Watch a Web cam, spot an illegal immigrant
June 3, 2006 by Mike Wendland
That’s the plan Texas officials are considering. Gov. Rick Perry would focus Webcams on his state’s most notorious illegal border crossings and ask the public to call authorities when they spot activity.
The governor, who is running for relection this fall, says it will cost aout $5 million for the high-def cameras. He didn’t say how many would be installed at that price but noted that with 1,000 miles of Mexican border, his state needs all the hep it can get.
The camera Perry wants to use is the Sony HDR-HC3, which lists at over $1,000 but can be bought online for around $780.
What do you think about this idea to make the public Big Brother? Good idea? Bad idea?
Welllllll. . . .it seems like you’d have to be slightly (?) wierd to sit around watching a piece of desert to pass the time. Although I must admit I’ve seen some TV shows (and web sites) where that might be an improvement.
Would these “watchers” be compensated to do this, or just ordinary, non-paid wierdos?
By the way, that’s “weird/weirdo”, not “wierd/wierdo”.
^&%*$()&%^ spell checkers!
Great idea. Our borders must be secure and any and all serious efforts are needed!
Even rudimentary webcams have motion detection capability. Rather than have people waste time “watching” these feeds, having them fed through a system which would prioritize the feeds and alert actual border control officers would probably be a more efficient system.
Once a camera detected motion, it could record 10 seconds and send that actual clip to a review officer who could then assign it high priority, low priority, or reset the camera alert if it appeared to be just an animal or something else.
While I do like the idea of cameras, as above, I don’t like the idea of putting this on the internet for several reasons. #1 - this has gained international attention and could achieve a sort of cult status. I could see these feeds being sought internationally for all sorts of reasons not related to border watching (such as gambling), and the bandwidth costs may get out of control. They could attempt to restrict access to American own IP addresses, but there are ways around that.
#2 - there are too many people in this country knee-jerk in support of illegal immigration without recognizing the problems it causes. An organized effort by these people to hack the system, or even flood the toll-free numbers with false reports would render it useless.
#3 - in addition to illegal immigration, which this system is being promoted to prevent, a huge problem is drug traffic. This system would be better off being part of a larger “illegal border crossing” program to defend against immigrants and drugs alike, and allowing the drug lords to see what we see of the border will only help their efforts. Better to keep the camera feeds with the Border Patrol and institute a motion detection/prioritization system I wrote about at the beginning of this post.
I lovvvvee pink elephants!
It will be more exciting than watching the World Cup…