With something as important as data at the border being farmed out to so many parties, I can hardly trust information can be kept securely with so many 3rd party relationships, especially with foreign firms.
Note that it looks like this technology is being deployed at the border not at border crossings.
What threats are you worried about here?
Privacy of people in the process of illegally immigrating? I don't think the people deploying these experiments share your concern.
Privacy of people who happen to live near the border? It seems unlikely that they are collecting much data on them, just because it's not useful to collect... I can see it being a real concern if they are collecting data on them.
Privacy of troop movements? Are there serious adversaries who are more likely to be aided by this data leaking than they are to be hindered by the increased surveillance? If a real war broke out on the US border I'm sure we would quickly become more selective about the providers, and where the data from the instruments is going.
> Privacy of people who happen to live near the border? It seems unlikely that they are collecting much data on them, just because it's not useful to collect... I can see it being a real concern if they are collecting data on them.
I could easily see an agency argue that it needs to collect data on everyone near the border in order to track coyotes and others inside the country assisting with border crossings, etc.
After Snowden, it's hard to envision any agency with surveillance powers opting not to collect data for not being "useful". The justification is definitely there for those who are adamant about collecting the data.
Fascinating. The article is talking about surveillance blimps and I can't help but wonder if someone is working on repurposing that tech to detect fires at their onset.
A lot of forest fires just starting are actually reported by small airplane pilots who notice them from the air. The controllers pass the information along to the proper authorities very quickly. I've reported a few. I note that half an hour later, there is already a response. So I guess NorCal approach calls the right people pretty quickly. So in a way, this is already being done.
Well, there are satellites that have far larger fields of view, so the question is how much smaller fires you can see with a blimp compared to a satellite.
Well, in the traditional sense of diversity, I see just about every race/ethnicity represented there. It's very diverse staff represented in this picture.
As a troll, he's exceptionally ignorant, even for racist trolls. Assuming he doesn't consider American Indians to be real "natives" of the U.S., Mexican-Americans most certainly are, especially for the border states in which citizenship was granted upon annexation.
Do you know their backgrounds? Do you know whether they were raised rich or poor? Perhaps some come from the Eastern states, some from the West, others from the south. Some are young and some are old. Maybe some like classical music while others prefer rap. Some like long walks on the beach while others like spending time hiking in the forest.
Lots of diversity is probably contained in that photo, just not the superficial type you're most fixated on.
Based on that picture alone? Some tall, some short, some old, some young, some men, some women, some skinny, some fat, etc. Lots of superficial diversity in that picture.
Why are we spending presumably billions of dollars restricting movement of people? It would be by far cheaper to open the border and allow working age migrants to pay into our tax system legally....
Because 12 million illegal aliens are currently paying something like $11B in taxes. That's $916 per person, per year. Now, some of that is because they're here illegally, but I bet a major part of it is that they aren't making much money, and in the US people who don't make much pay little to no taxes at all. Some even get money back from the government.
I think I might need to clarify my point here. I'm not placing any blame on migrant workers who come to the US to make a living, my biggest issue is with companies that take advantage of this labor without taxes. Having an easier system for migrant workers to have legal status here (i.e. able to bank in the US, pay taxes, etc) would raise their income, and benefit the US as a whole.
How would a massively increased supply of unskilled labor (which is already abundant) raise anyone's wages? Say, for instance, tomorrow it became really, really easy for companies to hire programmers. Do you think the wages would go up or down?
