U.S. Border Surveillance Towers Have Always Been Broken

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.

This 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.

Net 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.

Sounds 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.

Sounds like Palmer Luckey is putting that Oculus money to good use. Article mentions Anduril Industries.

This 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.

They (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.

I 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.

Is there some better way to say "a security theater sculpted out of political pork"?

It’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.

I'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.

> Boeing was the main contractor blamed for SBINet's failure

Why is this not surprising anymore?

The 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.

In the photos, are those normal people's homes around those dystopian towers?

Or are they government-owned buildings, like on a military base?

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.

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.