The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will expand the use of security cameras on the northern border with Canada to reduce the chances terrorists, illegal aliens, or contraband will slip over the northern border into the United States undetected, USA Today reports [1].

The department this summer will position 44 cameras in Detroit along Lake St. Clair, which separates the city from Canada, and 20 cameras in Buffalo along the Niagara River. There are now about 20 cameras along the entire 4,000-mile border between Canada and the continental U.S.

The $20 million program marks the department's first major effort to see whether the northern border, which has large swaths of woods, hills and lakes, can benefit from the extensive camera network along the 1,900-mile U.S.-Mexican border, said Mark Borkowski, head of the department's Secure Border Initiative.

According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released in November [2], DHS told the GAO that the threat of terrorism from Canada is higher than from Mexico. The new cameras, according to USA Today, will be positioned in trees and buildings to monitor the border.

The new deployment is part of the Secure Border Initiative [3] run inside of DHS by Customs and Border Protection. In the past, the GAO has criticized SBI's pilot program [4], known as Project 28, along a 28-mile stretch of the Mexican border for multiple flaws in the system, including the use of inappropriate software by the program's contractor, Boeing.