
U.S. CBP and Israeli Elbit to Persistently Surveil Native American Reservation - user982
https://theintercept.com/2019/08/25/border-patrol-israel-elbit-surveillance/
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TomMckenny
The Tohono O’odham predate the border by about 10,000 years. But some powerful
people with no knowledge of the land or its people drew a straight line on a
map 150 years ago.

Supposedly yet more intrusion and division of their land is the only solution
to some new problem someone else caused.

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mieseratte
Surveillance of the border from a reservation. What a clickbait title.

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mikeash
“...a 160-foot surveillance tower capable of continuously monitoring every
person and vehicle within a radius of up to 7.5 miles.”

Sounds like it’s surveilling the reservation to me. The stated purpose is to
monitor border crossings, but that’s not the same as surveillance of the
border.

~~~
mieseratte
This is already a thing done in the border in other locations, the title makes
it out like it was built to surveillance the reserve. That is a clickbait
title.

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mikeash
It _was_ built to monitor the reservation, for the purpose of monitoring
border crossings.

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mythrwy
I worked in the area 15 years ago or so.

What the article fails to mention is that some Tohono O'odham members have
been heavily involved in both human and drug trafficking due to the cross
border nature of their nation.

[https://abcnews.go.com/US/tribal-land-us-mexico-border-
drug-...](https://abcnews.go.com/US/tribal-land-us-mexico-border-drug-human-
smuggling/story?id=63064992)

(Of course the morality of laws leading to smuggling are up for debate)

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jonathankoren
I look forward to these being deployed in the 100 mile “border zone”

[https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/who-lives-in-
border-p...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/05/who-lives-in-border-
patrols-100-mile-zone-probably-you-mapped/558275/)

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writepub
The article, ahem hit piece, basically reports on surveillance commonplace
along the border.

But, by picking a border reservation, the exact same surveillance is falsely
setting CBP up as a bogeyman apparently racist towards natives - all of which
is left unsubstantiated by the article.

The origin of surveillance tech is of no relevance, other than to malign
Israel. What would change if the tech were from, say Canada? Nothing but the
outage channeled at Israel.

Here's the entirety of the article without the undercurrent prodding outrage:

Surveillance towers capable of infrared tracking of humans for upto 1 mile are
common along the border. Some borderland overlaps with Indian reservations.

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mikeash
There are several other important points that your summary misses:

* A history of harassment by CBP towards inhabitants of the reservation which is driving people away.

* CBP is abusing this surveillance technology to monitor protestors.

* CBP lends its surveillance technology to other law enforcement agencies in a way that seems to have insufficient oversight and large potential for abuse.

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writepub
Glad to see Israel has _nothing_ to do with this.

Wherever CBP presence increases, questionings increase, regardless of race. To
frame this tension as harassment targeting natives is disingenuous. CBP often
gets accused of racism, especially towards Hispanics, though some 70% of CBP
officers deployed along the border are Hispanic themselves.

If the protests are happening within CBP jurisdiction (100 miles from the
border), how is deploying authorized surveillance per law "abuse"?

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mikeash
If you think CBP monitoring protestors isn’t abuse if it’s happening within
100 miles of the border, then I think we share too little common ground for
this conversation to ever be productive.

~~~
writepub
Indeed - contrarian viewpoints are to be avoided at all costs for productively
mass converging on falsehoods.

~~~
mikeash
There has to be some basic set of shared values or else it’s just shouting.

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fit2rule
I honestly don't understand why the American people tolerate such influence
within their borders. I guess the tyranny of distance is at play here - this
reservation, as well as the other places patrolled by CBP stormtroopers, are
out of sight and therefore out of mind for a majority of Americans.

But its only a matter of time until someone gets up on the pulpit and starts
complaining about 'external sovereign powers having undue influence over
American politics' .. as has been the case with the ridiculous Russia
narrative of late.

I guess its a matter of having the 'right people' on the 'right side' of
history - but frankly, given the choice, I'd rather live on the plantation any
day. The oppressed natives of America have, time and again, demonstrated the
kind of resilient human spirit that I admire.

And now, here we are, with the perpetrators of one of the worst apartheid
states in the modern era, bringing it within the US' borders. How do people
rationalise this against the "mah Russia' narrative backdrop?

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bsaul
unfortunately, i don't know of any single border of any state or nation that
was peacefully acquired or constituted. I don't think "modernity" has changed
anything, no matter where you make it starts.

If you want an example, then look at Israel, which is one of the first state
that wasn't created unilaterally through force or as a result of war, but (at
least initially) through a UN resolution from an assembly of states that
(almost) all agreed on the necessity of partitionning the populations living
in the area. And look at the result...

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LegitShady
Israel, while 'ratified' by the UN, created itself from force by defeating the
surrounding opponents who tried to stop it from existing, continued to do so
throughout its history with multiple wars against coalitions of enemies, and
continues to develop its military deterrents today.

A handful of UN dopes sitting on the Golan Heights who have to run to Israel
for safety when actual trouble from the region affects them do not deter
anyone.

The UN recognition is nice, but israel would exist without it.

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bsaul
Completely off-topic, but :

In the post WW2 context, with the cold war looming, having the UN ratify the
existence of Israel was a huge thing. Don't forget that both in 49 and in 67
nobody was giving Israel any chance to survive in a war against its arab
neighbourghs. At that time, things were very _very_ different from now.

