NATIONAL: "Drone to Patrol Part of Border With Canada," by Monica Davey, New York Times, 8 December 2008.
Last time I sat down with senior officials of Customs and Border Protection within DHS, they lamented that America now had more border agents on the border with Canada than it did during Prohibition. Instead of firewalling our borders, they were more interested in spreading network transparency to nodes of embarkation--not debarkation. They wanted to access flows at the point of origin, not once they had already reached our borders.
Well, now we'll have drones on our border with Canada to go with our Berlin Wall-like fence down south (where more Mexicans die each year than did East Germans trying to cross the Berlin Wall across its entire, decades-long existence).
Funny, because Canada's safer, less violent, etc., and yet they get the FATA treatment.
The vast majority of what we do at the borders is catch illegal immigrants and drugs--essentially two self-inflicted problems.
But in a networked, flat world of hyperconnectivity and hypercompetitiveness, this is our answer--more high-tech firewalling.
The truth is, WRT terrorism, that 90 percent of terror is committed within the terrorists' home-country of origin, just like 70 percent of all cyber crimes/sabotage is committed by insiders already within your IT system's firewall.
That we suffer such Maginot Line thinking in this day and age--including that massive boondoggle called strategic missile defense--is sad indeed.
It truly reflects that which reduces our competitiveness.
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