Border Control and Security

I have mostly stayed out of this debate, mainly because I can’t think of much to contribute beyond some more whining. There’s one piece I will touch on, though, because I think it’s leading to some low quality thinking…

Recently the folks who are agitating for better border control have frequently — in fact, nearly universally — tied in the notion of border security against terrorism as more justification for drastically increased control at the border.

But this notion doesn’t withstand scrutiny. As others have observed, the vast majority of the folks agitating for increased border control are only asking for increased control at the Mexican border. If security against terrorism were really the issue that was motivating them, they would be agitating for across-the-board border control: the Canadian border, airlines, ships, and any other way people can enter this country. That’s not happening; the focus is entirely on the Mexican border. Therefore there must something else motivating those folks who are blathering on about border security, and that something is easy to identify: the economic impacts of illegal immigration. Not security.

I’m not going to engage the topic of illegal immigration here, just border security.

Suppose you really did want to secure America from any terrorist trying to enter. What do you suppose it would take to have a reasonable chance of success? It seems to me that a great many people simply don’t comprehend the magnitude of this problem. We’re talking about over 5,000 miles of land borders, even more ocean borders, hundreds of airports, and dozens of ships ports. We’re also talking about a large number of methods that a terrorist (or a group of them) could use to enter the U.S.

Without even trying hard, I can think of several different scenarios, each of which I believe is completely impracticable to defend against.

Example 1: Prevent any single human from walking across the Canadian border. That border is roughly 5,500 miles long. Technology can help (infrared scopes, UAVs, etc.), but in the end the only reliable “human detector” we know if is a pair of Mark I eyeballs. Let’s get really, really optimistic and suppose that one pair of eyeballs for every half-mile was adequate (and I think the real answer is probably more like half that, or even less) To man the Canadian border with a full time guard for every half mile would require 11,000 guards per shift. To handle three shifts a day, weekends, and vacation, you’d need about 50,000 guards! If you figure that with salary, benefits, expenses, equipment, and management overhead each guard cost $120,000 a year (that’s a very conservative number), then you’re talking about $6 billion per year. And that’s just for the Canadian border!

Example 2: Prevent any single human from sneaking into the US on a small boat (e.g., motorboat or sailboat) launched from a “mother ship” outside US territorial waters. The only way I can imagine how to do this (no matter what technology I invoke) is to surveil every single ship within a few hundred miles of the US, 24 hours a day (at night with infrared equipment). And even this wouldn’t work with bad weather — how could you possibly detect a sailboat departing under cover of fog or rainsqualls? I don’t think you need to be a very smart terrorist to see the attractions of this method (and it’s not the only “attractive” one I can think of). For starters, nobody even pretends to control small boats — many thousands of them depart and arrive our ports and beaches every day.

I think that effective border control, to the point of excluding terrorists from US territory, is simply infeasible. From a security perspective, clamping down on the Mexican border is useless (all but the absolutely most stupid terrorist would simply switch to Canada, or some other method of entry), and needlessly diverts resources from more promising approaches. Note that I’m speaking strictly from a security perspective, and I’m not making any arguments about illegal immigration (I’ll tackle that another day). If we’re trying to make the US safer from terrorists, I’d like to see the resources spent in a more useful way…

Iran vs. the UN

Unless you’ve been in a coma for the past year, you know that Iran has been aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons, all the while noisily denying that they are doing so. Instead, they claim they’re developing peaceful nuclear power — a claim that seems absurd given the enormous oil and gas reserves Iran has.

Likely you also know about the UN’s “action” this week: a resolution with no teeth, which Iran promptly announced they would ignore. The resolution carried no teeth because the five permanent Security Council members (the U.S., France, Russia, China, and the U.K.) could not agree on anything that even hinted at possible repercussions.

This is a ridiculous situation, ripe for satire — and Scott Ott at ScrappleFace leapt into the breech with “Iranians Terrified by UN Resolution”. On the toothless resolution:

The measure, which carries no consequences for non-compliance, nevertheless contains active verbs, challenging vocabulary and deliberate punctuation that pose a “clear and present danger” to the people of Iran, according to an unnamed spokesman for the Islamic Republic.

Active verbs, indeed. Heh. And on the ludicrous Iranian claim that they seek only peaceful nuclear power:

Holding one-tenth of the world’s known oil reserves and the second largest natural gas reserves, Iran desperately needs enriched uranium only to generate electricity, and not to make nuclear weapons to wipe Israel from the map.

Especially galling is the way part of the Iranian government claims the nuclear development is for peaceful purposes, while their President (and some of the mad mullahs) run around bragging about how they will wipe Israel from the map. How do they keep a straight face?!

Good thing we have Scott Ott to poke fun at them…

But how sad that the Iranian loonies are running circles around the civilized world (if you believe that the UN represents said civilized world).

Sounds like a job for cowboy W. to me…

Server Cost

The other day I ran across an interesting statement in a technical article — the author asserted that recent power cost hikes had made the cost of power (over a server’s lifetime) greater than the cost of the server itself. The author didn’t back that up with any analysis, but if he’s correct, that really flips the cost picture on its head from just a few years ago. Intuitively it seemed likely to me, as the cost of servers keeps going down and the price of power keeps staggering up.

So I decided to do a little analysis to see if this assertion passes the laugh test. Long story short: it does. The chart at right (click for a larger view) tells the story. It shows the net present value (NPV) of the lifetime power cost for a server, for any combination of server power consumption and average power cost per kilowatt hour. For this analysis, I assumed a four year server lifetime and an 8% discount rate. Reading off the chart, if you have a 400 watt server and you’re paying 20 cents a kilowatt hour, that lifetime power cost is about $4,300 — and chances are you paid substantially less than that for your server. As I write this, we’re paying 32 cents per kilowatt hour at my home, and the last server I personally purchased cost about $2,400. There’s another factor that makes it even worse: almost all IT datacenters (or server closets!) use air conditioning to remove the heat generated by the servers — you can add another 20% to 30% to the power consumption for that.

Sounds to me like the next frontier in lowering IT hardware costs lies with “green” servers — boxes optimized for lower power consumption per delivered MIPS…

Puppy Journal

I came home Monday to a house full of puppies. :-) Debbie is on spring break this week and drove over to return the puppies and Picabo. They came home with twice as many toys as they left with.

They are doing well! Debbie provided them with wonderful experiences. I’m trying to keep them busy too.

It seems my whole house is now nothing but a series of x-pens. I took the crates out of the dog room, layed down a 6' X 9' vinyl floor remnant, and set up my big plastic x-pen. That is where they stay during the day and while we sleep. For the first time ever, I took down my dining room table and set up my compost bin/x-pen there. That allows them to see all the action going on in the house in the evening. I’m trying to cook more for my dinners. John is convinced that Crockett’s fear of the stove comes from a lack of exposure to one at a young age. Ha ha. Outside my patio door, just off the deck and under the tree, I have two metal x-pens clipped together. This is a great place to put awakening puppies to pee and poop. Then there is the 12' X 12' dog run that has been converted into the puppy run. The weather still isn’t great but it is good enough for 6 1/2 week old puppies to be out in for a little while each day. All these x-pens give me places to put the puppies while I clean all the other places they’ve been! LOL

I take puppy socialization very seriously. Three things have influenced the way I socialize young puppies:

1. I have owned unsocialized dogs. There is a difference between loving a dog and being happy with a dog. It is hard to be happy with an unsocialized dog.

2. The “Rule of Sevens” socialization guide that I first heard about years ago at a Pat Hastings seminar. In a nutshell, puppies should be exposed to seven different things in seven different categories by the time they are seven-weeks old. For instance, under the category “surfaces", my puppies have experience with and are confident on: carpet, linoleum, newspaper, wood decking, gravel, concrete, and grass. As a bonus, they will also walk across a fallen baby gate. The gate fell on Yellow Boy this morning, he crawled out from under it and proceeded to make several trips over it as he and his littermates traveled in and out of the dog room. Didn’t phase him a bit.

3. A National Geographic video about gorillas. One of the segments in this program shows a study done on captive gorillas to help them with their boredom. Every day they went into their exercise room, there was something new and exciting. Like yards and yards of butcher paper draped on everything. The gorillas loved it. They were excited to go into the room every day and played with the new stuff until they were exhausted. I try to do that with the puppies. Little things intrigue them. A big fluffy blanket with lots of folds to explore, a toddler’s tunnel, or a big pile of shredded paper. They have the traditional toys but every day I try to give them an untraditional toy. An empty water bottle, a cereal box, and scrub brush top their list of cool toys.

They are also at the age where they need physical challenges. They can go out the patio door and down the deck stairs. They can come up the deck stairs and Pink, Yellow, and Purple can come in through the patio door. Going out the back door and down those steps will be a different challenge.

My biggest challenge is to provide them with a lot of opportunities to relieve themselves in appropriate places. Yes, they are peeing and pooping all over my house but they are also peeing and pooping outside or on papers. The more time I put into this now, the easier it will be to housetrain them later. That means hauling them out in yesterday’s rain and this morning’s snow. Thanks to yesterday’s rain, I will probably have to mow my lawn this weekend. :-( BUT the sound of the lawn mower (or me cursing it for not starting) will be another good experience for the puppies.

Next week is their temperament test and the following weekend is their structural evaluation. Everything is happening so fast…

Sheila Miller

Wolftree Acres

Nevada, USA

sdmiller@the-onramp.net

http://www.wolftreeacres.homestead.com