click here for original article<\/a><\/p>\nThe U.S. Department of Homeland Security developed plans at least three years ago to mount weapons on drones operated by Customs and Border Protection \u2014 though the agency denied Wednesday that it has any current plans to use armed drones.<\/p>\n
The plans, outlining the idea of mounting \u201cexpendables or non-lethal weapons\u201d on CBP drones, are disclosed in a 2010 document signed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.<\/p>\n
The document was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and first posted Tuesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco non-profit focused on cyberspace free speech, privacy and consumer-rights issues.<\/p>\n
According to the document, titled \u201cConcept of Operations for CBP\u2019s Predator B Unmanned Aircraft System,\u201d the weapons would be used against \u201ctargets of interest,\u201d described as people or vehicles carrying smugglers or undocumented migrants.<\/p>\n
The DHS and CBP declined to answer specific questions about the document, but issued a statement Wednesday that \u201cCBP has no plans to arm its unmanned-aircraft systems with non-lethal weapons or weapons of any kind.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, civil-rights advocates are concerned that Napolitano signed off on a document positing plans to place even \u201cnon-lethal\u201d weapons on drones.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve never seen this before in any proposals to fly drones domestically,\u201d said Jennifer Lynch, an attorney for the foundation, which first requested the documents last summer and then filed suit in October.<\/p>\n
She said the foundation obtained the document last month.<\/p>\n
In June, departing FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged in a Senate hearing that his agency has deployed surveillance drones, even though it hasn\u2019t yet drafted regulations for their use.<\/p>\n
\u201cWeaponizing drones, even with non-lethal weapons, creates too much of a danger to the public,\u201d said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C. \u201cAnd it is an open question what a \u2018non-lethal\u2019 weapon is. \u2026 Something that could incapacitate a person in the middle of a desert could be hugely problematic. We think that, in the United States, drones should be used for surveillance alone, and only under strong legal protections.\u201d<\/p>\n
The DHS document was heavily redacted, with pages of text blacked out. None of the material released details what \u201cexpendables\u201d or \u201cnon-lethal\u201d weapons would be.<\/p>\n
Currently, the CBP operates 10 drones. It plans to have 17 by 2017. The \u201cGang of Eight\u201d immigration bill passed by the Senate last week calls for the CBP and its subagency, the Border Patrol, to operate drones 24 hours a day, seven days a week along the southern border. If some version of that bill passes the House, as many as 24 additional drones could be deployed.<\/p>\n
By law, to ensure that drone operations don\u2019t pose a safety risk to civil aviation, the Federal Aviation Administration must issue \u201ccertificates of authorization\u201d for all unmanned- aerial-vehicle operations.<\/p>\n
In response to a query from\u00a0The Arizona Republic<\/em>, the FAA issued a statement Wednesday saying that it \u201chas not approved any certificates of authorization for law-enforcement agencies that authorize armed operations.\u201d<\/p>\nThe FAA hadn\u2019t responded by deadline when asked whether it has received requests to authorize armed operations.<\/p>\n
In February, at a drone convention in northern Virginia, the FAA official charged with regulating unmanned aircraft said that FAA rules bar using weapons on drones.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe currently have rules in the books that deal with releasing anything from an aircraft, period. Those rules are in place, and that would prohibit weapons from being installed on a civil aircraft,\u201d including on unmanned aircraft, the FAA\u2019s Jim Williams said, according to the\u00a0Washington Times<\/em>.<\/p>\nWilliams couldn\u2019t be reached Tuesday or Wednesday. When asked for the regulation Williams cited, an agency spokesman gave a regulation that says: \u201cNo pilot in command of a civil aircraft may allow any object to be dropped from that aircraft in flight that creates a hazard to persons or property. However, this section does not prohibit the dropping of any object if reasonable precautions are taken to avoid injury or damage to persons or property.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah and the author of a book on drone use, \u201cLegitimate Target,\u201d said that the Obama administration hasn\u2019t articulated a clear policy on either domestic or overseas drone use and that neither Republicans nor Democrats in Congress have been eager to limit the executive branch in this area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the new Wild West,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have no clear criteria, no articulation of the threat, no articulation of what constitutes a legitimate target.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, flight logs of CBP drones obtained and posted Wednesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation showed that the CBP has lent its drones more than 200 times in recent years to other federal and state agencies, including the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Forest Service and state law-enforcement agencies in Minnesota, North Dakota and Texas, among others.<\/p>\n
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2010 report: U.S. weighed weaponizing border planes by Bob Ortega, The Republic click here for original article The U.S. Department of Homeland Security developed plans at least three years ago to mount weapons on drones operated by Customs and Border Protection \u2014 though the agency denied Wednesday that it has any current plans to use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/images-7.jpeg?fit=142%2C187&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1828,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826\/revisions\/1828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}