Surveillance drones deployment on US's Great Lakes raises data collection fears
Source: Guardian
The Great Lakes have rarely ever been considered a hotbed of illicit drug activity or center for illegal immigration.
But that hasn’t stopped US government agencies and the company behind surveillance sailing drones from treating the region as such. The US Coast Guard recently announced it has launched an armada of at least six sailing drones in the Great Lakes this summer in an attempt to, in part, “track illicit activity”.
At 33ft long, Saildrone Inc’s Voyager surveillance vessels can operate for 100 days at a time without needing servicing. The California-headquartered company claims the drones can operate for months without refueling and can “track vessels across wide maritime regions”.
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“These vessels are equipped with radar and optical sensors capable of continuous monitoring, and they operate under what’s called a ‘contractor-owned, operated’ model, meaning a private company, Saildrone, is collecting the surveillance data and selling it to the government,” says Petra Molnar, the author of The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, and associate director of the Refugee Law Lab at York University in Toronto.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/09/great-lakes-military-surveillance-drones
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the great lakes have been a hotbed of of "people smuggling'" and illegal immigration for decades now. Certain drugs as well. Hashish from Lebanon and Afghanistan has always been smuggled from Canada to the U.S. The existence of Chinese and S.E. Asian illegal immigration routes have been known along the borders of the great lakes for 50 years or more.
If you live along the shores of the great lakes you're aware of this, but inlanders seldom hear about it.
Our northern border is notoriously porous. I'm not sticking up for Trump's ICE Gestapo tactics, but a problem does exist. 