(NEW YORK) MintPress – The United States Air Force first started to plan for the use of unmanned flights in 1959, after growing concern about losing pilots over hostile territory. They often relied on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for similar reasons in Vietnam, and drones, as they are now called, are known to have dramatically changed the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But today, the definition of hostile territory has expanded to include areas much closer to home, and drones are no longer a tool for the exclusive use of the military.
In fact, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been flying drones in the United States since its controversial eyes-in-the-skies program began in 2004. And that has many civil liberties and privacy groups up in arms.
Especially now that the DHS wants to more than double its fleet of Predator drones used to fly surveillance missions inside the U.S. The border agency has just signed a contract that could be worth as much as $443 million with General Atomics for the purchase of up to 14 additional Predator drones to fly near the borders with Mexico and Canada.
If Congress appropriates the funds, DHS’ drone fleet would increase to 24. The agency has already spent $250 million over the last six years on 10 surveillance Predators of its own.
It uses them to patrol the borders with surveillance equipment like video cameras, infrared cameras, heat sensors and radar.
Customs and Border Protection (CPB), a division of DHS, maintains that the drones are critical to its efforts to stop illegal immigrants.
But in June, the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report outlining several problems with the drones, including a lack of appropriate equipment and staff to fly them safely and insufficient procedures for prioritizing requests for their flights.
“This report, combined with the Federal Aviation Administration’s lack of openness about its drone authorization program and failure to disclose the true number of entities flying drones,” said the Electric Frontier Foundation, “shows that the federal government is moving far too quickly in its plans to dramatically expand the number of domestic drones flying in the United States over the next few years.”
Not so friendly skies
Even worse, claims the EFF, the DHS is also flying Predator drone missions on behalf of numerous local, state and federal law enforcement agencies for missions that go beyond immigration purposes.
“We know they have lent the drones out to the county sheriff’s department in North Dakota and the Texas Rangers, among others, but unfortunately, we don’t know the full extent DHS lending program. DHS, as is their custom, is keeping that information secret,” it said.
Last month, EFF sued the DHS under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and is demanding some answers, along with the records and logs of CBP drone flights conducted with other agencies.
And in June, the Congressional Research Service released a comprehensive report on domestic drones and the Fourth Amendment.
“The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness,” it says. “A reviewing court’s determination of the reasonableness of drone surveillance would likely be informed by location of the search, the sophistication of the technology used, and society’s conception of privacy in an age of rapid technological advancement.”
The report explains that drones can be equipped with, among other capabilities, facial recognition technology, fake cell phone towers to intercept phone calls, texts and GPS locations. In a few years, they will even be able to see through walls.
Local intruders
According to the EFF, the DHS has also started taking its activities to the local level, encouraging police agencies to buy their own drones by doling out $4 million for them to “facilitate and accelerate” their use.
And police departments in cities as large as Miami and as small as Mesa County, Colo. are already putting them to use, seeing them as the next cool tool.
The current crop of police drones, which cost anywhere from less than $100,000 to roughly $1 million, are smaller than Predators and do not have as long of a flight time. But with new technological advances, they will become cheaper and increasingly capable of surveilling people for hours and even days on end.
Lockheed Martin has already developed a drone that weighs just over 13 pounds and can be recharged by a laser on the ground.
Federal action
Several members of Congress introduced bills earlier this year that would restrict the use of drones at home. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) proposed the Preserving Freedom from Unwanted Surveillance Act of 2012, which would require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before using drones for domestic surveillance, subject to several exceptions.
Similarly, the Preserving American Privacy Act of 2012, introduced by Rep Ted Poe (R-Texas) would permit law enforcement to conduct drone surveillance after a warrant but only in investigation of a felony.
Said the EFF, “The American people deserve answers about to whom Homeland Security is loaning its drones, how DHS plans on protecting Americans’ privacy, and why they even need any more, given they are misusing the drones they already have.”
“As the integration of drones for domestic surveillance operations quickly accelerates, these questions and others will be posed to the American people and their political leaders,” wrote the Congressional Research Service in its report.
And the issue of drones is likely to come to even greater prominence when the new administration takes office.