Free Talk Live

A motion to dismiss charges based on the use of a Predator drone was denied Wednesday. A North Dakota court has preliminarily upheld the first-ever use of an unmanned drone to assist in the arrest of an American citizen.

In the span of just three years, we have seen drone surveillance become openly operational on American soil.

In 2007, Texas reporters first filmed a predator drone test being conducted by the local police department in tandem with Homeland Security. And in 2009, it was revealed that an operation was underway to use predator drones inland over major cities, far from “border control” functions. This year it has been announced that not only will drone operations fly over the Mexican border, but the United States and Canada are partnering to cover 900 miles of the northern border as well.

Earlier this year, a North Dakota sheriff was on the search for six missing cows. He turned up with a warrant at a family ranch, but was chased off by someone with a rifle, reports the Los Angeles Times. So he called in back-up, including a drone from Border Patrol, to search the family’s 3,000-acre ranch for the armed suspects. The drone used its sensors to find them and to determine they were unarmed. Police then arrested the family of six, marking the first known use of a drone to arrest U.S. citizens, reports the Times.

Military officials make an example of the TR425 Predator Drone which fired on an Afghan wedding last September.

Followup video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVCdLV3Xlbo&feature=feedu

Montgomery County Sheriff's Office was recently bragging about the $300,000 drone that they bought with help from the Department of Homeland Security. They tried to do a fancy photo op featuring the drone and their Bearcat, and crashed one into the other. It's a paramilitary police state on parade.

A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other war zones.

Yesterday, V-Day, the Public Protection Committee of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors held a public hearing in Oakland, CA on a request from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office to purchase a surveillance Drone, which would make my County the first in California to acquire it’s own local Drone. Of course Sheriff Ahern insisted that the Board of Supervisors refer to it as a “small Unmanned Aerial System” and not a “Drone.” He also objected to the term “surveillance” preferring ”observation.” As if there’s a difference.

Like a Swarm of Lethal Bugs: The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet

An Air Force simulation says researchers are at work on killer robots so tiny that a group of them could blend into a cityscape.

Science writer John Horgan's feature on the many ways drones will be used in coming years is interesting throughout, and terrifying in the passage where he describes an effort to build micro-drones that are, as the U.S. Air Force describes them, "Unobtrusive, pervasive, and lethal."

It seems a little known provision in the 2005 bill authorizing the use of Predator drones along the U.S. border allowed other agencies to borrow the drones for, “interior law enforcement support.” So, now the same MQ-9 “hunter/killer” drones used for CIA assassinations in Yemen and Pakistan are being used to track down stray cattle in North Dakota… no joke.