The lower Niagara River (below/north of Niagara Falls and the Rapids) has been a favored location for trade and smuggling for centuries. It seems to have taken a new turn recently, per this story, https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2023/01/17/drones-carry-mdma-into-america-via-niagara-falls/?sh=7b39ea602c83 also covered by BuffaloNews.com and other outlets.
The neighbors thought it odd that no one seemed to live in the capacious, quintessential American family house in Lewiston, New York, a small town that sits on the Niagara River, just east of Ontario, Canada. Whoever owned the $650,000 property appeared neither to reside there nor care about upkeep, its lawn unmowed to the point of being "unmanageable," locals later told police. Even odder, they told the cops, were the monthly arrivals of individuals driving expensive-looking cars, only for the visitors to leave a few days later.
Then in the early hours of September 21 last year, the house became the subject of a police raid, according to a recently unsealed search warrant obtained by Forbes. In the middle of the night, using a surveillance tool that could "recognize drone signatures, map their flight path and identify starting and stopping points via GPS," border patrol watched an unmanned aerial vehicle flying over the Niagara River and into the house's garden, according to the warrant. When the cops arrived, the pilot and two other individuals tried to flee, but were caught and taken in for questioning. The police found that attached to the drone was a package of MDMA with an approximate street value of $110,000. A subsequent search of the house recovered multiple webcams watching over entrances and exits, a number of commercial drones and paracord, a kind of rope originally designed for parachutes.
The case reveals the government's investment in drone surveillance, in particular at the border. "The border entities are much better at it," said Mary-Lou Smulders, chief marketing officer at drone detection contractor Dedrone, a provider to various U.S. federal government agencies.
The investigators in the Niagara River probe likely used radio frequency signals to tag and track the unmanned flying vehicle, Smulders said. That involves setting up sensors across a given area and triangulating the drone's signals to get a relatively precise location. There are other ways to monitor drones, however, from radar to listening for the machines' noises using arrays of microphones.
A google search for: smuggling lewiston ny
turns up human trafficking, un-taxed cigarettes, and a variety of drugs -- all recently, by boat. Going back even further to US Prohibition, plenty of alcohol came in by this route. Civil War era? Last stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves escaping to Canada. Pre-US Revolution? Fur traders -- some history here, https://historiclewiston.org/history/
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday January 25 2023, @11:56PM (5 children)
I think the first time I heard something like that was like a decade ago in a story where someone flew drugs into a prison.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2023, @01:07AM (3 children)
Planes, drones, and don't forget submarines, a Civil War era technology.
It would be neat if a cartel made their own custom UAVs with a stealth profile, like the MQ-20 Avenger. Just to ship drugs a few hundred miles.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Tork on Thursday January 26 2023, @01:49AM (1 child)
This is off-topic but I'm more worried about law enforcement using drones than I am smugglers and the like. In the beginning it'll be stuff like: "We used a drone to save the life of a hiker!" But eventually it'll be: "Our drone spotted your car's license plate within a mile of the crime scene..." Maybe I'm paranoid but I think the use of drones by law enforcement will start BEFORE the questions about our privacy are raised.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2023, @07:26AM
Killer robots aren't very killer without a good battery. Improve the battery 50%, and that's 50% more humans eliminated per charging cycle.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 26 2023, @11:27AM
> It would be neat if a cartel made their own custom UAVs with a stealth profile, like the MQ-20 Avenger. Just to ship drugs a few hundred miles.
What makes you think they haven't?
While I can't speak for the Cartels, in Europe I heard of fixed wing UAVs used to cross borders without detection carrying valuable cargo back in 2006 or so. Using the Paparazzi autopilot ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paparazzi_Project [wikipedia.org] ).
I can only assume that it has gotten more sophisticated since then. A bit like the Cartel submarines, by the time it became public knowledge they even had and used submarines, they had been in use for years and had reached a high level of development.
After all, in this world a successful transaction happens when nobody notices, which of course makes it hard to know what the "state of the art" is in the shadow economy. However the combination of large profits and low/no taxes, means there is a lot of money available for R&D and purchasing of hardware.
Likewise I suspect by the time something becomes public knowledge, they will have moved on by something else (if the public knows about it, then I am sure law enforcement knows about it too), so we only find out after the action has taken place.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 26 2023, @02:13AM
Was going to say: the first drug shipment smuggled by drone probably came within a few months of the first drone being available on the open market.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Thursday January 26 2023, @09:43AM (1 child)
'approximate street value of $110,000'
They clearly left out a zero. Otherwise why not just live in the $650,000 house and mow the lawn?
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday January 26 2023, @12:40PM
Presumably because this intercepted one of many such drops. This particular drop might be "worth" $110,000, but if the gang did 100 drops of the same value before they were intercepted, the return on the investment (including the house purchase) is pretty damn good.