The US Spent Billions on Border Surveillance. Why Can't It Catch People Before They Die?
This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology.
When José Morales Bernal crossed the border into the US in April 2024, the day before his 32nd birthday, he was within range of three surveillance towers equipped with cameras and AI to automatically detect and track people.
If the system worked as intended, Morales should have been apprehended. If he needed medical help, agents were trained to provide it. None of that happened.
Instead, Morales died just 360 feet from the closest tower. It was local landfill workers, rather than Border Patrol, who first spotted him. An autopsy concluded that he had died of "environmental exposure."
A first-of-its-kind investigation by MIT Technology Review reveals that deaths like Morales's are startlingly common. After mapping nearly 4,000 locations where human remains were found against information on nearly 600 surveillance towers, we discovered that a humanitarian crisis at the border has unfolded in view of the government's own cameras.
Read our full investigation into the deadly failings of the virtual wall.
—James O'Donnell and Eileen Guo