The Border Observer - Tedious, Mundane, and Boring Details

TL;DR Less tweets from the Search Engine on a daily basis, more tweets from press releases. Some Context Some of you  that have been around awhile know @borderObserver is an effort to make a workstation for news reporters . The first effort was to make a system whereby the basis for most news reporting was catalogued and reported on. To be clear, the "first effort" was to report on the latest press releases. Why? because that is where 90+% of all news starts from. The days of on-the-ground of gumshoe reporting are mostly gone. By all logically means, having a groud news reporter show up for a "local news briefing" — even for a city council meeting — is too expensive. As such, now-a-days reporters show up and take the printed press release. And in many such cases, they just gather the online press release via newsletters. I want to make this very clear. No actual person shows up for a "local news briefing." Unless, the "briefing" is extra-ordinar...

Today, we are dropping MANY stories that are Federal Government Press Releases, sourced locally and intended for local distribution. To be clear, we are dropping the local news website/webpage from our tweets and tweeting about the Federal Government Press Release instead. However, the links to local news stories (from local outlets) will remain on our daily Search Engine Result Page. We just won't tweet those stories, but instead tweet the Federal Press Release (PR). I'm going to give an example, but it's important to realize that ALMOST ALL of the stories I am talking about are put out as a Federal press release (PR). If you read a PR, more often than not, this PR becomes a copy & paste webpage on local news website .. with NO additional information added. It's pure laziness from the local "news" outfits. Here is one example from KVIA in El Paso Human smuggling operation uncovered in Borderland https://kvia.com/news/border/2025/02/20/human-smuggling-oper...

Kash Patel is likely to be Confirmed this week . What you may not know is how it affects HSI  (Homeland Security Investigations) - the investigative branch of CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) and USBP (United States Border Patrol) First, HSI is a law enforcement agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and as such it frequently completes criminal investigations for the CBP and USBP. One of reason it existing is because at one point in time greater than 50% of cases referred from CBP and USBP to the FBI did not get resolved _or_ took too long. More recently, a joint survey and report (dated: July 31, 2019) from the OIG (Office of the Inspector General) of both the DOJ and the DHS finds While 63 percent of survey respondents did not report any cooperation failures, 37 percent of survey respondents and many interviewees reported cooperation failures that resulted in negative impacts on investigations and operations. Let's be clear, 37% of the time the FBI was ...