CIA seeks to expand drone fleet, officials say

[alp227]

Source: Washington Post

The CIA is urging the White House to approve a significant expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones, a move that would extend the spy service’s decade-long transformation into a paramilitary force, U.S. officials said.

The proposal by CIA Director David H. Petraeus would bolster the agency’s ability to sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging al-Qaeda threats in North Africa or other trouble spots, officials said.

If approved, the CIA could add as many as 10 drones, the officials said, to an inventory that has ranged between 30 and 35 over the past few years.

The outcome has broad implications for counterterrorism policy and whether the CIA gradually returns to being an organization focused mainly on gathering intelligence, or remains a central player in the targeted killing of terrorism suspects abroad.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-seeks-to-expand-drone-fleet-officials-say/2012/10/18/01149a8c-1949-11e2-bd10-5ff056538b7c_singlePage.html

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I could easily have said something about Obama and risk getting this post hidden. Instead I suggest electing people to CONGRESS with anti-drone platforms.

[cpwm17]

1. This is horrible news for the world. n/t

[OnyxCollie]

2. The drone program has a substantial dollar value attached to it.

Anti-drone means you want the terrorists to win.

I appreciate your sentiment though.

[alp227]

4. Umm, aren't drones only annoying the terrorists more?

[OnyxCollie]

6. Sure. You and I know that.

But the gullible public doesn't, so anyone running against a pro-drone candidate is going to be slammed by negative advertising courtesy of the military industrial complex and Citizen's United.

[Comrade Grumpy]

3. Enough of this CIA army crap.

We don't need a black-budgeted secret paramilitary force. These guys are always making deals with the devil, too.

Where's Frank Church when you need him?

[Kindly Refrain]

12. You'd have to get rid of the DoD's Special Operations Command

To really get rid of it.

[olddad56]

5. Romney is a fucking drone.

[agentS]

7. 10 doesn't seem like a whole lot

But other than the Pakistan/Afghanistan arena, there aren't many other places where we need drones.
Except for Mali, and possibly the Pacific Ocean disputed island areas. That's what? 4?
I'm OK with 4, but I think 10 is excessive.

[Chef Eric]

10. How many foreign drones in U.S. airspace would be "excessive"? nt

[Trivium]

11. domestic drones, soon by the tens of thousands

Congress Passes Bill to Proliferate Drone Use in US Airspace (FAA says up to 30,000 by 2020)

http://techland.time.com/2012/02/08/congress-paves-way-for-unmanned-drones-in-u-s-commercial-airspace/

Ready to see drones flying over your house? A new bill passed by Congress will give commercial, private and military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) greatly increased access to U.S. airspace that’s currently reserved only for manned planes. Right now drones are mostly limited to the U.S.-Mexico border and military airspace, as well as use by around 300 public agencies located far away from cities and airports. That is now scheduled to change by September 30, 2015.

The main focus of the bill is the FAA’s adoption of NextGen, a program that will allow commercial aircraft to install and use GPS technology for steeper, more efficient take-offs and landings instead of the ridiculously outdated way things are done now. All in all, this should help make air travel a lot more time efficient. We shouldn’t, however, ignore the implications of letting drones into airspace that was previously off-limits. While the military and local police forces have long been able to use UAVs in operations on U.S. soil, the prospect of commercial and privately owned drones presents plenty of new questions.

First, there’s the issue of privacy. Rigging a cheap drone with a video camera was no problem for an Occupy protestor; http://techland.time.com/2011/12/21/occupy-wall-streets-new-drone-the-occucopter/ how hard would it be for someone with deeper pockets to finance a drone with even more powerful surveillance equipment to monitor, well, who knows what? How will we know what purposes any private citizen has for deploying a drone overhead?

Then there are the corporations. Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/07/congress-welcomes-the-drones/ points out that companies like Google could ditch their Street View cars and start deploying advanced, autonomous drones to roam the country for incredibly thorough mapping. If the idea of fleets of corporate-owned drones monitoring us from above doesn’t scare you, then you are a much less paranoid person than I.

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Send In The Drones: The Predator State Goes Domestic


http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2011/12/send-in-drones-predator-state-goes.html

“Eventually, we’ll have to put an end to this, one way or another.”

Sheriff Kelly Janke of North Dakota’s Nelson County http://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/rural-north-dakota-agencies-question-homeland-security-grants/article_f1dc8d8e-17ea-11df-bb45-001cc4c002e0.html uttered that ominous sentence in mid-September, http://www.valleynewslive.com/story/15463154/lakota-familys-ties-to-radical-group during what the local media giddily described as a stand-off with local farmer Rodney Brossart and his family. By that time, Sheriff Janke, with the help of the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Air Force, had already run the table where “non-lethal” means of compelling the family to surrender were concerned. This included everything from the Taser used during Brossart’s June 23 arrest to the precedent-setting use of a Predator-B drone to conduct surveillance of the home several days later to facilitate the arrest of the farmer’s three sons.

The most recent conflict between Janke’s department and Brossart began when a half-dozen stray cattle wandered onto the family’s farm, which is located near the tiny village of Lakota (roughly 100 miles northwest of Fargo). Brossart, who reportedly believed that the cattle were unclaimed and thus belonged to him under a disputed interpretation of open-range law, refused to turn them over to the Sheriff.

A team of deputies tasered the 55-year-old farmer and took him into custody. His daughter Abby, frantic for the safety of her father, tried to intervene; for “striking” the sanctified personage of a deputy, she was arrested and charged with assault. When Brossart’s wife Susan refused to help the deputies locate what they described as “illegal” firearms, she, too, was arrested and charged with lying to law enforcement officers (who are trained to lie http://www.officer.com/article/10233095/training-cops-to-lie-pt-1 and can do so without legal consequence). http://www.republicmagazine.com/news/dont-help-the-police-put-you-in-jail.html When deputies returned the following day, they were reportedly confronted by Brossart’s three sons – Jacob, Alex, and Thomas -- who were allegedly carrying the rifles the police had tried to confiscate the previous day.

This led Sheriff Janke to escalate the confrontation to a full-spectrum military response – including, in the words of the Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211,0,324348.story elements “from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances, and deputy sheriffs from three other counties. He also called in a Predator B drone.” That unmanned aerial vehicle, identical to those used in CIA-directed missions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, was supplied by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency http://www.uasvision.com/2011/06/06/u-s-customs-and-border-protection-agency-predators-exceed-10000-flight-hours/ (CBP), an affiliate of the Department of Homeland Security. http://www.cbp.gov/

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U.S. law enforcement agencies authorized by the FAA to use surveillance drones

http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_21803966/u-s-law-enforcement-agencies-authorized-by-faa


The number of organizations that have been authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration is estimated to have grown to about 100. They include the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and numerous universities. About a dozen are law enforcement agencies. Here is a list provided by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, the industry's main trade group.

Arlington County Police Department (Texas)

CAL FIRE (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection)

Georgia Tech Police Department (Georgia)

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Hays County Office of Emergency Services (Texas)

Houston Police Department (Texas)

Miami-Dade Police Department (Florida)

Mesa County Arizona Police Department (Colorado)

North Little Rock Police Department (Arkansas)

Ogden Police Department (Utah)

Seattle Police Department (Washington)

Virginia Tech Police Department (Virginia)

Texas Department of Public Safety (Texas)

Washington State Department of Transportation (Washington)

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As Drone Debate Rages, Police Move on to Million-Dollar Spy Planes

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/spy-planes-domestic/

FAA Has Authorized 106 Government ‘Entities’ to Fly Domestic Drones

http://homeland.house.gov/sites/homeland.house.gov/files/Testimony-Dillingham.pdf

[Citizen Worker]

8. Beware, Petraeus is building his own military. This does not augur well for the future.

[Solly Mack]

9. K&R

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Kick (nt)