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Technology battle well underway on the US border with Mexico
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
By Carl Braun
Examiner.com
A UAV or unmanned Aerial Vehicle watches over the southern border with Mexico.
(Federation of American Scientists)
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There has been much to do recently about a cell phone based GPS application that assists illegal border crossers in evading the Border Patrol and invading the United States. In the total scheme of things though, this ill-intended technology, conceived by a radical University professor, is but a blip on the radar screen…literally.
Since 2006, the United States Border Patrol has been quietly amassing a technological arsenal that a scant few years ago would have seemed like something out of Star Trek. Mobile Surveillance Systems or MSS technologies can detect the heat signature or movement of a human at a reported distance of up to seven miles. Within seconds they lock on the group or groups like a laser beam and direct Border Patrol Agents to the exact location. MSS is now commonplace in all of the southern Border States. Combining, video cameras, thermal imaging, radar, night vision, laser range finders and GPS, these tools are acting as a force multiplier allowing fewer Agents to do more work and cover a larger area.
Then there are the “drones”. Unmanned aircraft loaded with similar technologies are being used to fly over the deserts and track illegal entrants and smugglers. Five of them are now deployed in the United States with more on the way next year. These are very similar to the aircraft used over Afghanistan and Iraq though these will only carry electronics and no weapons. The highly sophisticated aerial platforms are also being used to monitor the “Blue Border” or the coastline of the US. Plans are underway to deploy them in Florida and the Gulf Coast though high commercial and military traffic off of Southern California makes deployment there problematic for the time being.
Not everyone is in favor of using these types of electronic technologies. TJ Bonner, President of the Border Patrol Union said this:
“Unmanned aircraft serve a very useful role in military combat situations, but are not economical or efficient in civilian law enforcement applications. There are a number of other technologies that are capable of providing a greater level of usefulness at a far lower cost. It appears that the contractors have once again managed to sell a bill of goods to the politicians and bureaucrats who oversee the procurement of technology designed to secure our borders.”
Still, it is hard to argue with success. The drones alone have been credited with providing the intelligence necessary to seize more than 22,000 pounds of marijuana and 5,000-plus illegal entrants to the US.
In 2006, the Department of Homeland Security also contracted with Boeing to develop SBInet or the Secure Borders Initiative. Mismanagement and inferior technology have halted the program but certain aspects of the overall strategy like MSS and the UAV’s have continued.
So when you have a university professor with revolutionary fervor announce to the world he has found the cure for the common border apprehension, fear not. The big boys are engaged in a battle for technological superiority on the Mexican Border and a new I-Phone App isn’t going to help much. Especially when getting a cell phone based GPS signal in the vast deserts and mountains of our Southern frontier is about as easy as finding a cold beer under a cactus.
Carl Braun is an analyst for the Homeland Security Policy Institute Group and he’s logged 5,000-plus hours on the border. He has written several books including his most recent on Border Insecurity, “Above All Else” . Contact Carl at Carl.Braun@BPAUX.org.
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For further information please refer to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
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