4 ways to address the failures we found along the US border’s “virtual wall”

MIT Technology Review today published our investigation into how many people have died near the “virtual wall” of surveillance towers that the US government has installed along the US-Mexico border. We found cases of people who walked undetected through areas surveilled by advanced, AI-enabled towe…

Résumé

Audit surveillance towers

The US government has installed hundreds of surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border, often called the virtual wall, to detect people crossing illegally.

These towers use advanced technology, including AI, to monitor remote desert areas.

However, a recent investigation by MIT Technology Review found that many people died near these towers without being detected, and their bodies remained unnoticed for weeks or months.

The article highlights that the government does not have a complete map of where these towers are located or when they were installed.

For example, the investigation identified nearly 600 towers, but the government claims there are 800 in operation today.

The article suggests that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency managing these towers, should conduct a full audit to understand how many towers exist, where they are, and how often they fail to detect people.

This audit is necessary because the current lack of data makes it impossible to assess the system’s effectiveness or the number of deaths linked to it.