Obama jumpstarts virtual fence project

WASHINGTON, May 8 (UPI) -- The Obama administration is resuming construction on a "virtual fence" along the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said.

The White House plans to build a $6.7 billion chain of tower-mounted sensors and other surveillance equipment over most of the 2,000-mile border in the next five years, The Washington Post reported Friday.

The project comes after problems encountered by former President George W. Bush's administration during a 28-mile pilot project.

"This is the initiation of the no-kidding, real, SBInet system," said Mark Borkowski, executive director of DHS Secure Border Initiative and its technology component, SBInet. "We understand this a lot better. We're a lot more sophisticated in our modeling of what control of the border is."

U.S. officials began erecting 17 camera and radio towers Monday on a 23-mile stretch near Tucson, and expect this summer to add another 36 networked towers on a 30-mile span near Ajo, Ariz, the newspaper reported.

If all goes well, the goal is to expand that 53-mile coverage to the full 320-mile-long Arizona border by late 2011 or early 2012, and the full border with Mexico by 2014 except for a 200-mile stretch near Marfa, Texas.