Surveillance drones deployment on US's Great Lakes raises data collection fears [View all]

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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