The US spent billions on border surveillance. Why can’t it catch people before they die?
The US spent billions on border surveillance. Why can’t it catch people before they die?
美国在边境监控上花费了数十亿美元，为什么还是无法在悲剧发生前救人？
When José Morales Bernal crossed the border into the United States on April 8, 2024, the day before his 32nd birthday, it should have triggered a chain of technological alerts and human responses. 2024年4月8日，何塞·莫拉莱斯·伯纳尔（José Morales Bernal）在32岁生日前一天越过边境进入美国时，本应触发一系列技术警报和人工响应。
As he walked through the desert in southern New Mexico that morning, he was within range of three surveillance towers. Newly installed by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), they were built by the defense tech company Anduril and equipped with cameras and AI to automatically detect and track people. They transmit live video to nearby control rooms and can send alerts to the government-issued smartphones held by agents in the area, prompting the closest available to respond. 那天早上，当他走在新墨西哥州南部的沙漠中时，他正处于三座监控塔的覆盖范围内。这些由美国海关和边境保护局（CBP）新安装的监控塔由国防科技公司Anduril制造，配备了摄像头和人工智能，可以自动探测并追踪人员。它们将实时视频传输到附近的控制室，并能向该地区特工持有的政府配发智能手机发送警报，促使最近的特工前往响应。
This story is part of Dying on Camera, a collaboration between MIT Technology Review and Times of San Diego. Journalists in both newsrooms spent the past year examining the failures of border surveillance technology and uncovering the stories of the people who die in the borderlands. 这篇报道是《麻省理工科技评论》与《圣地亚哥时报》合作项目“镜头下的死亡”（Dying on Camera）的一部分。两家新闻编辑部的记者在过去一年里调查了边境监控技术的失灵，并揭开了那些在边境地区丧生者的故事。
These AI-enabled towers are meant to give greater visibility across the 1,951-mile southern border, freeing up border agents from having to spend hours staring into video monitors. They were installed in this particular place to spot border crossers before they reached the nearby town of Sunland Park. If the system worked as intended, Morales should have been apprehended. If he needed medical help, agents were trained to provide it. 这些人工智能监控塔旨在提高全长1951英里的南部边境的可见度，使边境特工无需再花费数小时盯着视频监视器。它们被安装在这个特定地点，是为了在越境者到达附近的桑兰帕克（Sunland Park）镇之前发现他们。如果系统按预期工作，莫拉莱斯本应被逮捕。如果他需要医疗救助，特工们也受过相关培训，可以提供帮助。
The view from where José Morales Bernal’s body was found toward a Customs and Border Protection surveillance tower made by Anduril, along the southern US border in Sunland Park, New Mexico. CENGIZ YAR FOR MITTR 从发现何塞·莫拉莱斯·伯纳尔遗体的地方望向美国南部边境新墨西哥州桑兰帕克的一座由Anduril制造的海关和边境保护局监控塔。（摄影：CENGIZ YAR FOR MITTR）
That didn’t happen. Despite the nearby surveillance towers, it was employees of the local landfill, rather than Border Patrol, who first spotted Morales that morning. At 1 p.m. the workers saw him again, now lying in the sand. At 4 p.m. the landfill workers saw that he had not moved and called Border Patrol. Agents arrived 45 minutes later. He was dead. 但这一切并没有发生。尽管附近有监控塔，但那天早上首先发现莫拉莱斯的却是当地垃圾填埋场的员工，而不是边境巡逻队。下午1点，工人们再次看到他时，他正躺在沙地上。下午4点，垃圾填埋场工人发现他一动不动，于是拨打了边境巡逻队的电话。特工在45分钟后赶到。他已经死了。
When an agent then called 911 to report the body, he said it was “probably one of the migrants crossing through there,” seemingly unaware that Morales had been moving near the agency’s surveillance systems earlier that day. The agent can be heard sounding unsure of Morales’ location despite the proximity of an AI-powered surveillance camera. The call has been edited for length. 当一名特工随后拨打911报告发现遗体时，他说这“可能是从那里经过的移民之一”，似乎并不知道莫拉莱斯当天早些时候曾在该机构的监控系统附近活动。尽管附近就有AI监控摄像头，但从通话中可以听出，该特工对莫拉莱斯的位置并不确定。通话内容已为精简篇幅而编辑。
Morales had died just 360 feet from the closest surveillance tower. Two more towers stood watch to the east and the west. An autopsy later concluded that he had died of “environmental exposure.” 莫拉莱斯死时距离最近的监控塔仅360英尺（约110米）。东西两侧还有两座塔在“监视”。尸检报告随后得出结论，他死于“环境暴露”。
The towers surrounding Morales were only the latest addition to the “virtual wall” the government has spent 25 years and billions of dollars building along the entire border, which also includes earlier generations of towers with more basic features, as well as blimps, drones, seismic sensors, and even tunnel-sensing robots. 环绕莫拉莱斯的这些塔只是政府花费25年时间和数十亿美元在整个边境线上建造的“虚拟墙”的最新组成部分。这道墙还包括功能更基础的早期监控塔，以及飞艇、无人机、地震传感器，甚至还有探测隧道的机器人。
Together, all this technology provides “persistent surveillance” and “situational awareness” to help the Border Patrol quickly and accurately detect people crossing and, crucially, make sure agents are sent to intercept them. CBP has also credited it with saving lives. 所有这些技术共同提供了“持续监控”和“态势感知”，以帮助边境巡逻队快速、准确地探测到越境人员，并至关重要的是，确保特工被派去拦截他们。CBP也曾称赞这些技术挽救了生命。
But a first-of-its-kind investigation by MIT Technology Review reveals that deaths like Morales’s are startlingly common. We cross-referenced nearly 4,000 locations where human remains were found—drawn from records collected by nonprofit groups like No More Deaths and Humane Borders, as well as hundreds of records we obtained in Texas—with information on nearly 600 towers identified by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 但《麻省理工科技评论》一项首创性的调查显示，像莫拉莱斯这样的死亡事件惊人地普遍。我们将近4000处发现人类遗骸的地点（数据来自“不再死亡”和“人道边境”等非营利组织收集的记录，以及我们在德克萨斯州获得的数百份记录）与电子前沿基金会（EFF）确定的近600座监控塔的信息进行了交叉比对。
We considered when towers were installed and when each person is estimated to have died, and combined this information with field reporting from the border. The result is the first comprehensive map and analysis of deaths near CBP surveillance towers. Our investigation shows that a humanitarian crisis at the border has unfolded in view of the government’s own cameras. 我们考虑了监控塔的安装时间和每个人的估计死亡时间，并将这些信息与边境实地报道相结合。其结果是第一份关于CBP监控塔附近死亡事件的综合地图和分析。我们的调查显示，一场边境人道主义危机正是在政府自己的摄像头注视下发生的。
José Morales Bernal died the day before his 32nd birthday. PHOTO COURTESY MIREYA MORALES 何塞·莫拉莱斯·伯纳尔在32岁生日前一天去世。（图片来源：MIREYA MORALES）
We found more than 1,050 people who died within range of border surveillance towers between 2015 and early 2026. These deaths are not failures of a few towers or technologies: We found deaths within the advertised range of nearly two-thirds of all the towers we analyzed. 我们发现，2015年至2026年初期间，有超过1050人在边境监控塔的覆盖范围内死亡。这些死亡并非个别塔台或技术的失灵：在我们分析的所有监控塔中，近三分之二的塔台覆盖范围内都发生了死亡事件。
Our topographical analysis—which assessed the degree to which terrain might block a tower’s view of a particular death and its surveillance area in general—found that some have sight of as little as 10% of their advertised surveillance area, and yet we also found most deaths did not occur in towers’ blind spots. 我们的地形分析评估了地形在多大程度上可能阻挡监控塔对特定死亡地点及其整体监控区域的视野。结果发现，有些塔台的实际视野仅为其宣称监控区域的10%，但我们也发现，大多数死亡事件并非发生在监控塔的盲区内。
These deaths are not the result of legacy systems, as our estimate found more than 110 people have died within range of modern autonomous towers from Anduril, among the most advanced systems CBP has deployed, since 2021. 这些死亡并非老旧系统的结果，因为据我们估计，自2021年以来，已有超过110人在Anduril现代自主监控塔的覆盖范围内死亡，而这些塔台属于CBP部署的最先进系统之列。
The overall picture reveals repeated failures of one of the virtual wall’s basic security functions, as CBP has described it in press releases: to effectively identify and locate migrants entering illegally into the United States. 总体情况揭示了“虚拟墙”基本安全功能之一的反复失灵——正如CBP在新闻稿中所描述的那样：即有效识别和定位非法进入美国的移民。
The year that Morales died, 18 other people died in that same stretch of desert in range of the three Anduril towers. Five were visible from the same surveillance tower closest to where his body was discovered. 在莫拉莱斯去世的那一年，同一片沙漠中、在那三座Anduril监控塔覆盖范围内，还有18人死亡。其中5人的位置在发现他遗体的那座最近的监控塔视野内。
One man, after walking a mile past the border and in range of two AI towers, dragged his 30-year-old brother into the shade when he began having trouble breathing, according to records we obtained from the medical examiner. The two were spotted by Border Patrol only when the man waved down a helicopter for help; by the time agents arrived, his brother was already dead. 根据我们从法医处获得的记录，一名男子在越过边境一英里并进入两座AI监控塔的覆盖范围后，当他30岁的兄弟开始呼吸困难时，他将对方拖到了阴凉处。直到这名男子向直升机挥手求救时，他们才被边境巡逻队发现；当特工赶到时，他的兄弟已经死亡。
A 24-year-old woman died near another Anduril tower, where our terrain analysis showed it should have had clear sight of her location. Her body lay unnoticed for weeks; it was decomposed, and blistered by the summer heat, when it was spotted by agents patrolling the area. A few miles west, and a short drive from a Border Patrol station, four other AI… 一名24岁的女性死在另一座Anduril监控塔附近，我们的地形分析显示，该塔本应能清晰地看到她所在的位置。她的遗体在数周内无人发现；当在该地区巡逻的特工发现时，遗体已经腐烂，并被夏日的酷暑灼伤。在向西几英里处，距离边境巡逻站仅短途车程的地方，另外四台AI……