Outdated Sensors Hamper Border Patrol

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Source: Associated Press

- Along the expansive Canadian border, a lack of agents and antiquated motion sensors can make it difficult to distinguish between a would-be terrorist and a wayward moose, officials say.

Law enforcement officials and lawmakers argue more funding is needed to put more agents and reliable technology along the 4,000-mile border. Without both, it's impossible to hunt down everything that trips the sensors or know who — and what — is trying to get in.

"It's pretty much a joke," said Towner County Sheriff Vaughn Klier, whose territory stretches to the border.

Officials won't say how many of the motion detectors are buried along the border, citing security concerns. But U.S. Border Patrol supervisor Brent Zimmerman said he doesn't entirely trust the sensors because they're difficult to maintain and rely on batteries.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070630/ap_on_re_us/border_sensors_1

[Bruce McAuley]

1. We live close to the border...

Funniest thing I've seen or heard recently was the scanner report of a person running the border from Canada one evening in a vehicle which promptly turned right and paralleled the border for 10 miles or so and then turned north again and re-entered Canada at the next crossing. The local cops are too far away to stop them, and the Border Patrol was evidently caught napping also, since they couldn't get to stop the vehicle before it made a crossing right by the local Border Patrol office. Who knows what kind of duffel bags they threw out on their free run before they made it back?
I can believe the sensors are getting old, but there's a lot of overflying the border by thermal imaging aircraft on a constant basis.
Newer technology would make up for lack of agents, which isn't the case here as the local office only opened 3 years ago with 30 or 40 new people moving here.
They do pick up vans every once in a while with illegal Koreans(mostly) who walk across and get picked up on this side.

Bruce