Web users to 'patrol' US border

[Sikander]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
Some of us have better things to be doing with their lives than staring at webcams for days on end looking for illegal immigrants...

A group which apparantly excludes yourself.

[Dr Strangelove]

Will the volunteers each be assigned to monitor one camera at a time, or will they monitor several, or might more than one volunteer simultaneously monitor a camera? An unscrupulous person could arrange to monitor part of the border and allow immigrants to cross.

[Vesayen]

They could make it an MMO....

Heres the big question.

If you roll up an elf do you keep your +2 search bonus and infrasion? What do they do-give the elf players night vision goggles?

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle



Ooooooh, well what happens when the boarder patrol checks the tape to see if there were any illegals actually crossing? Or when the "volunteers" getting bad info start to get investigated for screwing with the federal government? Odd how those phone calls are traceable. Do you know what a felony is?

Face it, it's a good idea. Your poor excuse for a flaw is like saying the neighborhhod watch is a bad idea because the drug dealers will call the cops.

You do realize phone calls can be made from outside the US where the government would be hard pressed to do any prosecuting.

Besides, if enough people make calls to flood the system, they'll have a lot of trouble getting them all.

Heck, prosecuting a few people will make even people who like the idea scared to call if they're not 100% sure they're seeing the real thing.

What happens when some hacker decides to knock the system offline? Do they have a backup?

[Donegeal]

And you do realize that such phone calls can be blocked?

Hell... if it nabs one extra illegal immigrant trying to pass and cost the tax payers nothing:

All the naysayers seem to think that this is a system to supplant the current system. Its not. It is merely an extra measure. Flooding the system would probably just make them not use it for awhile. Someone hacks the system and it crashes? So its down for awhile. Big deal. It is not the primary border enforcement. Hell, its not even the secondary (or third or fourth, etc). Its just another process in a much larger system.

[Harry Tuttle]

Yeah and what's to stop the people who are that gungho about stopping the illegals from calling another number for the INS?

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Will the volunteers each be assigned to monitor one camera at a time, or will they monitor several, or might more than one volunteer simultaneously monitor a camera? An unscrupulous person could arrange to monitor part of the border and allow immigrants to cross.

I believe, since it's web based, that multiple people can watch the cameras and are not assigned.