US/Canada Border Increasingly Militarized

WINNIPEG - Famed for prowling the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, a remote-control Predator aircraft took flight over the wheat fields of South Dakota yesterday, the first in a network of surveillance drones that could soon patrol the American border with Canada from Maine to Washington state.

While security-conscious politicians applauded the start of Predator flight operations along the largely unmonitored northern border, some border experts regard it as a mere public-relations exercise.