Guard Towers and Border Security

Earlier this week, we learned that the US is building "guard towers" along the Mexico and Canada borders.

Okay, it's not Tancredo's concrete fence notion, but close enough. (especially when you realize that Canada is not exactly a hotbed of people trying to sneak into the United States)

There's a few points about this thing that I'd like to point out.

First, fences can be as much about keeping people in as out. Although this is being sold as a "security" measure to keep the "evil bastards" out of the United States, I can't help but think it has a lot to do with traffic the other way.

Second, I question the effectiveness of such a scheme, especially along the Canadian border. As one looks across the breadth of the Canada-US border, there are some significant impediments to "fencing off" the border - even with just simple surveillance.

Even using the "state of the art" along the border from the BC coast through to the Crowsnest Pass in Alberta, I doubt that the "vision range" of any tower is going to cover a single valley. Consider the complexity of using, for example, thermal sensors to pick up someone moving across the border. The system is going to spend a lot of its time picking up the local wildlife. (Was that a person or a bear that crossed the border?)

In practical terms, the creation of this fence starts to remind me of the creation of the so-called "Iron Curtain" of the cold-war era.