Drones over America: Are they spying on you?

Deputy Amanda Hill of the Mesa County Sheriff’s
Office in Colorado prepares to use a Draganflyer
X6 drone equipped with a video camera to help
search for a suspect in a knife attack.

Thousands of them could be flying in US skies within the next 10 years 

By Brad Knickerbocker Staff writer

updated 6/16/2012 11:26:50 PM ET

Most Americans have gotten used to regular news reports about military and CIA drones attacking terrorist suspects – including US citizens – in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere abroad.

But picture thousands of drone aircraft buzzing around the United States – peering from the sky at breaches in border security, wildfires about to become major conflagrations, patches of marijuana grown illegally deep within national forests, or environmental scofflaws polluting the land, air, and water.

By some government estimates, as many as 30,000 drones could be part of intelligence gathering and law enforcement here in the United States within the next ten years. Operated by agencies down to the local level, this would be in addition to the 110 current and planned drone activity sites run by the military services in 39 states, reported this week by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a non-government research project.

The presence of drones in the US was brought home Wednesday night when some people thought they saw a UFO along the Capitol Beltway in Washington. In fact, it was a disc-shaped X-47B UCAV (Unmanned Combat Air System) being hauled from Edwards Air Force Base in California to Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland for testing.

'Beltway UFO' sparks saucer frenzy in D.C.
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