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.
  READ MORE

 

What if we were drone targets?

Anti Krogian terrorist target 34th and 8th Ave Starbucks
Target locked,  fire when ready...

Letters to the editor, June 13

Several recent articles have described how our president and his committee decide which people are terrorists and who should be attacked by a drone aircraft ("Death by drone a disturbing trend," Editorial, Insight, June 10).
Many have been murdered. At least one was an American citizen, which counters the idea that a person is presumed innocent until proved guilty at a trial. Isn't it an act of war when a government of one country kills people in another country ?
Let us imagine a time in the future when another country also has drones. That country decides that a citizen of this country is opposed to its government and is therefore a terrorist.
It sends its drone to San Francisco and blasts the alleged terrorist as well as several others who happen to be in the coffee shop at that moment. How will we react, knowing that this is a routine action by our government?
Burt Rodgers, Walnut Creek

We'll rue the day

Scarcely less troubling than the opacity of the process by which drone-death targets are chosen is the administration's arrant flouting of the sovereignty of the several countries recipient of these unbidden attacks. The day likely will come, as it did concerning nuclear weaponry, when mastery of this latest technical marvel will not be ours alone, and we will rue this unfortunate precedent.
Richard Boyce , San Francisco    READ MORE

 

Why Are Universities Buying Up Drones Faster Than Police Departments?

The spreading drone curriculum is a sign of the coming normalization of drones in American life.

May 2, 2012

For all the attention given to U.S. law enforcement’s interest in adopting drones, the biggest users turn out to be not police departments, but universities. We learned this last week, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation forced the Federal Aviation Administration to reveal that it had approved 25 universities to fly drones in U.S. airspace. Not that universities were waiting on the FAA to begin working in the field: Last fall, Kansas State University created a degree in unmanned aviation. So far, 30 undergraduates have signed up.

The spreading drone curriculum is, for better and worse, a sign of the coming normalization of drones in American life. Interviews with university officials revealed widespread excitement about the possibilities of unmanned aviation technology, which has the potential to transform fields like agriculture and disaster response. The U.S. military, however, is funding parts of this academic research, and so are leading defense contractors. Whether their intentions are as pure as the universities’ is an open question.  READ MORE

Contractors' Role Grows in Drone Missions, Worrying Some in the Military

David S. Cloud, McClatchy Newspapers: "America's growing drone operations rely on hundreds of civilian contractors, including some, such as the SAIC employee, who work in the so-called kill chain before Hellfire missiles are launched, according to current and former military officers, company employees and internal government documents. Relying on private contractors has brought corporations that operate for profit into some of America's most sensitive military and intelligence operations. And using civilians makes some in the military uneasy."
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