Border Patrol: Protecting America's Borders

This article discusses the increasingly political and visible issue of border security in terms of automated sensor arrays, with focus on the United States and its border with Mexico. In order to provide an excellent multi-spatial multi-spectral sensor array, this article describes a series of important technological necessities: a low false-alarm rate, accurate threat identification, ability to classify threat, and the capacity to be integrated into a larger information network. The article also describes issues that arise from jamming (for which is recommends a fault tolerance) and wireless networking. Many of the problems with using sensor arrays for border security are due to difficulties with integrating the sensors with regional network capabilities as well as Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Legal privacy issues are also being addressed due to the constant monitoring of private property that is provided by these sensors.