The Next New Virtual Border Fence? – The Defense Media Network
On Jan. 18, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) released a Request for Information (RFI) in which it expressed interest in commercial off-the-shelf solutions “for deployment at fixed, elevated sites, hereafter referred to as Integrated Fixed Towers, that would provide automated, persistent wide-area surveillance for the detection, tracking, identification, and classification of illegal entries. The capability sought would provide additional situational awareness and will allow CBP to more efficiently and effectively respond to border incursions where deployed.”
The RFI raised eyebrows among homeland security experts who closely followed the doomed trajectory of a system conceived in 2005 to bring integrated cameras and sensors to the entire U.S./Mexican land border: the Secure Border Initiative Network, or SBInet.
