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by astrodust 3306 days ago
This is about border cameras, sure, just as much as border patrol is about borders. It's not uncommon for border patrol to set up checkpoints two or three hundred miles from the border just to shake down people for identification (Papers, please!).

Today's border cameras are liable to be deployed all over in the future. Watch what you build because it's very hard to un-build things.
1 comments
sremani 3306 days ago
The farther I know is Sarita TX and one along I-10 some where in AZ (been through both), they are not two hundred miles inside, even though Sarita TX is about 80 miles from border. Would really appreciate if you can point one check post that is 200 miles inland from border?
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astrodust 3306 days ago
This practice is so rampant apparently there's a Wikipedia page for it now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_in...

I'm not sure if the 100 mile thing is a new convention or not (https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone) but it's 100 miles from the border as the crow flies, not via highways. That means the entire state of Vermont is somehow inside that zone.

I think the 200 mile figure that was reported, though I can't find the citation, involved the driving distance. Vermont, for example, is 159 miles end to end, and somehow the southern tip is in the border zone.

What if they decide this entire zone is worth putting up cameras in? What if that software that recognizes "illegals" is so bad that it simply tags anyone who looks vaguely Mexican? These systems are only as good as their data, and the data is astonishingly thin in areas where it counts.

A recent story covered three people that were treated as "identical" in the police database because they had the same first/middle/last names and birthdates. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/03/identity-the...

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mywittyname 3306 days ago
> is so bad that it simply tags anyone who looks vaguely Mexican

Or someone without a ~~personal tracking device~~ cellphone

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chimeracoder 3306 days ago
> Would really appreciate if you can point one check post that is 200 miles inland from border?

The overwhelming majority of the country lives within 200 miles of a border (since ocean borders count as borders). 66% of the country lives within only 100 miles of the border.

So even if you're talking about something that "only" applies to the 200 mile region, you're still talking about something that applies to the vast majority of people actually living here.

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