mike_barton
Editor

Web-cams to patrol borders

news
Jun 2, 20061 min

President George Bush’s home state of Texas will “enlist web users in its fight against illegal immigration by offering live surveillance footage of the Mexican border on the internet”, reports BBC News online.

The report said:

The plan will allow web users worldwide to watch Texas’ border with Mexico and phone the authorities if they spot any apparently illegal crossings…

The Texas governor announced his plans for streaming the border surveillance camera footage over the internet at a meeting of police officials late this week.

The cameras will cost $5m to install and will be trained on sections of the 1,000-mile (1,600km) border known to be favoured by illegal immigrants.

Web users who spot an apparently illegal crossing will be able to alert the authorities by telephoning a number free of charge.

Are you ready to become Big Brother for the government?

mike_barton

Mike Barton started out in online slinging HTML for CNET.com in the late 1990s and began his editorial career at New Media magazine shortly thereafter. In his early days, he was an editor at Ziff-Davis's PC Computing and ZDNet.com before heading Down Under, where he produced and edited the business and technology sections of The Sydney Morning Herald online. After returning to the States in 2006, he has worked for IDG's Infoworld, PCWorld, Computerworld, and CSO Online. He currently edits and produces WIRED.com's Innovation Insights, and is a contributing editor at ITworld.

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