never heard of it. Cameras and sensors seem to be the best options we have. The cameras and sensors (when they were functioning) were never the problem with past systems. Those past problems were more like "We paid for a bunch of cameras but we never budgeted for anyone to respond to them, or to maintain them, or to maintain the systems we need to collect data from them". Those are all very solvable problems which shouldn't have happened in the first place.
- michaelt 2y ago
  Seems to me if you see someone crossing the border illegally that’s only really useful if you can apprehend them before you lose track of them. How would you propose to respond to detections, if the cameras all worked?
  - autoexec 2y ago
    By sending border patrol out to collect them. As much as people hate the idea of a wall, and the entire concept has become politicized, it would make that process a lot easier, but the truth is that if you're going to monitor a border and prevent people from illegally crossing it, that will involve humans having to drive/fly out to wherever there are people who are illegally crossing in order to turn them away or arrest/process/deport them.

ajross 2y ago

In the interests of optimization: maybe we could just not? Seems like the Occam solution here would just be to (1) rigorously enforce employment eligibility for all employers (not employees!), something that is done routinely at the salaried level already and has an existing bureaucracy in place and (2) hand out green cards like candy for people working positions for which there are openings. Problem solved, QED. No border towers needed, and "illegal" migration stops at exactly the level where it's required, because migrants obviously won't come in excess of the jobs available. Obviously that's not the actual problem you're trying to solve, because the actual problem is political and ethnographic (c.f. Musk's thread that this will be the "last election" because of something to do with demographic change). But this is HN, and it seems like it's worth discussing actual solutions.

autoexec 2y ago
The illegal immigration problem can't be solved purely by making sure that anyone coming into the country illegally cannot be employed. Too many jobs are paid under the table and while almost all of the people entering illegally today are economic migrants looking for higher paying jobs, in the very near future we'll be looking at floods of climate refugees who literally won't have homes to go back to. Having otherwise open borders or just handing out green cards to anyone who asks also fails to address security concerns. No matter what, we need to be able to monitor and regulate who is coming in to the country and what they are bringing in with them (drugs, weapons, human trafficking victims, etc). I agree that we should be strongly enforcing employment eligibility as well and that it would do a lot of good, but doing that won't mean that we can just leave our borders open and unmonitored.
- ajross 2y ago
  > The immigration problem can't be solved Seems, again, like you need to first define what "the immigration problem" really is. I mean, if you mean it like I think you mean it, the truth is a lot of us don't think that's a problem worth solving at all. This isn't the forum, obviously, but maybe step back and have some discussions across the aisle before planning out policy.