CANADIAN DATA MAY HELP U.S. NAB SMUGGLERS

The Canadian government has agreed to supply the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security with surveillance data collected from 22 radar
feeds as American officials struggle to combat the use of lowflying
aircraft to smuggle drugs across the Canada-U.S. border.

In testimony before a Senate panel, Customs and Border Protection
commissioner Alan Bersin said the Canadian data will be sent to the
U.S. Air and Marine Operations Centre in Riverside, Calif., starting
in November.

The Canadian data will be used to detect "unlawful entry into the
United States, unannounced entry," Bersin told reporters following a
hearing of the Senate judiciary committee on border security. "The
ability of small aircraft to enter the United States undetected
presents a multi-faceted threat."

U.S. senators have, for months, been pressing Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano to boost surveillance along the
Canada-U.S. border to combat trafficking of marijuana,
methamphetamines and other drugs in planes that frequently go
undetected and land at small American airstrips.

In February, New York Senator Chuck Schumer and a group of other
northern border lawmakers asked Napolitano to use military-grade
radar technology to track the low-flying aircraft.

The Canadian radar feeds will be used to help fill the gaps in
existing U.S. surveillance, Bersin said. For decades, the U.S. and
Canada have shared radar surveillance data through the North American
Aerospace Defence Command -Norad.

But Canada has agreed to provide information to the U.S. from "more
feeds than currently exist," Bersin said.