Abigail Scott Cronkite News
PHOENIX – U.S. Customs and Border Protection is actively expanding a “virtual wall” of border surveillance towers in the Southwest, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which maps the location of each tower along the U.S. southern border. increase.
“We started making our own map, but it became clear that this would be a useful resource for others, including journalists, researchers, advocates, and humanitarian aid workers,” said Conservation. said Dave Mars, director of research at the Foundation, a dedicated nonprofit. Civil liberties in the digital age.
Maas said the project began in 2022 when the EFF traveled across the border to document watchtowers and realized there were no public maps of the location. They found towers not only in remote areas, but also in neighborhoods and inhabited urban areas.
EFF said in a previous statement Digital surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico border “will not only impact immigrants,” but it will also put every American living within 100 miles of the land or sea border “in the shadow of billions of dollars worth of privacy-abusing technology.” Always exposed.”
Requests for comment from CBP regarding the tower’s operations and safeguards against potential abuse were not immediately returned.
map — so far identified 352 towers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas — only a partial list of what is installed and what’s to come and will be updated as new information becomes available. EFF is also concerned about increasingly sophisticated surveillance systems using artificial intelligence.
According to the EFF, CBP is installing new small AI-controlled surveillance towers that catalog images along parts of the southern Texas and California borders, and CBP will combine towers from various manufacturers into one We are working to integrate it into the program.
The EFF said its map includes both fixed and mobile watchtowers that CBP has adopted over the past decade from several vendors (Elbit Systems of America, General Dynamics, Anduril Industries, FLIR). said there is.
“They are pushing a new program called the Consolidated Oversight Program, which will allow the Elbit system, the General Dynamics system and the Anduril system to be under one specific program within CBP,” said Maass. says.
Arizona was an early adopter of watchtowers when the CBP program started in the 2000s, so most of the new watchtowers are in neighboring states.
“Arizona was the starting point and spending skyrocketed,” Mars said.
Arizona researchers are among those who could benefit from the new map.
Sam Chambers, a researcher in the Department of Geography at the University of Arizona, compares the spatial and temporal patterns of border crossers and the mortality rates of these border crossers to border controls and border surveillance in place. and analyzed.
Chambers’ research shows a correlation between watchtowers and immigrant deaths.
“Before and after surveillance technology was introduced, the locations of human remains found were in different places,” Chambers said, explaining that watchtowers would force immigrants to take alternative routes. bottom.
“Each new development doubles the harm and doubles the border deadline,” Chambers said.
The rise of these surveillance technologies will not only affect border crossers, but also residents living in towered cities.
According to EFF maps, several cities and towns, including Nogales and Douglas, Arizona, and San Antonio, Texas, appear to have concentrations of surveillance technology and are responsible for the U.S.-Mexico border program. Raises privacy concerns for Pedro Rios. American Friends Service Committee.
Towers in these areas pick up a lot of movement from people going about their daily lives, Rios said, and detected movement from people going to work, walking their dogs, or going to the mailbox are all tracked by these monitoring technologies. I added that you can.
“With any kind of enforcement mechanism or tool, we need a way to ensure accountability, we need to monitor these mechanisms and transparency. Those three things seem to be missing,” said Rios. says Mr.
Rios said the border surveillance system collects endless amounts of data on U.S. citizens and has appropriate surveillance mechanisms to ensure that the agency is held accountable for the misuse of this data and the basic civil liberties of its citizens. He said that it is important to have
Like Chambers, Rios is concerned about the correlation between watchtowers and immigrant deaths.
“Studies have shown impacts on border crossers, and there is a correlation between tower placement and the location of human remains found, particularly in southern Arizona,” Rios said.
