U.S. Border Agency Is a Frequent Lender of Its Drones

By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: July 3, 2013
As Congress considers an overhaul to the nation’s immigration law that would expand the fleet of unmanned drones along the border, the agency in charge of border protection is increasingly lending the drones it already owns to a variety of domestic law-enforcement agencies, according to documents recently made public.


The documents, which include flight logs over the last three years, were unearthed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

Agencies that have borrowed the 10 Predator drones owned by the Customs and Border Protection Agency have used them for a variety of purposes, including to investigate fishing violations, search for missing persons and inspect levees along the Mississippi River. Three years ago, the drones were lent out 30 times; in 2012, they were lent out 250 times.

In the documents, the border agency said data collected by the drones could be shared with other government agencies, raising concerns about the privacy of Americans within the nation’s borders.

Additionally, the agency, in a 2010 report to Congress included in the documents, raised the possibility of eventually equipping its drones with “nonlethal weapons” to “immobilize” people and vehicles trying to cross the border illegally.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/business/us-border-agency-is-a-frequent-lender-of-its-drones.html