Sunday, June 04, 2006

Texas To Put Web Cameras On Mexican Border

Texas To Put Web Cameras On Mexican Border

This is the dumbest idea that I have heard of in a long time. Listen to audio report here.

Texas wants to put hundreds of cameras on its border with Mexico, hoping that will somehow stem the flow of illegal immigration.

The cameras will be linked to the internet where the public would be able to report people crossing the border or to report suspicious activity. And they want you to believe that from this, police and Border agents will respond and arrest the border crossers? NONSENSE!

It would be impossible for this to be effective. There are not enough law enforcement personnel to even begin to handle these reports. These reports will just be taken for PR purposes. It's an effort to make the public feel that something is being done, while in truth, these reports will be passed on and added to a stack of hundreds (if not thousands) of other reports, if they would even take reports at all... the whole thing is likely a farse. If they were serious about this program, why not hire trained Federal or State personnel to monitor the cameras? Buying cameras and letting random web users look at them as Web Cams and giving them an 800 number to call? SILLY!!!! That would be like the FAA buying all new Air traffic control monitors, but not hiring Air Traffic Controllers to monitor them... let's just hook it up to the internet and let the public guide the planes. LOL

In the case of the Texas idea.... there are several problems:

1. The public is not trained to deal with this problem. We are supposed to have border patrol to deal with this.

2. As mentioned before... there would be no one to respond to any of these calls. Which points to a PR motive by the Texas governor, who is getting the State ready for elections. You are talking about a time delay of anywhere from 15 minutes to over an hour. The border crossers would be long gone by the time authorities reached the location where activity was spotted. (It's not a real plan... it's a PR stunt).

3. Does the Texas governor really expect the public to understand the terrain, or to accurately report what they see? NONSENSE!

4. Will this deter illegal border crossers? Of course not. It will only make them more resourceful. For example... they would just vandalize or destroy the cameras for one thing. To illegal border crossers, this is yet another half measure, that they aren't afraid of.

This bright idea is just as bad as the idea of putting 6000 National Guard troops on the border who can't take any action. They can only observe and report. This was Bush's PR stunt for the mid-term elections.

Unfortunately, Americans are slow to catch on to this bull...., as they so often are.

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