Google AI Tech Will Be Used For Virtual Border Wall, CBP Contract Shows (theintercept.com) 76
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: After years of backlash over controversial government work, Google technology will be used to aid the Trump administration's efforts to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border, according to documents related to a federal contract. In August, Customs and Border Protection accepted a proposal to use Google Cloud technology to facilitate the use of artificial intelligence deployed by the CBP Innovation Team, known as INVNT. Among other projects, INVNT is working on technologies for a new "virtual" wall along the southern border that combines surveillance towers and drones, blanketing an area with sensors to detect unauthorized entry into the country.
Contracting documents indicate that CBP's new work with Google is being done through a third-party federal contracting firm, Virginia-based Thundercat Technology. Thundercat is a reseller that bills itself as a premier information technology provider for federal contracts. The contract was obtained through a FOIA request filed by Tech Inquiry, a new research group that explores technology and corporate power founded by Jack Poulson, a former research scientist at Google who left the company over ethical concerns. Not only is Google becoming involved in implementing the Trump administration's border policy, the contract brings the company into the orbit of one of President Donald Trump's biggest boosters among tech executives.
Documents show that Google's technology for CBP will be used in conjunction with work done by Anduril Industries, a controversial defense technology startup founded by Palmer Luckey. The brash 28-year-old executive -- also the founder of Oculus VR, acquired by Facebook for over $2 billion in 2014 -- is an open supporter of and fundraiser for hard-line conservative politics; he has been one of the most vocal critics of Google's decision to drop its military contract. Anduril operates sentry towers along the U.S.-Mexico border that are used by CBP for surveillance and apprehension of people entering the country, streamlining the process of putting migrants in DHS custody. CBP's Autonomous Surveillance Towers program calls for automated surveillance operations "24 hours per day, 365 days per year" to help the agency "identify items of interest, such as people or vehicles." The program has been touted as a "true force multiplier for CBP, enabling Border Patrol agents to remain focused on their interdiction mission rather than operating surveillance systems." It's unclear how exactly CBP plans to use Google Cloud in conjunction with Anduril or for any of the "mission needs" alluded to in the contract document. Google faced internal turmoil in 2018 over a contract with the Pentagon to deploy AI-enhanced drone image recognition solutions. "In response to the controversy, Google ended its involvement with the initiative, known as Project Maven, and established a new set of AI principles to govern future government contracts," notes The Intercept.
Contracting documents indicate that CBP's new work with Google is being done through a third-party federal contracting firm, Virginia-based Thundercat Technology. Thundercat is a reseller that bills itself as a premier information technology provider for federal contracts. The contract was obtained through a FOIA request filed by Tech Inquiry, a new research group that explores technology and corporate power founded by Jack Poulson, a former research scientist at Google who left the company over ethical concerns. Not only is Google becoming involved in implementing the Trump administration's border policy, the contract brings the company into the orbit of one of President Donald Trump's biggest boosters among tech executives.
Documents show that Google's technology for CBP will be used in conjunction with work done by Anduril Industries, a controversial defense technology startup founded by Palmer Luckey. The brash 28-year-old executive -- also the founder of Oculus VR, acquired by Facebook for over $2 billion in 2014 -- is an open supporter of and fundraiser for hard-line conservative politics; he has been one of the most vocal critics of Google's decision to drop its military contract. Anduril operates sentry towers along the U.S.-Mexico border that are used by CBP for surveillance and apprehension of people entering the country, streamlining the process of putting migrants in DHS custody. CBP's Autonomous Surveillance Towers program calls for automated surveillance operations "24 hours per day, 365 days per year" to help the agency "identify items of interest, such as people or vehicles." The program has been touted as a "true force multiplier for CBP, enabling Border Patrol agents to remain focused on their interdiction mission rather than operating surveillance systems." It's unclear how exactly CBP plans to use Google Cloud in conjunction with Anduril or for any of the "mission needs" alluded to in the contract document. Google faced internal turmoil in 2018 over a contract with the Pentagon to deploy AI-enhanced drone image recognition solutions. "In response to the controversy, Google ended its involvement with the initiative, known as Project Maven, and established a new set of AI principles to govern future government contracts," notes The Intercept.
Re: Keep the Muzzies and Mexicans OUT! #TRUMP2020 (Score:2)
What the hell is a "muzzy". Why do racist people come up with the silliest disparaging terms. Do you realize that sounds like the name of a character in a children's cartoon? Maybe that's it, by coming up with a seemingly silly and inoffensive term that is actually anything but.
Just one little problem (Score:4, Funny)
Getting all the migrants to wear the headsets.
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Perhaps you'd like to share details of the war crimes you believe that Google employees are responsible for?
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like hitlers general staff.
alphabet thinks it is immune from prosecution from the advocates of the victims of alphabets actions
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easy
Then why didn't you?
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when alphabet starts this project.
their actions will be very telling.
as for my actions.
i am raising the alarm now.
what are you going to do.
besides smirk
Borders, who needs them? (Score:2, Interesting)
Would God support borders? I mean, I get the logic, you don't want criminals coming here and killing people, it's better they kill people somewhere else right? But then, nobody cares about covid killing a mere 250,000 people .. why is it a big deal to republicans that illegals kill, what? A negligible 1000 people a year? We're not missing 250,000 people, what's 1000? Why they get so mad? Since we know human life is meaningless to them, it has to be racism.
Re:Borders, who needs them? (Score:5, Insightful)
An uncontrolled border is basically an unlimited H1B program, but targeted against laborers and blue-collar workers. It's a bit amusing to me the way the white-collar Slashdot crowd are almost unanimously opposed to the excesses and abuses of the US's H1B program, which happens to suppress their *own* wages, while ascribing the most base motivations to those that oppose illegal immigration on exactly the same grounds.
In both cases, it comes down to protecting one's own jobs. Unless one is willing to give unlimited H1B foreigners access to US jobs, it's blatantly hypocritical for that person to advocate open borders, either because it actually benefits them or does them no serious economic harm.
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We had an wide open uncontrolled border until 2016 remember? At least that was what the conservative narrative was. Now we have a "controlled border" and crime has gone up. Unlike from 1992 to 2016 when violent crime and murder declined dramatically.
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We had an wide open uncontrolled border until 2016 remember?
No.
I distinctly remember strong border controls between the US and Mexico when I crossed that border in 2003 or 2004. Even without researching I'm confident that they existed before that time too.
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The kid is for sympathy. If you have a minor, then someone will need to watch over said minor. May as well be the adult accompanying the kid.
This is precisely the same thing with anchor babies. Mom some how manages to get into the USA, deliveries baby. Now baby is automatically a US citizen because of the soil they were born on. They now qualify for all the welfare benefits but since they are a child, the mom gets to stay and baby sit for the next 18 years. Hence the term anchor baby.
This could all be easil
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The kid is for sympathy.
Sure, sure, all brown people are just evil soulless criminals who want to murder, rape, steal, and destroy America, just because they're evil, right? You're another asshole. Go read this other comment, it also applies to you. [slashdot.org]
YOU are the soulless criminal. I'd sooner turn the country over to the immigrants than let people like YOU make the rules.
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I am from Canada, and I don't get this.
To work here, you either need a work permit, or else a social insurance number. Both of these are very traceable. Unless the employer isn't properly paying taxes themselves or is otherwise not properly accounting for each of its employees to the government, I don't see how someone who is in the USA illegally would be able to find any sort of work.
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Weird... that's a foreign concept to me.
Employers here need written permission from you to not take taxes off, or to make any changes at all from the standard amounts for that matter, and that permission form (which is done on an official government form), is sent off to the the government and filed under your SSN, so even if you aren't paying taxes, it is still traceable.
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Yeah, it's different here, because taxes are 'voluntary.'
The way it works is, if you're a law-abiding citizen and working in proper documented fashion for a registered employer, they report your earnings to the IRS and withhold an estimated tax. The IRS uses those reports to calculate how much tax you owe.
You then are 'encouraged' to 'voluntarily' do all the same calculations yourself, and tell the IRS how much tax you owe, you perform these calculations using their algorithm, and if your answer differs fr
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Where do you come up with voluntary? Nothing voluntary about taxes. You pay them or they will come get the money. The whole point of government is to collect taxes and they take this very seriously.
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https://turbotax.intuit.com/ta... [intuit.com] is the first thing that comes up on the Google.
Re:Borders, who needs them? (Score:4, Interesting)
In my early 20s, I worked fast food, and eventually ended up managing a restaurant.
The illegal workers gave us fraudulent papers.
We had no real way to verify them with extensive work on our side that we weren't directly required to do.
When we sent in their I9s with bad SSNs, the Government never called us up and said "hey- this is horse shit..."
But we paid standard taxes, and so did the workers with fraudulent papers (i.e., we did standard withholding)
Furthermore, they got nothing back (unless they were insane enough to file for a return from the IRS, which I strongly doubt)- so they actually significantly overpaid their taxes.
We generally found out they had fraudulent papers when one was pushed up to management and we did a routine background check (which we did not do on basic cooks, till jockeys)
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The only way I can imagine this happening here is if they faked their documents and paid more than enough in taxes to account for any tax that the person with the real SIN might need to owe based on their combined income (which could put them in a higher tax bracket, and therefore they might not be paying enough). Depending on the income disparity between what the person makes and the income of
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More likely than not, I don't see someone being able to get away with this. If it was an invalid, unissued, or deactivated SIN this would raise red flags no later than tax time.
This is likely the critical difference, here.
The IRS likely has no idea if, for example, the owner of an SSN is dead.
In general, the federal government has very little idea about that kind of stuff due to some of our early paranoid federalization splits. (States work with births and deaths, not the Federal government)
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The businesses are the larger problem but since American is really run like a business (this isn't new to Trump) everyone pretends it doesn't happen. Companies hire illegals and neither party pays any payroll taxes. If the employee gets hurt, company just fires them and ignores them. Also the worker isn't paying into the social security scheme so they are going to be able to retire either.
It's all around a joke and amounts to businesses over people. Neither political party has the will to do anything about
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They are so cheap you just pay them in cash out of your pocket?
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Social insurance numbers are traceable. The government knows who is supposed to have them, and which employer(s) are filing taxes for them.
I hope that is true for y'all. Though, I suspect a lot of fraud still occurs. Here in the USA, I know employers get your SSN, make a copy of your driver's license (or state ID card), and a bunch of other details. But, there's still those who do under the table type of things and no matter the degree of government oversight, it's not possible to trace it all. That would be especially true of those who want day laborers or temporary jobs (say picking crops in a field). At best, you'd need law enforcement
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Because overall immigration improves the job prospects of natives.
https://www.epi.org/publicatio... [epi.org]
Overall immigration has a net positive effect on the economy and general and employment for natives. The problem is that there are acute problems in certain areas. So rather than trying to make it worse overall by reducing immigration to unsustainable levels it makes more sense to address those issues directly and improve the immigration system.
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Trumpies at work again, modding down factual information. The truth really is the best weapon against them.
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I agree, immigration is a good and positive thing, and a general boon to the economy. I come from a family of immigrants, so it would be grossly hypocritical to oppose immigration in general. And I'm actually rather proud of the US's lottery system, where we could easily require merit-based systems like almost all other countries do, favoring specific skill sets or trades.
However, uncontrolled, unregulated immigration is not in our best interest. Specifically, it's not a good thing to have a "shadow" pop
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I oppose uncontrolled, unregulated immigration as well. That's why I think having a well run, usable asylum claim system is essential.
Note that entering the country by any means at any point is legal if the intention is to claim asylum. It's also very easy to make someone an illegal immigrant by making it impossible for them to claim asylum, or making it so difficult they fall into the hands of criminals.
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An uncontrolled border is basically an unlimited H1B program
Were you dropped on your head?
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An uncontrolled border is basically an unlimited H1B program
Jesus would probably be in favor of that, too.
I mean, if he were real.
It never ceases to sadden me that we can have politicians who shout Jebus out of one side of their mouth and Fuck The Poor out of the other, and they can go on to get re-elected. It just goes to show what's really important to so-called religious voters.
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An uncontrolled border is basically an unlimited H1B program
So, you're saying that undocumented workers who cross the border can work legally in the US? No? Ah, then, the problem isn't the undocumented immigrants, it's the American citizens and American companies who employ them. Crack down on that, enforcing the existing US labor laws, and your problem is solved.
I suggest that the easiest way to find out who is employing illegal immigrant labor is to offer work visas to any undocumented immigrants who turn in their bosses. That plus harsh penalties for said bosse
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Unchecked immigration has knock on affects. We haven't been building enough housing for the past 30 years. They got to live somewhere. The freeways can only grow so wide before you just become grid-locked. Those people got to drive to work. They have children that take up seats in school. They participate in our society on most levels while at the same time get screwed by the employer.
The same people will take jobs in retail, hospitality, banking, hair/nail salons, construction and a slew of other non degre
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Would God support borders?
My first thought was . . . which God . . . ? A bunch of different religions have butt-loads of Gods for this, that and the next thing . . . there must be some Gods of Borders stuffed in there somewhere. Even in Singleton God Religions, God has multiple manifestations and it's like Heisenberg trying to measure Schrödinger's cat . . . "God" answers differently, depending on who and where you ask.
God is polymorphic.
In Northern Ireland, the Protestant Christian instance of God supports a hard border wi
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>Would God support borders?"
WTF? Would "God" support having "countries"? Without borders, there is no country. Without countries there is no way to have laws, unless you think there should be "one world government" or some nonsense.
>"I get the logic, you don't want criminals coming here and killing people"
Borders are more than just about security, although that is a major part, it is also the ability to control your economic system and set rules for your society.
>"Since we know human life is mea
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In the first chapter of the Bible he puts and Angel with a fiery sword
to guard the garden of Eden from those who think they know better.
So short answer, yes.
A virtual border wall actually makes sense. (Score:4, Insightful)
Aside from the fact that a physical wall is simply impractical in many places or interferes with private property, you still have to patrol the thing because there's no such thing as an impenetrable wall. Walls at best slow people down, and if you don't patrol people in remote places will have plenty time to find a way over/under/through it. In fact the remoteness of these places probably represents the biggest delay in their getting through.
Since the entire length of the wall has to be monitored, in effect it's the *monitoring* that is doing the work, not the wall itself. So why pay money to build and maintain a physical wall? Sure, in places like border towns where there's just too much activity to monitor a physical barrier has its place. But a few drones and some other appropriate equipment will do the job a wall is supposed to in the vaster hinterlands along the border, and even if you had a physical wall you'd still need that stuff.
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Weren't we supposed to get a moat? With snakes and alligators and stuff?
Google's shit might work now, but they'll probably kill the project when they lose interest
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A moat with aligators would be a protein source for anyone trying to cross the border in remote places. Anyhow, why build a mote when you've got a huge fricken' desert already there, for free?
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Once someone makes it across the border, they become much more expensive to deal with: after spotting them, you need to send out a patrol, you have to identify each person, US law says you have to determine if they might qualify as refugees, that requires having them go before a set of overloaded immigration judges, and then you either need to report them or make sure they have all the database entries needed to live and work in the country legally. And your staff and equipment need to be able to handle th
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Walls at best slow people down [...]
in effect it's the *monitoring* that is doing the work
The two work in tandem. The monitoring alerts the border protection peeps that a potential violation of border or custom controls is taking place and the wall slows that potential violation down for long enough to respond and investigate.
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The best way to manage a border is to have plenty of official border crossings that actually work for people. Make sure people arriving legally are processed quickly instead of having to wait for months or years to claim asylum. That's the kind of thing that encourages them to cross elsewhere and claim from within your country.
Then it becomes much easier to police the rest of the border because basically everyone crossing there is up to no good. The overall number of people trying to cross away from officia
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That's what I said -- walls slow people down. That's why they make sense in places where people can melt into the general populace. In remote areas drones with FLIR would end up being cheaper and more effective.
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Why not use it ... (Score:3)
...to find the deported parents of the 500 caged immigrant children they cannot find anymore?
Interesting twists (Score:1)
Googlers shout: "WALLS ARE BAD/INEFFECTIVE! DO VIRTUAL!"
Government hires Google to do AI virtual walls...
"AI IS BAD! WALLS ARE BAD, EVEN VIRTUAL ONES!"
I think it's less about the approach, and more about the concept - they're just afraid to say as much.