The Bush administration's plan to outfit the U.S.-Mexico border with a "virtual" fence consisting of sensors, cameras, and drone aircraft is running into technical snags.
Federal officials told a congressional committee on Wednesday that the first phase of the project--consisting of about 100 miles near Yuma and Tuscon, Ariz., and El Paso, Texas--won't likely be completed until 2011, about three years later than expected, according to The Washington Post. The task is being overseen by the Department of Homeland Security and has been contracted out to Boeing.
The Bush administration is working on adding a 'virtual' fence--consisting of sensors, drones, and cameras--in an effort to supplement physical fences like this one along the U.S.-Mexico border.
(Credit: U.S. Department of Homeland Security)For years, the Bush administration has been heralding the concept of a "high-tech" fence as a sophisticated, 21st-century way to help border patrol agents nab foreigners trying to sneak into the country--and supplement physical fences, which are also in the works. In 2006, it estimated that it would cost $7.6 billion to secure the entire 2,000-mile southern border. Critics, including Democrats in Congress, charge the effort has been wasteful and poorly executed so far, and civil libertarians have raised questions about privacy.
The decision to postpone completion of the first phase came after government auditors discovered numerous flaws in a 28-mile pilot of the border fence in Arizona. Known as "Project 28," the $20.6 million effort was supposed to have been operational last summer, but software integration issues stymied a timely launch.
In the past, other glitches--including lags in radar information displaying in command centers and newly deployed radars being activated by rain or other environmental factors--have made the system unusable, according to Government Accountability Office investigators. However, the GAO did note in its testimony Wednesday to Congress (PDF) that border security agents they interviewed say the current project provides "greater technological capabilities" than what they're accustomed to working with.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said last week that the department had "accepted" the pilot, which he said means the agency will take elements of the prototype and apply them to other parts of its virtual fence plan. He also said the department plans to double the number of unmanned aerial vehicles policing the border. In a blog entry on Tuesday, Chertoff denied any allegations that the overall border security plan is facing setbacks or, as The Wall Street Journal called it in a weekend article, "mothballing."
"I've seen this system work with my own eyes, and I've talked with the Border Patrol Agents who are using it," Chertoff wrote. "They assure me that it adds value."
WASHINGTON--We already know that some aging politicians and bureaucrats are prone to less-than-coherent ramblings about the technological topics that fall within their job descriptions (See: Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, former chairman of the panel overseeing Internet regulation, "The Internet is a series of tubes," July 2006).
You can imagine what goes through their minds: I really need to show the public that I get it. The only problem is that it doesn't always work.
Take an event held Wednesday at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a storied pro-business lobbying group. It was called "RFID Solutions: Securing the Commerce of Tomorrow." Representatives from government agencies, foreign embassies and RFID (that's radio frequency identification) vendors--some of whom were sponsors--came to listen to panels that lauded the benefits of using the track-and-trace chips in everything from pharmaceutical shipments to international relief.
W. Ralph Basham, CBP Commissioner
(Credit: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)Fast-forward to lunch and the chicken cordon bleu. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Ralph Basham took the podium. Basham, a former Secret Service chief, launched into a speech about how his agency is the only one he's aware of to use RFID chips "operationally"--that is, they're not just used for building security or employee identification cards, as several other federal agencies do.
Basham boasted that they're currently embedded in "trusted traveler" cards carried by some 325,000 commercial truck drivers and frequent border-crossing commuters.
But before he even began his speech, he treated the audience to this witticism: "I probably couldn't tell you the difference between an RFID chip and a potato chip."
I wondered at first whether I had misheard him. After all, this was the same guy who went on to boast about how tech-enabled his agency is. But after his speech, he did it again. After agreeing to take a few questions from the audience, he reminded the packed ballroom not to ask him anything about chips--oh, "unless it's potato chips," of course.
During his talk, he described each of the RFID-chipped identification programs and sought to dismiss the need for privacy worries about the tactic. That's because the chips don't store any "personal information," Basham said--just a unique identifying number that's read from a distance by a border patrol agent's reader and transmitted through the air. He said such "vicinity"-read ID cards were a proven means of vetting people at the borders and had been used in trusted traveler cards since 1995.
"We are tagging a number, not a human being," he said. Referring to the Canadian and Mexican border-crossing cards, as well as the program for commercial truck drivers, he added: "SENTRI, NEXUS and FAST members do not have to worry about their personal ID or identity being stolen."
The only thing missing, I guess, was Basham proudly sharing with the audience that he couldn't figure out how to get rid of the blinking "12:00" on his VCR.
WASHINGTON--A handful of new drones is expected to begin patrolling the nation's northern and southern borders within the next few years.
For the moment, we're not talking swarms, here. But U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials, backed by the Bush administration and some in Congress, are nevertheless hoping to steadily increase the presence of unmanned aerial vehicles aloft in an effort to nab illegal immigrants and drug traffickers more effectively, said Michael Kostelnik, a retired U.S. Air Force official who now serves as assistant commissioner of the CBP's air and marine unit.
U.S. Homeland Security officials plan to add more drones like these in an effort to nab illegal immigrants and drug traffickers.
(Credit: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)For the past few years, CBP agents have already been launching a pair of Predator B unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from the Arizona desert to work along the southwestern border with Mexico.
The agency plans to take on two more aircraft this fall, with the idea that they'll undergo further testing and start flying surveillance missions next year, Kostelnik said in a speech at the annual symposium here of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. In September, CBP plans to inaugurate one of the flying machines at an operations center in Grand Forks, N.D., and in November, it plans to accept a second UAV as part of its southwestern fleet.
There's also funding available for the addition of two more Predator B vehicles next year, Kostelnik said. CBP hopes to outfit one of them with sensors specially designed for policing the seas and station it along the Gulf of Mexico coast, which he suggested has "a lot going on" from an illegal-immigration and drug-trafficking perspective.
For what are probably obvious reasons, the idea of sharing the domestic airspace with vehicles lacking human eyeballs has caused a stir among many pilots. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, citing safety worries, has repeatedly called on Congress to urge federal regulators to step up their enforcement of potentially unregulated uses of the aircraft in the national airspace.
Kostelnik attempted to downplay those concerns on Wednesday by boasting about the perceived benefits derived from the policing tactic. He noted that CBP has received certification from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate only in certain areas along the border.
He also said the Predator is "probably one of the most experienced and safest of all vehicles we fly" and noted that most missions occur at night and in relatively remote areas. ("We're not flying downtown New York; we're not flying across Dallas, Texas," he said.) While they're up there, CBP's planes could likely be used to conduct other federal agencies' missions, too, such as collecting weather data for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he added.
"You have to understand what these things are doing," Kostelnik told the gathering of UAV industry and government representatives. "I'm not trying to make a buck, I'm trying to protect you and your families."
Although China's government has been mired in human rights problems for years, the bureaucrats do know a thing about customer service.
Communist party members have to undergo the "360" review process for promotions, the peer-review system that helps determine promotions at companies like Intel. (The party picked it up from U.S. corporations, Jian Daning, director of the
Customer service-rating tool
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)Want to open a company here? The system for tax breaks for exporters is well mapped-out, and there are several regions offering deals on land in industrial parks.
And there's this handy screen at customs at the Beijing Capital International Airport. It allows visitors and returnees to rate the customer service given by the customs official at the desk. You push a button to indicate Greatly Satisfied, Satisfied, Checking Time Took Too Long or Poor Customer Service.
And you can rate the official before, or after, he stamps your passport and studies your visa. It's right there at the customs gate. I was in a fairly quick lane, and didn't get sent back to a sniffer dog, so I gave officer No. 30043 a Greatly Satisfied.
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