Drones CBP flew its drones on behalf of other agencies

Published 22 January 2014

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection(CBP) operates the largest drone fleet in the United States. The Defense Departmenthas a much larger fleet, but it is prohibited from operating its drones in the United States for law enforcement missions. The FAA is working on opening U.S. skies for public and commercial drone traffic, but for now CBP is the only agency permitted to operate drones on a daily basis within the nation’s borders. Released documents show that agencies not allowed to operate drones borrowed them from CBP.

Most of the missions performed are for the Coast Guard, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and immigration authorities. Other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies have been borrowing border patrol drones for surveillance missions, but the drones also serve in disaster relief, drug seizures, and in the search for missing persons.

The Washington Post reports that CBP has a fleet of ten unarmed Predator B Drones equipped with infrared cameras and specialized radar. The drones are similar to the Reaper, an Air Force drone also manufactured by General Atomics, a drone producer based in Southern California.

Civil libertarians argue that domestic drone operations could lead to persistent visual surveillance of Americans on their private property, but Congress has directed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gradually to open the national airspace to public and commercial drone traffic (see “FAA approves testing, developing standards for commercial use of drones,” HSNW, 31 December 2013).

For now, CBP is one of the few agencies permitted to operate drones on a daily basis within the nation’s borders. This has led to a heavy demand from other agencies for CBP to operate its drones for reasons other than border patrol. David Aguilar, former acting chief of CBP, said requests for drone operations from other agencies were in high demand once details about the drone’s capabilities were made public. “As the other entities found out we were able to fly, and where we were able to fly, the requests started to come up,” said Aguilar, who is a partner at Global Security & Intelligence Strategies, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm.

Jenny Burke, a spokeswoman for CBP, says that 95 percent of the agency’s drone operations “are devoted to CBP’s border security missions.” CBP released the overall totals of drone operations used for other agencies, but the agency did not release the names of those agencies.

Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney for the EFF, is concerned with the fact that the names of agencies using CBP drones are kept classified. Lynch is also concerned about the policies allowing for indefinite retention of data collected during drone operations. “We don’t know what’s happening with that data, and that creates a bigger privacy risk,” Lynch said.