US Coast Guard concludes first season of surveillance drone program in Great Lakes

The United States Coast Guard announced on Monday that it is concluding its first season of autonomous drone surveillance on the Great Lakes. Earlier this week, the agency brought six sailboat drones to shore that had been deployed across four of the five Great Lakes, including Lake Superior, between April and November. The program is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to bolster security on the freshwater border with Canada. The drones were used to “monitor the Great Lakes, gather critical weather data for emergency response planning, track illicit activity and keep maritime borders safe,” the Coast Guard wrote on the U.S. Department of War website. Understanding Wisconsin, Together. WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” newsletter keeps you connected to the state you love without feeling overwhelmed. No paywall. No agenda. No corporate filter. Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Email Subscribe “They’re trying to determine what traffic is going back and forth between the U.S. and Canada, and if there are any problems that they should take note of,” Phoebe Wall Howard, a journalist who has been reporting on the sailboat drones from Detroit, told WPR’s “ Wisconsin Today .” “In the first six months, they said the use of this program has not identified any wrongdoing or suspected wrongdoing at this time,” she said. The program has raised concerns for data privacy experts, who see echoes of the Flock camera debate now playing out on the Great Lakes. This new surveillance program is part of the Coast Guard’s $23 billion budget , the largest single appropriation in the agency’s history. The vessels were operated by Saildrone, a technology firm based in California, through a $15.5 million contract with the government. “The U.S. Coast Guard is a contractor, so when the U.S. Coast Guard wants to move one of these … sail drones, they reach out to the San Francisco company, and the company actually controls them,” Howard said. Over the last decade, Saildrone has collaborated with agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for scientific research. In 2022, the company deployed two of its boats on Lake Superior from Ashland as part of a multi-year program to capture data about fish populations in the Great Lakes. More recently, Saildrone has pivoted to using its technology for surveillance and border security. Last year, Lockheed Martin announced a $50 million investment to equip Saildrone vessels with military-grade weapons. “These are the same boats that are being used in the Middle East and other areas,” Howard said, “including the U.S.-Mexico border, the Atlantic and the Pacific.” Saildrone program raises data privacy concerns The use of a third-party company like Saildrone to collect and store surveillance data on behalf of the government has raised questions for privacy experts like Michael Zimmer, director of Marquette University’s Center for Data Ethics. “Where is this data? Who else has access to it? What is this third party doing with this data?” Zimmer said. “It’s just a lot of open questions because it does happen to be a private enterprise that’s running these devices and collecting all this data about people out enjoying their time on the lake.” In an email to WPR, the Coast Guard wrote that the Saildrone camera “captures still photographs — not continuous video — does not use facial recognition software and is not designed to target, track, or process recreational boat hull numbers.” “Saildrone is not permitted to provide or sell Coast Guard operational data to other customers. After the contract with Saildrone ends, the Coast Guard will retain the rights to the collected data,” the Coast Guard continued. The Saildrone vessels deployed this year did not clearly identify as being operated by the Coast Guard. They are classified as “ pleasure crafts ” on MaritimeTraffic.com, a global ship tracking and maritime intelligence platform, as reported by The Guardian . “If you are out on the water, it does look like a sailboat,” said Howard, who went out onto Lake Erie with a Coast Guard representative to see one of the Saildrone boats close-up. The presence of these drones raised concerns among recreational boaters and anglers who use the Great Lakes. Ryan Weekes, who runs the InterCity Yacht Club in Cleveland, told The Guardian that he understands the need for maritime security but believes there should be more transparency “whenever new surveillance technology is deployed.” For Zimmer, the privacy expert at Marquette, Saildrone is part of a broader debate around surveillance and a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy . “We’re all familiar with controversies around Flock cameras or tracking cars on the roads, and now people are seeing similar types of platforms being deployed on the open water,” Zimmer said. “I think that’s just part of that uncertainty and the anxiety that the average person has about how often are they being monitored and just unclear about what’s happening with that information.” Canadian officials ‘don’t have trust’ in future of Saildrone use This comes as tensions between the U.S. and Canada are on the rise . Recent polling by the Angus Reid Institute, a nonpartisan public opinion research firm in Canada, shows that nearly half of Canadians have an unfavorable view of Americans . The Coast Guard maintains that the Great Lakes drone program “does not alter our close, daily partnership with the Canadian Coast Guard and Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” the agency wrote in an email to WPR. But some Canadian officials have said they were not consulted about having drones patrolling the water border. Mike Bradley, the mayor of Sarnia, Ontario, which sits on Lake Erie, told CBC Radio that he was not aware of the Saildrone program until he was contacted by journalists reporting on the story. “We have thousands of boaters on the river St. Clair, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and now they’re going to be photographed and watched,” he said on the radio program “ As It Happens .” “Even though they’re saying right now it’s benign, I don’t have the trust down the road, especially with the rapidly deteriorating relationship with the U.S., that they won’t use it for other purposes.” This kind of “function creep” is a common concern with new surveillance technologies, Zimmer said. “We never know what might change next week or next month or next year. Will they start collecting video? Will they start doing face recognition?” Zimmer said. “We call that ‘function creep,’ where something gets deployed for a reason that we can rationalize, but all of a sudden, over time, it changes, and then that equation — that calculus that we thought was OK — suddenly shifts.” The Coast Guard says it plans to send the sailboat drones back onto the Great Lakes in spring 2027. Related Stories Wisconsin communities end contracts with surveillance company Flock over privacy, misuse concerns Coast Guard investigating beacon stolen from Superior lighthouse Microsoft doesn’t expect its data centers will trigger review under Great Lakes Compact