Editor’s Note: From the history files.
From: Vice
The RCMP Is Spending Nearly $100 Million to Spy on the Mohawks’ Black Market Tobacco Trade
Weeks after the Conservative government deemed a federal inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women too costly, they have allocated $91.7 million over five years for a surveillance program that seeks to stem the tide of the Mohawk-run…
Mar 26 2014
The same Conservative government that dismissed a federal inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women as too costly, has allocated $91.7 million over five years in its budget for a high-tech surveillance operation along the Quebec-Ontario border with the US in order to find and shut down Mohawk-run underground tobacco operations. The funds were set aside specifically for a “Geospatial Intelligence and Automatic Dispatch Centre,” which will rely on a number of different and costly surveillance technologies.
“Law enforcement partners need to have a clear understanding of the border environment in order to identify potential threats. This is most effectively and efficiently accomplished through the use of technology, including sensors, radar, cameras and underwater acoustics,” an RCMP media relations officer told VICE.
