The American Prospect – It’s only a matter of time before the drones, spy blimps, license plate readers, and motion-activated cameras come to the rest of America. Walls are but one ingredient in the borderlands’ mix of barriers. In recent years, autonomous surveillance towers, drones, spy blimps, license plate readers, and motion-activated cameras have also been put in place. In the borderlands, no one is free from the ever-expanding surveillance and data collection nexus operated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Federal agents have spent years perfecting a range of techniques and technologies that undermine civil liberties, all with the goal of sustaining the surveillance-driven immigration enforcement apparatus. The nearly ubiquitous surveillance has produced what is known as the panopticon effect. “The panopticon [effect] is, of course, you think that they’re watching you, but they might not be,” Todd Miller, author of Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders, told the Prospect. “Like in the prison system, a camera could be there, but it might be turned off and no one’s looking, but psychologically, you think people are watching you.” Nothing screams panopticon quite like CBP’s Tethered Aerostat Radar System (TARS), semi-stationary blimps providing low-altitude surveillance of the U.S.-Mexico border, Florida Keys, and Puerto Rico. TARS operators relay surveillance data to DHS, law enforcement, and military partners. Since the 2010s, CBP has contracted with British defense contractor QinetiQ and with Peraton—a private equity–owned national-security company based in Virginia—to maintain the program. The agency has dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into TARS. Last year, it also deployed a new aerostat in the Florida Keys amid “upticks in transportation avenues and conveyances for illegal smuggling, fishing, and immigration activities,” according to the agency’s website. On March 6, the Senate passed the Coast Guard Authorization Act, instructing the U.S. Coast Guard and CBP to procure blimp-based surveillance systems for deployment in additional areas of operation. The move came one day after an aerostat at South Padre Island in Texas broke free and, after drifting hundreds of miles, crash-landed on a ranch property outside Dallas. Runaway spy blimps aside, license plate readers (LPRs) can also be found throughout the borderlands. These devices, some of which are covert, capture images of license plates and convert those images into data. CBP uses that data to identify vehicles believed to be linked to cross-border crimes. LPRs also produce real-time alerts to allow CBP and other federal agencies to intercept suspicious vehicles. For Hathaway, a self-described “big, tall gringo,” LPRs are part and parcel of dragnet surveillance in the borderlands. “I drive in a car with Arizona license plates, but I will get pulled over,” he told the Prospect. Autonomous surveillance towers installed by CBP in the borderlands are the most visible manifestation of smart border technology to date, with the agency describing them as “a partner that never sleeps, never needs to take a coffee break, never even blinks.” CBP has received more than $700 million in federal funding for its surveillance tower program since 2017. Over the next decade or so, it will spend approximately $68 million to expand the program by upgrading existing towers and constructing hundreds more.

In early April, CBP unveiled plans to integrate machine-learning capabilities into the existing surveillance towers. First reported by The Intercept, modernizing these towers will facilitate automatic detection of anyone and anything moving near the Tucson-area border zone in Arizona. CBP has also tasked Google with operating “a central repository for video surveillance data,” supported by MAGE, a cloud computing platform. As part of the project, CBP is also partnering with IBM and Equitus, which will provide the software needed to collect visual data. That data will be stored on the agency’s Google Cloud. The CBP spokesperson told the Prospect that technology affords the agency “persistent surveillance of the border region,” which reduces the need for manpower on the border and provides greater coverage to interdict migrant crossings, which have dropped significantly under the Trump administration. But for residents of border communities, surveillance towers loom not just physically but mentally, creating a sense of perpetual observation while eroding any semblance of privacy. “They’re scanning the whole community and … zooming in on just regular day-to-day people going about their life,” Hathaway said….”