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from the what-happens-underground-stays-underground dept.
girlwhowaspluggedout writes:
"The US Border Patrol has a new tool in its battle against the tunnels that are used to smuggle in drugs from Mexico. Since the cartels' diggers operate outside the range of the agency's cameras, motions detectors, and drones, and because filling the tunnels with concrete hasn't stopped the smugglers, the US Border Patrol now regularly employs robots to search through the underground drug trafficking routes.
The Border Patrol operates four remote-controlled robots along the US-Mexico border. Three of the four are assigned to its station in Nogales, Arizona, the final destination for most of the tunnels that have been discovered so far near the southern border. The agency's robots, which include Applied Research Associates' Pointman Tactical Robot and Inuktun Services' Versatrax 300, can easily fit in closed quarters. The tunnel that the Border Patrol shut down last month, for example though it was equipped with electric lighting, ventilation fans, and wood shoring was only 3 feet and high 2 feet wide. It spanned a whopping 481 feet, the largest tunnel discovered in Nogales by the Border Patrol.
The robots' ability to travel through areas where the air is unsafe to breath for extended periods is especially valuable in Nogales, AZ, whose popularity with drug smugglers is due to its sewer system, which is easily accessible from the adjacent city of Heroica Nogales, Mexico."
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 25 2014, @12:06PM
It was more than just a lie: One of the horrible effects of pot cited by Anslinger was that it caused "upstanding white women to consort with Negroes".
The War on Drugs has always been an exercise in institutionalized racism. Opiates were made illegal because of racism against Chinese-Americans (particularly in San Francisco). Alcohol and tobacco, being drugs of choice for white people, were kept legal.
And of course this continues today: When rich white 19-year-olds are busted for pot possession, the judge tells their parents and makes them go to a rehab program while leaving their criminal record clean. When poor black 19-year-olds are busted for pot possession, they go to jail and have a drug conviction on their record for the rest of their life (which also legalizes discrimination against them in employment, housing, government services, and voting rights).
Every task is easy if somebody else is doing it.