A Big Tower With Cameras Raises Privacy Concerns
ARIVACA, Ariz.—C Hues has vowed to moon it. Phil Benoit calls it a "search without probable cause." Jim Chilton has demanded a written statement that the radar won't harm his health—or his cows. That's just a sampling of the reaction this quirky town of 2,500 has had to the surveillance tower the Department of Homeland Security has erected on Tres Bellotas Road on the southern edge of town.
It's part of a "virtual wall" of technology that DHS wants to extend across the entire southern border of Arizona by the end of next year. And Hues, for one, is determined to keep it from happening. "I'm not going to go with this idea that it can't be turned around," she says.
That could be a tall order. The Border Patrol and Boeing Corp., which won a $70 million contract to provide the camera- and radar-equipped towers, have sent representatives to several town meetings. Among their messages: The cameras, equipped for day and nighttime viewing, can't see through glass, and agents will be less invasive if they don't have to traipse out on foot to see what triggered censors.
Still, Ellen Dursema, a 50-year-old artist with the local co-op, says the towers disturb her as a "peacekeeper and an earth keeper." She's among a group concerned about how radar might affect the migration of bats each year from the nearby ghost town of Ruby.
Spying. Residents' other worries include loud horns on the towers and newly slowed Internet connections. They plan to post their other concerns on their website and a new blog. Two protests have already been held, and more are planned.
Yet there will probably always be some sort of push and pull in this hard-to-patrol area of gulches and canyons popular with smugglers. "I'm outraged that cameras can basically see right into my bedroom," Chilton says. But he has also seen illegal immigration take its toll: He claims traffic over his lands has decreased his property value by $500,000. "If [the tower] cuts down the illegal immigrant traffic," he says, "it might not be all negative."
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