Homeland Security Taps Generals to Run Domestic Drone Program: The Rise of Predators at Home

English: Seal of the United States Department of Homeland Security. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tom Barry | Truthout | August 7, 2013

The continuing rise of Predator drones at home has been fueled by the bizarre merger of military influence in domestic affairs and the key role of border hawks in the politics of immigration reform. DHS’s early decision to tap generals involved in the military’s own controversial overseas drone program to shape and direct the domestic drone program points to the increasing merger of the post-9/11 homeland security/border security complex with the military-industrial complex.

Drone proliferation at home will likely increase from a multibillion-dollar spending surge to boost “border security” as a result of congressional proposals to reform immigration policy.

At home and abroad, drone proliferation has benefited from a broad bipartisan consensus about the purported success of the US military’s foreign deployment of Predator drones in counterterrorism operations by the Pentagon and intelligence apparatus. Drone proliferation at home is closely linked to military and CIA enthusiasm for what are formally called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or simply unmanned systems.

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Drones Over the Homeland: From Border Security to National Security

Tom Barry | Truthout | May 19, 2013

A Predator B aircraft in Palmdale, Calif., on Dec. 7, 2009. To help spot and track smugglers, the Homeland Security Department is expanding its use of drones, the unmanned aircraft widely used in war zones, beyond the Mexican and Canadian borders to the Caribbean and possibly other seas. (Photo: Ann Johansson / The New York Times)

Public attention and Congressional review, writes Barry, should focus on the increasing militarization of border control, especially in the management of the border drone program.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says it is the “leading edge” of drone deployment in the United States. Since 2005, DHS has been purchasing Predator drones – officially called unmanned aerial systems (UAS) – to “secure the border,” yet these unarmed Predator drones are also steadily creeping into local law enforcement, international drug-interdiction and national security missions – including across the border into the heart of Mexico.

DHS will likely double its drone contingent to two dozen unmanned UAS produced by General Atomics as part of the border security component of any immigration reform.  The prominence of border security in immigration reform can’t be missed.  The leading reform proposal, offered by eight US senators, is the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 – which proposes to spend $6.5 billion in additional “border security” measures, mostly high-tech surveillance by drones and ground surveillance systems.

Most of the concern about the domestic deployment of drones by DHS has focused on the crossover to law-enforcement missions that threaten privacy and civil rights, and that, without more regulations in place, the program will accelerate the transition to what critics call a “surveillance society.” Also alarming is the mission creep of border drones, managed by the DHS’ Customs and Border Protection (CPB) agency with increasing interface between border drones, international drug interdiction operations and other military-directed national security missions.

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10 Ways the Public Backlash Against Killer Drones Is Taking Off

Medea Benjamin, Noor Mir | AlterNet | March 26, 2013

Rand Paul’s marathon 13-hour filibuster was not the end of the conversation on drones. Suddenly, drones are everywhere, and so is the backlash. Efforts to counter drones at home and abroad are growing in the courts, at places of worship, outside air force bases, inside the UN, at state legislatures, inside Congress–and having an effect on policy.

1. April marks the national month of uprising against drone warfare. Activists in upstate New York are converging on the Hancock Air National Guard Base where Predator drones are operated. In  San Diego, they will take on Predator-maker General Atomics at both its headquarters and the home of the CEO. In D.C., a coalition of national and local organizations are coming together to say no to drones at the White House. And all across the nation—including New York City, New Paltz, Chicago, Tucson and Dayton—activists are planning picket lines, workshops and sit-ins to protest the covert wars. The word has even spread to Islamabad, Pakistan, where activists are planning a vigil to honor victims.

2. There has been an unprecedented surge of activity in cities, counties and state legislatures across the country aimed at regulating domestic surveillance drones. After a raucous city council hearing in Seattle in February, the Mayor agreed to terminate its drones program and return the city’s two drones to the manufacturer. Also in February, the city of Charlottesville, VA passed a 2-year moratorium and other restrictions on drone use, and other local bills are pending in cities from Buffalo to Ft. Wayne. Simultaneously, bills have been proliferating on the state level. In Florida, a pending  bill will require the police to get a warrant to use drones in an investigation; a Virginia statewide moratorium on drones passed both houses and awaits the governor’s signature, and similar legislation in pending in at least 13 other state legislatures.

3. Responding to the international outcry against drone warfare, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson, is conducting an in-depth investigation of 25 drone attacks and will release his report in the Spring. Meanwhile, on March 15, having returned from a visit to Pakistan to meet drone victims and government officials, Emmerson condemned the U.S. drone program in Pakistan, as “it involves the use of force on the territory of another State without its consent and is therefore a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.”

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Domestic Drones and Their Unique Dangers

Glenn Greenwald | Guardian UK | Reader Supported News | March 31, 2013

AR Drone: almost certainly the world’s first Wi-Fi enabled iPhone-controllable miniature flying device. (illustration: unknown)

he use of drones by domestic US law enforcement agencies is growing rapidly, both in terms of numbers and types of usage. As a result, civil liberties and privacy groups led by the ACLU – while accepting that domestic drones are inevitable – have been devoting increasing efforts to publicizing their unique dangers and agitating for statutory limits. These efforts are being impeded by those who mock the idea that domestic drones pose unique dangers (often the same people who mock concern over their usage on foreign soil). This dismissive posture is grounded not only in soft authoritarianism (a religious-type faith in the Goodness of US political leaders and state power generally) but also ignorance over current drone capabilities, the ways drones are now being developed and marketed for domestic use, and the activities of the increasingly powerful domestic drone lobby. So it’s quite worthwhile to lay out the key under-discussed facts shaping this issue.

I’m going to focus here most on domestic surveillance drones, but I want to say a few words about weaponized drones. The belief that weaponized drones won’t be used on US soil is patently irrational. Of course they will be. It’s not just likely but inevitable. Police departments are already speaking openly about how their drones “could be equipped to carry nonlethal weapons such as Tasers or a bean-bag gun.” The drone industry has already developed and is now aggressively marketing precisely such weaponized drones for domestic law enforcement use. It likely won’t be in the form that has received the most media attention: the type of large Predator or Reaper drones that shoot Hellfire missiles which destroy homes and cars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and multiple other countries  aimed at Muslims (although US law enforcement agencies already possess Predator drones and have used them over US soil for surveillance).

Instead, as I detailed in a 2012 examination of the drone industry’s own promotional materials and reports to their shareholders, domestic weaponized drones will be much smaller and cheaper, as well as more agile – but just as lethal. The nation’s leading manufacturer of small “unmanned aircraft systems” (UAS), used both for surveillance and attack purposes, is AeroVironment, Inc. (AV). Its 2011 Annual Report filed with the SEC repeatedly emphasizes that its business strategy depends upon expanding its market from foreign wars to domestic usage including law enforcement:

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10 Ways the Public Backlash Against Killer Drones Is Taking Off

Medea Benjamin, Noor Mir | AlterNet | March 27, 2013

Rand Paul’s marathon 13-hour filibuster was not the end of the conversation on drones. Suddenly, drones are everywhere, and so is the backlash. Efforts to counter drones at home and abroad are growing in the courts, at places of worship, outside air force bases, inside the UN, at state legislatures, inside Congress–and having an effect on policy.

1. April marks the national month of uprising against drone warfare. Activists in upstate New York are converging on the Hancock Air National Guard Base where Predator drones are operated. In  San Diego, they will take on Predator-maker General Atomics at both its headquarters and the home of the CEO. In D.C., a coalition of national and local organizations are coming together to say no to drones at the White House. And all across the nation—including New York City, New Paltz, Chicago, Tucson and Dayton—activists are planning picket lines, workshops and sit-ins to protest the covert wars. The word has even spread to Islamabad, Pakistan, where activists are planning a vigil to honor victims.

2. There has been an unprecedented surge of activity in cities, counties and state legislatures across the country aimed at regulating domestic surveillance drones. After a raucous city council hearing in Seattle in February, the Mayor agreed to terminate its drones program and return the city’s two drones to the manufacturer. Also in February, the city of Charlottesville, VA passed a 2-year moratorium and other restrictions on drone use, and other local bills are pending in cities from Buffalo to Ft. Wayne. Simultaneously, bills have been proliferating on the state level. In Florida, a pending  bill will require the police to get a warrant to use drones in an investigation; a Virginia statewide moratorium on drones passed both houses and awaits the governor’s signature, and similar legislation in pending in at least 13 other state legislatures.

Read more