U.S. to receive Canadian radar feeds to combat drug smugglers
The Canadian government will soon start supplying DHS with data from its radar feeds to help border officials prevent low-flying airplanes from entering U.S. airspace to smuggle drugs along the northern border; in November the Canadian government will begin sending surveillance information collected from its twenty-two radar feeds to the U.S. Air and Marine Operations Center in Riverside, California; the data will be used to detect “unlawful entry into the United States”
The Canadian government will soon start supplying DHS with data from its radar feeds to help border officials prevent low-flying airplanes from entering U.S. airspace to smuggle drugs along the northern border.
Before a Senate panel, Alan Bersin, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), said that beginning in November the Canadian government will begin sending surveillance information collected from its twenty-two radar feeds to the U.S. Air and Marine Operations Center in Riverside, California.
Bersin said the data will be used to detect “unlawful entry into the United States.”
In particular, “The ability of small aircraft to enter the United States undetected presents a multi-faceted threat,” he said.
Drug traffickers have been using small planes to enter the United States and land at small American airstrips to smuggle drugs.
Smuggling along the northern border has become an increasing problem due to the border’s size, its rugged terrain, and the long stretches that are isolated from major population centers.
Last year border official interdicted approximately 40,000 pounds of illegal drugs, and in 2009 alone it seized more than two million doses of ecstasy alone.
Canada’s radar feeds will help fill existing gaps in U.S. surveillance along the northern border.
The United States and Canada have long shared radar surveillance data, but Bersin said the additional radar data will provide the U.S. with “more feeds than currently exist.”
