Posted on 12/29/2009 3:59:07 PM PST by DogByte6RER
GPS-enabled mobile to aid migrants
(UKPA) 10 hours ago
A group of California artists are developing a GPS-enabled mobile phone to help dehydrated illegal migrants find water as they trek through harsh deserts into the US.
The Transborder Immigrant Tool created by faculty at the University of California, San Diego, is part technology endeavour, part art project. It introduces a high-tech twist to an old debate about how far activists can go to prevent migrants from dying on the border with Mexico without breaking the law.
The designers want to load inexpensive phones with GPS software that takes signals from satellite, independent of phone networks. Pressing a menu button displays water stations, with the distance to each. A user selects one and follows an arrow on the screen.
Immigration hardliners argue the activists are aiding illegal entry to the US, a felony. Even migrants and their sympathisers question whether the device will make the treacherous journeys easier.
The designers - three visual artists on UCSD's faculty and an English professor at the University of Michigan - are undeterred as they criticise a US policy they say embraces illegal immigrants for cheap labour while letting them die crossing the border.
"It's about giving water to somebody who's dying in the desert of dehydration," said Micha Cardenas, 32, a UCSD lecturer.
The effort is being done on the government's dime - an irony not lost on the designers whose salaries are paid by the state of California.
"There are many, many areas in which every American would say I don't like the way my tax dollars are being spent. Our answer to that is an in-your-face, so what?" says UCSD lecturer Brett Stalbaum, 33, a self-described news junkie who likens his role to chief technology officer.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
They'll survive if they have T.I.T.s to rely on?
(ducking for cover....)
Excellent. Just be like the crocs waiting for the antelope to come to the watering hole. Chomp. Thank you, liberal idiots for the help.
Gosh...thank goodness for liberals...without them we would have no thinking,feeling human qualities whatsoever. /s
***They’ll survive if they have T.I.T.s to rely on?***
Yes, everyone likes sucking on the TIT of the US.
Or a handy GPS way to find out where the illegals are going for water. Hehehehehe.
Is it wrong of me to wish improvised landmines were placed around these water sites?
Or just shoot the dang things full of holes.
Lets help the environment, by putting alligators in the Rio Grande. The Serria Club should be all for it right?
The phone or the stinking illegal?
Not that I would care either way anymore. My milk of human kindness has curdled. I am to the point where the only way out of this, or all the other problems that are caused by the illegals, the government, and these pin-head liberals is going to be in blood.
To paraphrase another poster, 'I'm glad I lived in the last 55 years and not in the next 55'.
I hope you mean the border jumper; wouldn't want to damage a perfectly good waterer....
/Blazing Saddles thoughts
I hope they have read about that Oregon couple who almost died believing their GPS. Immigration officers will just hang out around the water holes.
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