Monday, June 11, 2012

Bringing the Battlefield to the Border

The Border Patrol became part of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 and was placed under the wing of Customs and Border Protection, now the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country with 60,000 employees.

By Todd Miller, TomDispatch
June 7, 2012

William “Drew” Dodds, the salesperson for StrongWatch, a Tucson-based company, is at the top of his game when he describes developments on the southern border of the United States in football terms. In his telling, that boundary is the line of scrimmage, and the technology his company is trying to sell -- a mobile surveillance system named Freedom-On-The-Move, a camera set atop a retractable mast outfitted in the bed of a truck and maneuvered with an Xbox controller -- acts like a “roving linebacker.”

As Dodds describes it, unauthorized migrants and drug traffickers often cross the line of scrimmage undetected. At best, they are seldom caught until the “last mile,” far from the boundary line. His surveillance system, he claims, will cover a lot more of that ground in very little time and from multiple angles. It will become the border-enforcement equivalent of New York Giants’ linebacking great, Lawrence Taylor.

To listen to Dodds, an ex-Marine -- Afghanistan and Iraq, 2001-2004 -- with the hulking physique of a linebacker himself, is to experience a new worldview being constructed on the run. [...]

Read the full article:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9650-bringing-the-battlefield-to-the-border

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