Secure Border Initiative Part 6

Part of the technology soon to be employed by Boeing is real time fingerprint identification of border crossers as they are apprehended in the field. The embarrassing question of: What difference does it make since you have to haul them all away in plastic handcuffs anyway? seems to have been too mean spirited for anyone to ask. Another embarrassing question to ask would have been How many more prisoner transport vehicles could we buy with that money instead?

In some places along our border the Border Patrol vehicles being used are in such bad shape that if you take your hands off the steering wheel they drive themselves in tight circles — the whole front end is gone from driving over such bad roads.

Another interesting technology soon to be fielded by Boeing are Blackberry type PDAs. These PDAs are to allow the Agents to get instant updates on the positions of illegals along the border. Here too, we have a solution to a nonexistent problem. It takes even an hour for Agents to get into position to apprehend illegals. This is especially true when the illegals cross in large groups and have to be surrounded.

Standard operating procedure for most Agents is to stand on the X and park their vehicles on specific spots. Agents do not wander like grazing cows.

Existing USBP helicopters are already quick on the scene and do a good job at tracking and herding. Giving the Agents a real time map of all the activity in their sector of operation might be good for the smugglers to see — because it might show the positions of all the Agents — but it does little for Agents who might have to spend twenty minutes traversing three miles of rutted dirt road to try to make the apprehension. Yes, there are places in Arizona where five miles an hour is a Border Patrol vehicle’s top speed because the environmentalists have stopped anyone from smoothing the dirt road. Yes, if you go smooth that road you can be sued.

This PDA real time technological solution is but another example of something from people who spend their days in pristine offices and where dribbling donut sugar on their $100 tie is the worst that will happen to them this week.

What the Border Patrol Agents need are roads they can drive on. Notice that they are not getting what they need — roads — because they then could actually do their job.