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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 p

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.
- michaelt 2y ago
  What would that mean in terms of camera coverage, and border patrol coverage? Will the border patrol get there in, say, 20 minutes? And we have cameras covering all the land within 20 minutes of the border, so we don't lose them in that time?
  - autoexec 2y ago
    Yeah, it'd mean you need enough camera to cover the area and you need to have enough people on the ground to reach the people crossing within a reasonable amount of time. There are somethings you can do to slow them down (walls for one) and things you can do keep an eye on them while people are being sent out to make contact (cameras, drones, planes, helicopters, satellites, etc.). More people on the ground does cost money, but the good news is that those government jobs would be a real boon for people living near the border.
    - fzeroracer 2y ago
      Are you familiar with how large the jurisdiction claimed by the CBP is? It's 100 miles from any border of the country [1]. What exactly counts as enough camera coverage? Should we just cover one border? Do we need to expand this to the Canadian border as illegal crossings increase up there as well? Should we blanket the majority of the population in these cameras now that we've established how big their jurisdiction is despite low evidence of their usefulness for their actual job? [1] https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
      - autoexec 2y ago
        > Are you familiar with how large the jurisdiction claimed by the CBP is? Yes, and I'm no fan of the so-called constitution free zones and the impositions on our rights that result from them. Thankfully, just as borders don't need to be 100% open or 100% closed, enforcement can also exist on a spectrum and to prevent border crossing most of the focus should be on the border itself and what's happening on the Mexican side (or indeed the Canadian one, but while there are problems with people entering illegal from our northern border it's at nowhere near the scale of the problem the southern border is because Canada is a more developed nation and a lot more careful about enforcing their own borders than Mexico is). Again, there isn't low evidence for the effectiveness of cameras. They are a proven technology. It's primarily been the rest of the systems which failed (non-working camera purchased, bad contracts, bad contractors, lack of staff to respond etc). If you know of a better solution than cameras for monitoring large areas of the border for illegal crossings I'd love to hear your pitch
throwaway19972 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. Will nobody acknowledge how ridiculous a concept absolute security of a border is? Nobody would want what this would actual look like—extremely violent and expensive with little benefit to anyone.
- autoexec 2y ago
  You think it would be better to have an open boarder? No other country seems to think that's a good idea. What do you think the ideal solution should look like? Keep in mind that you'll have to defend against or allow into the country economic migrants looking for higher wages, millions of truly desperate climate refugees who don't have homes to go back to, as well as terrorists and criminals.
  - artimaeis 2y ago
    Consider the spectrum: Absolute border security - it is literally impossible by land/sea/air/tunnel to cross into the US territory from Mexico without rapid detection and response. ... Open border - the US does not impede general traffic from Mexico, bringing certain goods remains illegal but enforcement of this is limited to additional penalties after apprehension. We are pretty far from both of those right now. I don't think the person you initially replied to was arguing for an open border. But surely it's not an ideal use of resources to stop all of these border based crimes in real time? Most people are not crossing illegally. Those that do are going to have to actively evade those consequences as long as they continue an unpermitted stay. How much of our GDP should we spend to move "up" that spectrum? What benefits are we gaining by doing so? What consequences do we face?
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      Exactly. Once "the border" became politicized, very few people allow themselves to think in terms of a spectrum. They just stand up a straw man on either extreme end and argue against it. Almost nobody is arguing for absolute open borders or absolute closed borders.
Aloisius 2y ago
Dispatch a drone to follow until agents can respond?
whimsicalism 2y ago
this is a sociopolitical problem, not a technical one. for instance, face recognition works, especially if we are tolerant of a very small % of false positives.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> How would you propose to respond to detections, if the cameras all worked? Facial-recognition scan plus rudimentary SIGINT to identify any e.g. cell phones or devices broadcasting a MAC address. I don't like it, less because of what it means at the border and more in that it requires, for step two, doing the same surveillance across the country. But it's not unsolveable. We just don't particularly have consensus it should be solved.
- autoexec 2y ago
  > We just don't particularly have consensus it should be solved. I think that is going to change as increasingly people see for themselves the negative impacts of unchecked immigration. I fear that most people won't be personally impacted until the worst of it hits (due to climate change) and by then it'll be too late to make the sensible preparations needed to offset the coming refugee crisis. I'm not a fan of domestic surveillance either, and hopefully we can place limits on its use internally to minimize the impacts to citizens within the US.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > think that is going to change as increasingly people see for themselves the negative impacts of unchecked immigration Doubtful. Wealthy communities profit from the wage disparity and can afford to insulate themselves from the problem. And the voters most animated by this remain hyper-responsive to performative solutions.
BurningFrog 2y ago
If you take a step back, cameras merely recording when and where people cross the border can still be very useful. That way you can move your enforcement crews to where most people enter. That won't catch all, of course, but should be more performant than guessing.

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.

michaelt 2y ago
What would that mean in terms of camera coverage, and border patrol coverage? Will the border patrol get there in, say, 20 minutes? And we have cameras covering all the land within 20 minutes of the border, so we don't lose them in that time?
- autoexec 2y ago
  Yeah, it'd mean you need enough camera to cover the area and you need to have enough people on the ground to reach the people crossing within a reasonable amount of time. There are somethings you can do to slow them down (walls for one) and things you can do keep an eye on them while people are being sent out to make contact (cameras, drones, planes, helicopters, satellites, etc.). More people on the ground does cost money, but the good news is that those government jobs would be a real boon for people living near the border.
  - fzeroracer 2y ago
    Are you familiar with how large the jurisdiction claimed by the CBP is? It's 100 miles from any border of the country [1]. What exactly counts as enough camera coverage? Should we just cover one border? Do we need to expand this to the Canadian border as illegal crossings increase up there as well? Should we blanket the majority of the population in these cameras now that we've established how big their jurisdiction is despite low evidence of their usefulness for their actual job? [1] https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
    - autoexec 2y ago
      > Are you familiar with how large the jurisdiction claimed by the CBP is? Yes, and I'm no fan of the so-called constitution free zones and the impositions on our rights that result from them. Thankfully, just as borders don't need to be 100% open or 100% closed, enforcement can also exist on a spectrum and to prevent border crossing most of the focus should be on the border itself and what's happening on the Mexican side (or indeed the Canadian one, but while there are problems with people entering illegal from our northern border it's at nowhere near the scale of the problem the southern border is because Canada is a more developed nation and a lot more careful about enforcing their own borders than Mexico is). Again, there isn't low evidence for the effectiveness of cameras. They are a proven technology. It's primarily been the rest of the systems which failed (non-working camera purchased, bad contracts, bad contractors, lack of staff to respond etc). If you know of a better solution than cameras for monitoring large areas of the border for illegal crossings I'd love to hear your pitch

throwaway19972 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. Will nobody acknowledge how ridiculous a concept absolute security of a border is? Nobody would want what this would actual look like—extremely violent and expensive with little benefit to anyone.

autoexec 2y ago
You think it would be better to have an open boarder? No other country seems to think that's a good idea. What do you think the ideal solution should look like? Keep in mind that you'll have to defend against or allow into the country economic migrants looking for higher wages, millions of truly desperate climate refugees who don't have homes to go back to, as well as terrorists and criminals.
- artimaeis 2y ago
  Consider the spectrum: Absolute border security - it is literally impossible by land/sea/air/tunnel to cross into the US territory from Mexico without rapid detection and response. ... Open border - the US does not impede general traffic from Mexico, bringing certain goods remains illegal but enforcement of this is limited to additional penalties after apprehension. We are pretty far from both of those right now. I don't think the person you initially replied to was arguing for an open border. But surely it's not an ideal use of resources to stop all of these border based crimes in real time? Most people are not crossing illegally. Those that do are going to have to actively evade those consequences as long as they continue an unpermitted stay. How much of our GDP should we spend to move "up" that spectrum? What benefits are we gaining by doing so? What consequences do we face?
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    Exactly. Once "the border" became politicized, very few people allow themselves to think in terms of a spectrum. They just stand up a straw man on either extreme end and argue against it. Almost nobody is arguing for absolute open borders or absolute closed borders.

Aloisius 2y ago

Dispatch a drone to follow until agents can respond?

whimsicalism 2y ago

this is a sociopolitical problem, not a technical one. for instance, face recognition works, especially if we are tolerant of a very small % of false positives.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> How would you propose to respond to detections, if the cameras all worked? Facial-recognition scan plus rudimentary SIGINT to identify any e.g. cell phones or devices broadcasting a MAC address. I don't like it, less because of what it means at the border and more in that it requires, for step two, doing the same surveillance across the country. But it's not unsolveable. We just don't particularly have consensus it should be solved.

autoexec 2y ago
> We just don't particularly have consensus it should be solved. I think that is going to change as increasingly people see for themselves the negative impacts of unchecked immigration. I fear that most people won't be personally impacted until the worst of it hits (due to climate change) and by then it'll be too late to make the sensible preparations needed to offset the coming refugee crisis. I'm not a fan of domestic surveillance either, and hopefully we can place limits on its use internally to minimize the impacts to citizens within the US.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > think that is going to change as increasingly people see for themselves the negative impacts of unchecked immigration Doubtful. Wealthy communities profit from the wage disparity and can afford to insulate themselves from the problem. And the voters most animated by this remain hyper-responsive to performative solutions.

BurningFrog 2y ago

If you take a step back, cameras merely recording when and where people cross the border can still be very useful. That way you can move your enforcement crews to where most people enter. That won't catch all, of course, but should be more performant than guessing.