ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) - U.S. Customs and Border Protection is considering placing a surveillance tower in Rochester as part of a nationwide plan to expand border monitoring.
The agency plans to install about 100 surveillance towers across the country in the coming years. If approved, Rochester’s tower would be part of the Remote Video Surveillance System, or RVSS, and would be built at a yet-to-be-determined location along Lake Ontario.
More than a dozen RVSS towers are already operating in Western New York, most in the Buffalo region. Officials say the towers stand about 140 feet tall and can detect and track a person within a seven-mile radius, day or night, using infrared technology. The cameras can rotate 360 degrees and are monitored remotely by Customs agents, who say the system i