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Today,
EFF filed suit against the Federal Aviation Administration seeking information on drone flights in the United States. The
FAA is the sole entity within the federal government capable of authorizing domestic drone flights, and for too long now, it has failed to release specific and detailed information on who is authorized to fly drones within US borders.
Up until a few years ago, most Americans didn't know much about drones or unmanned aircraft. However, the U.S. military has been using drones in its various wars and conflicts around the world for more than 15 years, using the
Predator drone for the first time in Bosnia in 1995, and the
Global Hawk drone in Afghanistan in 2001. In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the US military has used several different types of drones to conduct surveillance for every major mission in the war.
In Libya, President Obama
authorized the use of armed Predator drones, even though we were not technically at war with the country. And most recently in Yemen, the CIA
used drones carrying Hellfire missiles to kill an American citizen, the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. In all, almost
one in every three U.S. warplanes is a drone, according to the Congressional Research Service. In 2005, the number was only 5%.
Now drones are also being used domestically for non-military purposes, raising significant privacy concerns. For example, this past December, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) purchased its ninth drone. It uses these drones inside the United States to patrol the U.S. borders - which most would argue is within its agency mandate - but it also uses them to
aid state and local police for routine law enforcement purposes. In fact, the
Los Angeles Times reported in December that CBP used one of its Predators to
roust out cattle rustlers in North Dakota.
Comment: The article implies a preparation for war, while simultaneously downplaying the possibility - a classic propaganda tactic, usually resulting in cognitive dissonance in the reader.