FBI, police cleared to launch drone aircraft over U.S. cities

The American skies may soon be full of drones after it was disclosed that domestic law enforcement agencies, from the FBI to local police, have been granted permission to deploy the unmanned aircraft.

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws show that more than 50 nonmilitary organizations have asked to fly drone aircraft, many of which can carry cameras and surveillance equipment for spying, within the U.S.

The figures from the Elec- tronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that aims to defend Americans from digital snooping by government, showed that agencies such as the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice had been cleared to launch drones.

More alarmingly, city police forces were also drawing up plans to use the reconnaissance aircraft, which are more usually associated with top secret missions against terrorist suspects in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

Police chiefs in Miami, Seattle and even North Little Rock, a city in Arkansas of less than 70,000 people, were all cleared by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to launch drones within their jurisdictions.

A spokesman for the North Little Rock Police Department told the Wall Street Journal that it was only using its unmanned helicopter for training over unpopulated areas but hoped to eventually fly it above crime-ridden neighbourhoods and use it to gather intelligence for major drug cases.

In response to the revelation both Democrats and Republicans in Congress wrote to the FAA demanding that it take into account privacy concerns before approving deployments.