‘Almost too easy’

On a cloudless morning last month, I traveled to the southwestern outskirts of Tucson to see the technology Worsley is touting. Acres of desert terrain were pockmarked with Saguaro cacti and jagged rocks. Far off, a mobile-home park, the only evidence of civilization, was barely visible.

Brad Solomon and Mike Thompson met me there. Solomon is a field application engineer with SpotterRF, a Utah-based company that specializes in small radar systems. Thompson is vice president of business development and marketing with ADSS, Inc., which provides portable platforms for surveillance systems like the ones made by SpotterRF. Both companies would see a huge windfall if Worsley’s proposal gets funding; they would lead the $30 million project, and likely be tasked with ensuring the systems don’t degrade in the Arizona desert — a contract worth millions in recurring revenue. When I meet them, Solomon and Thompson are standing by a white pickup with a 4-foot-high cap on the bed. Next to the truck sits a platform with a 30-foot white tower pointing toward the sky. After some chit-chat, Solomon asks Thompson: "Wanna go take a walk?"

Thompson does, alone, out into the brush. Solomon opens the back of the truck cap to reveal two laptops connected to a pile of orange extension cords and black wires. He taps briefly on the keyboards, then explains the setup.

On top of the white tower, a high-definition video camera is mounted alongside a SpotterRF C550 sensor. The sensor — a small rectangular cube — detects movement anywhere within a 550,000-square-meter range. Worsley’s plan would stretch 300 of these along the 387 miles of Arizona’s border with Mexico.

When Thompson is far beyond eyeshot, Solomon points to a laptop screen, showing me the feed broadcasted by the tower-mounted camera. He calls Thompson’s cellphone to make sure he’s still walking. With Thompson holding on the line, Solomon tells me, "See if you can find him."

It’s difficult. The controls to adjust the camera’s orientation are awkward and sensitive, and though I’m generally aware of Thompson’s location, it takes at least a minute to scroll the camera and find him amid the rocks and dust.

Over the phone, Solomon tells Thompson to change course. While we wait, Solomon explains that SpotterRF’s radar systems are designed for Army Rangers, who monitor their surroundings at night in Middle Eastern desert environments. The goal is not only to pick up anomalous movements in pitch blackness or inclement weather, but to have that capability in a relatively inexpensive system that’s easy to transport.

He calls Thompson back. "You still walking?"

He is. Solomon looks at me and says, "Watch this." He presses a letter on the keyboard. In an instant, the feed zooms in on Thompson, walking slowly in the distance. It takes the system about a second to do what took me a minute.

Without the SpotterRF system, he says, someone monitoring surveillance would use only their eyes — like I did in this simulation — to locate border crossers in the distance. Now imagine that procedure with hundreds of cameras installed over about 400 miles; you’d need eyes on each of those cameras, 24 hours a day, scanning for movement. Using SpotterRF, computers plugged into a central server would receive a video feed of the crosser’s presence, eliminating the need for those hundreds of sets of eyes. Solomon also says the system can differentiate human from animal movement, and other anomalies like tumbleweeds blowing across the desert border.

"You see that?" he says. "It’s almost too easy."