While the Silk Road trial is ongoing, San Diego's NBC news affiliate is reporting on a drone that crashed near the border crossing at San Ysidro while carrying more than 6 pounds of methamphetamine. The crash location itself was a Tijuana grocery store parking lot. This is far from the first report of drug trafficking across the United States – Mexican border using drones, and is largely notable because of the drone's crash.

This incident illustrates one of the numerous that in spite of all of the technological advances finding their way into law enforcement hand, it is the advance in sophistication and reliability of more mundane and less life critical technologies that are actually empowering criminal organizations. It is nothing short of amazing that an inexpensive electronic drone can completely remove the risk of actually having a person cross the border with contraband in their possession.

It also highlights the absurdity of trying to restrict strong cryptography. It would be unreasonable to expect we could return to a world where making a rather sophisticated yet inexpensive and expendable drone from off the shelf parts would be impossible. Somehow though politicians are under the impression the encryption genie can be put back in the bottle in a world where GNU Privacy Guard is old enough and disseminated enough to have a "Classic" Series.