The Future of SBInet – HSToday
The Secure Border Initiative-Network (SBInet), the controversial effort to build a “virtual fence” across the southwest border, will add another chapter to its long saga this year when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano receives an analysis of the security options for the entire southwest border. That analysis could be delivered as early as March.
Questions remain whether this signature technology component of border security efforts at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will remain a part of the solution or not.
Napolitano and other DHS officials received a briefing on alternatives to the primary border security technology program at the end of last summer. The results of that alternatives analysis apparently provided justification to doom SBInet—at least in its present form—despite evidence that the system finally might fulfill the promise of significantly expanding situational awareness for US Border Patrol agents.
