Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Real Fences

Terrence P. Jeffrey's latest article concerns the construction of a virtual fence to protect our boarder. This virtual fence would use cameras, motion detectors, and unmanned vehicles to patrol the boarder and track anybody who tried to cross it. Then our border patrol units could swoop in and say "Hey, we see you - you gotta go back."

Jeffrey favors a real wall because it is both discriminatory and proportional. That is to say, it would stop people from attempting to cross, but people (and large squirrels) on this side of the fence wouldn't risk triggering these cameras and whatnot.

I don't know - he's kind of convinced me that the virtual wall isn't much good, but I am also unhappy with the idea of a big physical wall. It would work as a deterrent (if it were well done), but would be enormously expensive to build and to man. And I have to admit, I just don't like the imagery.

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