Secure Border Initiative, Part 4
Boeing was awarded the Secure Border Initiative
contract while admitting to having no experience in border security.
Boeing's Network of Integrated Technologies
Boeing is a technology company. They manage, and sell, and maintain..Technology.
The solution to any problem put before them is... Technology.
Boeing is moving portable observation /surveillance towers into
the border zones to act as temporary or prototype observation
posts. Once the optimum spots for the towers have been determined
then permanent towers will be installed. These towers can have
remotely operated day and night vision cameras and even radar
systems on them. The towers can also have certain digital radio
relay systems mounted on them that allow the border patrol agents
to communicate more easily with their sector headquarters and
to send and receive more information than is possible over their
standard hand held radios. Some of this is very good because the
agents will have fewer communications dead zones (just like with
your cell phone) and this can be good when they are calling for
help.
The Big Problem Boeing somehow missed is that
to put a camera tower – portable or not – along the
border you have to have legal access to the land. You also have
to have an access road. You also have to have done some pretty
strange and expensive environmental and archeological studies
of the area to make sure the area does not have some broken arrowhead
buried on it that some Native American tossed away 300 years ago
or that the truck you plan to use to deliver lunch to the workers
passed it's last smog check (really). If you simply try to ignore
such rich gems of archeological and environmental diversity there
are lawyers and lawsuits waiting for you. If you doubt this..
return to the example of "Tijuana," above... Or look
at the following document's table of contents.
What is shown at the following links are images
of the table of contents for a 246 page document (one of five
different documents that are required) to allow the Border
Patrol to simply place a Rescue Device (photo on right) on the
ground in the desert to allow illegal aliens, drug smugglers,
and even terrorists to call for help -- if they get lost in the
American desert.
The Border Patrol isn't digging for oil, or building
a Yucca mountain nuclear waste repository.. they are gently placing
a block of concrete on the surface of the ground that
has a flag pole and call button that goes to a radio that lets
those in need call for help in the desert.
Page One .... Page
Two ... Page Three ... Page
Four ... Page Five ...
These reports cost about $1,000 a page to create.
There could easily have been over a million dollars spent on the
"environmentalist lawsuit mandated" research and paperwork
just to keep from being sued for placing that thing on the surface
of the ground to try to save smugglers and even terrorists who
are wandering around in the desert.
Just that one document detailed above fills 21
megabytes of disk space. The entire CIA
World Fact Book is only about 100 megabytes of disk space.
So when you see people protesting about somebody
dying in the desert keep in mind that it's those very same people
who sue when the Border Patrol tries to put rescue devices in
the desert to save those lives.
It gets worse. If you examine Page
Two of that document -- items #4 and #6 --you will note that
under the "agreement" the Border Patrol is required
to stay away from hundreds of square
miles of border lands. Yes, to be allowed to place rescue devices
on the ground to save lives the Border Patrol had to promise the
"environmentalists" to restrict its own surveillance
of the border. It's fine with the "environmentalists"
if the place becomes a drug smuggler's Freeway To The North but
just don't let the Border Patrol go there.
This is the sort of "stuff" Boeing
did not bother to investigate before they bid on this SBI-Net
fiasco.
The "environment" not withstanding..
another problem seemingly missed by Boeing is that there really
aren't that many places along the border where camera towers will
work. Much of the border terrain is far too craggy and has too
many deep narrow canyons to make video cameras an effective solution.
Border Access
The U.S. border itself offers a simple east west
roadway that is met every few miles by a north south roadway.
Almost all of these roads are dirt roads – not all-weather
roads. If your “tower” cannot fit on the existing
right of way or easement or land you already bought, you are in
trouble. Further, the ideal spot for your tower might not be anyplace
you can actually use without five years of government acquisition
procedures plus ten years in court with the "environmentalists"
and then a million dollars in all-weather road construction.
