U.S. CBP and Israeli Elbit to Persistently Surveil Native American Reservation | Hacker News Reader

U.S. CBP and Israeli Elbit to Persistently Surveil Native American Reservation

theintercept.com

77 pointsuser98237 comments

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.

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

“...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.

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.

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

The reservation is roughly 60 x 60 miles and roughly squarish. So it appears that the surveillance is a few mile deep strip along its southern border.

Not really - they're surveilling a hell of a lot more than just the border, which is a 1-dimensional object. They're surveilling a Native American community that's in the USA, not on the border. They're basically building surveillance towers on the border and pointing many of the cameras towards the American side, where Americans live.

People cross the border into the reservation, it’s not a game of red-rover. It’s not surveillance the reservation per-she, but the people and objects crossing.

>per-she

per se, latin for "in itself"

Sean Connery would like to persuade you otherwise.

even he prefers "per-shay"

IANAL but "Indian Law" is very complicated also as to what parts of federal law apply to reservations and which don't, and what sovereign rights the Tohono O'odham Nation has.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_sovereignty_in_the_Unit...

As someone living in Tucson, and having to go through these Border Patrol checkpoints, it does feel like they've gotten more aggressive over time. The last time I went through a checkpoint, they didn't even ask about citizenship, just wanted to run their dog over the car sniffing for drugs, which I feel is a 4th amendment violation, even though the supreme court probably disagrees.

I'm not sure if they have any legal recourse, but I'd love to hear a lawyer chime in. IANAL.

It’s also being deployed along the US-Canada border. It was(?) also the preferred solution by the congress who favor them over “actual” walls.

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-...

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

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...

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.

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.

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"?

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.

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

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

"CBP jurisdiction" is about as close to judicial activism as anything in this country. It's bunk and will be remembered in history as a blight on the US.

It's very telling that governments seek to abuse the rules they set forth, to deny citizens as much as possible. This idea that there is a 100-mile radius from the border, where constitutional rights just don't apply, is laughably authoritarian and will be expanded in the future. The history of human governments shows that absent very strong protections against the government, the citizenry will always lose in the end, whether it be loss of freedom, or loss of nation stability.

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?

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...

Modern Israel wasn't created through war? I mean, the refrain I often hear from pro-war Israelis regarding the West Bank and the Gaza settlements is, "these people lost the war they started against us, so we have a right to that land" .. Sure, it maybe wasn't started that way, but it sure looks like its been maintained/expanded through war, endless bloody war.

Either way, I don't think the fact of Israeli involvement in surveillance theatre regarding Native American Indians is a positive development. I'm very curious as to how this can possibly be justified, given the state of Gaza today.

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.

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.

Israel was totally created from war, the 1948 war, and the 1967 war.

the 1948 war happens after the 1947 UN declaration recognizing the partition of the region into two states : one for the arab and the other for the jews (israel). The declaration was accepted by the UN.

The fact that this declaration was accepted by a majority of states including the most powerful ones, and yet lead to an immediate never-ending war is the point i was trying to make. To my knowledge, borders always get determined through war, even if you try to begin with a legal procedure.

Well considering they the decision by the UN was totally made by western colonial powers, with total disregard for Arab opinion, it’s not surprising it was going to lead to war. The Yishuv expected a war and used it as a platform to expand their territory and execute their plans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_...

I'm not sure what you consider a western colonial power in this list, but yes indeed, arabs refused the rights for jews to have any kind of state at the time.

> arabs refused the rights for jews to have any kind of state at the time.

Did they refuse them rights to any kind of state, or refuse them rights to any kind of state on land that was at that time Arab land? It’s not hard to see why a country would be against giving over its own land.

I'm not sure what makes you think this land belonged to an "arab country". It isn't more arab than turkish, or british, or jewish, or latin, or any other nation that has ruled it in the past. If you only look at the last 500 previous years, it belonged to the ottoman empire (not arab), then to the british empire, and now is split between one jewish state and three arab entities/countries (jordan, what's left of the PA and gaza)

Arab population never got along well with the idea of having jews (or anything non-muslim) rule any part of the region, but i don't think the reason has anything to do with sovereign country giving its own land...

The Arab population had tolerated Jews for centuries, where they even thrived I some countries, the persecutions, expulsions, forced conversions etc were far worse in Europe throughout history.

There well Palestinian Jews who had lived there for centuries, well integrated, the spoke Arabic, and there were hardly any issues prior to Zionism.

Although your point of view should be pondered by what the status of "dhimmi" is in muslim-ruled countries (not exactly the same as citizen of equal rights), i don't think you contradict my point. Jews were "tolerated", but it was really out of question to have them be in charge.

It was at the time British land. The British got it from the Turks as part of the peace agreements at the end of World War I. The Turks had it for a few hundred years before that.

It's changed hands a lot. I guess that's not surprising given the location. Anyone building an empire in much of Europe, Asia, Egypt, Persia, and the like at some point would be passing by Palestine on the way to some juicy target--might as well grab Palestine on the way.

The USA, France, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, Australia ...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com