Tracking the global commute

■"Hurdles for High-Tech Efforts To Track Who Crosses Borders," by Eric Lipton, New York Times, 10 August 2005, p. A1.

Interesting piece on the successes and travails of the customs and border control units of the Department of Homeland Security in their efforts to create a variety of high-tech border-crossing tracking systems.

Yes, yes, security leads and we do this all first and foremost out of fear. But frankly, this shouldn't be a US Government directed effort-in sum-so much as a USG-enabled effort that encompasses both public and private sectors and is internationalized to the hilt.

Instead of posing this all in terms of the U.S. catching terrorists and criminals (the latter is basically whom we catch day-in and day-out with this stuff-plus the illegals), we need to push a Core-wide effort (forget the Gap at first, if countries there were that "with it," they wouldn't be in the Gap) that's pitched more in terms of enabling the global commute so that everything is streamlined and made efficient for the vast flow of humanity that now regularly cross borders for work. Make a system that works for all those people and you'll catch the bad guys as a bonus, but focus your system on catching bad guys first and foremost and what you likely end up doing is making life harder for that vast majority whose travel the Core needs to promote, not hinder.

Yes, the public sector stays in charge of it all (after all, we're talking borders), but lure the private sector in because it's a positive for their business rather than just a hassle to put up with.

This evolution from public-sector-driven-due-to-security-fears to private-sector-driven-due-to-productivity-gains is a natural one. Governments love to build networks in a monopoly fashion, but markets are much better at running them. I mean, there has got to be a better way-a much broader, horizontal, connecting way-to get this job done. One that makes America a positive rule-set leader, not an isolated rule-set purveyor.