LISTEN: Ford Patent Could Protect You from Accidentally Smuggling Drugs

You may own a Ford vehicle and travel across the border but that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to smuggle illegal drugs. And the automaker wants to make sure you don’t accidentally participate in narcotics trafficking.Ford recently filed a patent, spotted by Motor1, for an "unknown cargo detection and evidence collection system" that can use a vehicle’s various cameras and sensors to prevent the driver from becoming a “blind mule,” or someone who carries illegal drugs across the border without their knowledge.The system is designed to detect suspicious activity by monitoring for fluctuations in the vehicle's weight, listening to any activity around the vehicle that seems out of norm, and scanning for unfamiliar GPS signals, since that’s the most likely way a drug smuggler would track a vehicle and retrieve their cargo after it crosses the border. As the report points out, if the system does think something fishy is going down, it can turn on the cameras, make recordings, and store the footage so it can be used as evidence later.