Move over, Minuteman Project: Here come the webcams. The San Antonio Express-News reports that Texas governor Rick Perry has allocated $5 million to deploy hundreds of webcams along the state's border with Mexico. The cameras will have night-vision features, feeding images to state-run Web servers 24 hours a day. The idea takes a page from US HomeGuard, the 2003 vision of a webcam-based U.S. national-defense system put forward by erstwhile dot-com billionaire Jay Walker (of Priceline.com renown). Perry's vaguely "open source" notion is that anyone sitting at home can tune into the camera network and call a toll-free number should they spot a would-be illegal immigrant.

The BBC was quick to pick up the story, noting that Perry, a Republican, is up for re-election in November. Slashdot, in turn, linked to the BBC coverage, and one Slashdotter pointed out what he felt was a "subtle but important difference" between recent British neighborhood surveillance projects and Perry's proposal: "Britain's cams look in while Texas's cams look out. If Texas tried to spy on its citizens the same way that Britain does (not that I'm saying that Brits necessarily mind the camera[s]), the Texans would blow them away with 20 gauge shotguns." There is, as yet, no official word from the Mexican government regarding the plan.