CBP Adding To Its Border Surveillance Arsenal With The Help Of The Creator Of The Oculus Rift

There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) pretty much unregulated use of surveillance technology. Courts have given considerable leeway to border agencies, reasoning that national security concerns outweigh the countless violations of constitutional rights.

The protections the highest court in the land erects are waved away anywhere CBP operates, which includes international airports located hundreds of miles away from the nation’s physical borders. So does the CBP’s surveillance tech, which can often be found miles inland as well, scooping up US residents in the CBP’s sizable dragnet.

Even when the CBP decides Supreme Court decisions might apply to its surveillance efforts, the agency finds ways to route around this mild inconvenience, utilizing private companies to do its unconstitutional work for it.

Lots of private companies are pitching in to help surveil both sides of the border. The EFF has used information gleaned from public records requests to give researchers (and concerned citizens) some idea of the extent of the CBP’s wall o’ surveillance, which includes at least 290 surveillance towers and 50 automatic license plate readers.

It has compiled a dataset anyone can download, remix and reuse, as well as an interactive map of camera/ALPR locations.

Obviously, the CBP can’t do all of this on its own. So, it’s relying heavily on private sector contractors to help build the surveillance network, as well as make use of everything the CBP collects. The biggest contributor is a company founded by none other than the man who gave us the Oculus Rift, Palmer Luckey. Luckey has long since pivoted from giving people the opportunity to engage in virtual reality. He’s now in the far more lucrative surveillance sector, crafting tech for government agencies that have often shown they can’t be trusted with this much power.

The tower systems are able to automatically detect and track objects  up to 7.5 miles away and assist agents in classifying objects 3 miles away, depending on regional requirements. Dozens more towers will be added at the Canadian border. Meanwhile CBP is in the process of installing 200 Autonomous Surveillance Towers (ASTs) from Anduril Industries that are controlled by artificial intelligence software, which will also be part of the IST program.  In the short term, CBP has earmarked $204 million for this program in its 2023 and 2024 budgets, which covers the deployment of 74 ASTs  by the end of FY 2024 and 100 new towers by the end of FY 2025.

Anduril is Luckey’s company, formed with some former employees of Palantir, the surveillance tech company formed by venture capitalist/free speech enemy Peter Thiel. Anduril stands to make $250 million alone from the creation and installation of the 200 surveillance towers, which can detect people from nearly two miles away.

And the towers aren’t just keeping an eye on the border. The EFF has discovered some rather unusual CBP installations that don’t appear to be border security focused.

The map also includes unusual and novel surveillance towers, such as a new Elbit tower that was installed on the Cochise County Community College campus and a tower installed on the property of Warren Buffet’s son’s ranch, both near Douglas, Ariz. Another Anduril tower was located 30 miles north of the San Diego border, where it watches the Pacific Ocean from the cliffs near the Del Mar dog beach. 

Sure, you can make some money offering goods and services to the US citizens. But if you want to make real money, you’re sometimes better off helping fulfill the government’s surveillance state desires. Fortunately, the Freedom of Information Act ensures that not all of this passive, not-exactly-border-targeting surveillance flies under the public’s radar. Sometimes we need to be the ones who watch the watchers, and thanks to the efforts of the EFF and others, we are sometimes given the opportunity to perform this very necessary task.