'Surveillance society': has technology at the US-Mexico border gone too far?

Palmer Luckey, the virtual reality pioneer, left Facebook in 2017, six months after it was discovered that he had secretly funded a pro-Trump campaign group dedicated to influencing the US election through "shitposting" and "meme magic". The 25-year-old Oculus founder now has a new venture, Anduril Industries, this time supporting Trump's immigration policies directly through the creation of a surveillance system designed to detect unauthorised crossings of the Mexican border. Anduril Industries is one of a growing number of companies playing on the fear of "bad hombres" to cash in on government contracts for hi-tech virtual alternatives to physical wall. From drones and sensors to AI-powered facial recognition and human presence detection, these surveillance systems promise cheaper border control but at what cost to civil liberties? "These systems are reflective of advances in sensor and analytics technologies that are going to have serious repercussions for Americans' privacy," said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the ACLU.