Vol. 76/No. 2      January 16, 2012

Drone attacks, such as those in Pakistan, are shrouded in secrecy. Some 240 drone strikes there have been reported in the press over the past three years. They have assassinated intended targets—individuals or groups of “suspicious” people—in addition to many noncombatant men, women and children. With the exception of open gloating over some “high value” individuals, victims’ identities and circumstances of the hits are classified by the U.S. government, as is the existence of the drone program itself.

In the United States, spy drones have been deployed along U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada since 2005. The Customs and Border Protecti0on agency currently operates eight Predator drones—among the models used for international hunter-killer operations—with plans to increase this threefold over the next five years. This will give “the agency the ability to deploy a drone anywhere over the continental United States within three hours,” according to the Washington Post.

Some of these same drones are also being used to conduct surveillance operations for local police agencies. In eastern North Dakota in June cops in Grand Forks called in two Predator drones from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to spy upon operations on a family farm in the area.

Police then “rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator,” reported the Los Angeles Times. Since then local police have used Predators “based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights,” the paper added.

The Federal Aviation Administration is planning to issue guidelines this month allowing greater use of domestic surveillance drones. And the drive is on by police agencies to gain access to them.

The state of Oklahoma is seeking approval for an 80-mile air corridor exclusively for drone development and testing. In Houston, the police chief told a news conference that the drone Montgomery County is pursuing could be used in issuing traffic tickets. Feeling some heat, the city’s mayor nixed the program, but the county went ahead and purchased a ShadowHawk unmanned helicopter, according to Metro.us. The Miami-Dade Police Department is also purchasing two drones.

If restrictions are loosened on domestic drone use, there could be as many as 15,000 of them by 2018, Ryan Calo, director for Privacy and Robotics at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, told Metro.us.
 
 
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Minn. Somalis protest bank halt on remittances  
 
 
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