U.S. PLANS 'VIRTUAL FENCE' AT BORDER

Sensors, Cameras To Watch Crossings In B.C., Ontario

WASHINGTON - Sections of the Canada-U.S. border in British Columbia
and southwestern Ontario -- areas deemed most vulnerable to drug
smuggling and terrorist infiltrations -- are likely the first
locations where U.S. authorities will deploy a "virtual fence" of
high-tech monitoring equipment to stop illegal crossings, Homeland
Security officials said yesterday.

Detailing plans for an array of sensors, infrared cameras,
watchtowers, and drones that will eventually stretch across entire
8,890-kilometre border with Canada, U.S. authorities said their goal
is to have the world's longest undefended border under surveillance
within three to six years.

"We are looking at making it just that, making it a guarded border,"
U.S. Border Patrol chief David Aguilar said.

His comments followed a Department of Homeland Security announcement
that Chicago-based Boeing Corp. had been awarded an initial
$67-million contract to begin work on the project, known as the
Secure Border Initiative.

Starting with a 45-kilometre section of the U.S.-Mexico border south
of Tucson, Arizona, the project will expand along the Canadian and
Mexican boundaries based on evaluations of the threat posed by
illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and terrorists.

"What we are looking to build is a virtual fence, a 21st-century
virtual fence," said Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff.

"The border is not just a uniform place. It is a very complicated
mix. . What applies in one stretch of the border is not going to be
what applies in another stretch."

U.S. officials said their priority is to gain operational control of
their southern border with Mexico, where more than one million
immigrants are caught sneaking into the country every year.

Fewer than 10,000 people were detained trying to enter the U.S.
illegally from Canada in 2004, but U.S. officials have struggled to
prevent the flow of narcotics across its northern border. It has also
identified Toronto and Vancouver as hubs for the smuggling of Asian immigrants.

"We will expand rapidly to take on the task at hand," said Michael
Jackson, deputy secretary of Homeland Security.

"Our preliminary focus is on the southwest border, but from the very
beginning we will be looking at the northern border and trying to
define the right (surveillance equipment) to do the job there."

Mr. Aguilar identified border areas stretching from Detroit to
Buffalo, New York, the area surrounding Blaine, Washington, and
remote stretches in Vermont and Maine as the areas most in need of
high-tech surveillance.

It was at the Blaine border crossing that agents apprehended would-be
millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam in December 1999. In 2005, U.S. agents
discovered a 120-metre-long smuggling tunnel linking a Quonset hut in
Canada to the living room of a house in Lynden, Washington.

"Those are basically your lay down areas of interest to us," Mr. Aguilar said.