Drones in Gaza, over US/Mexico border, Af/Pak, India. Next, New York City?

NYPD Considering Use of Unmanned Aircraft

August 16, 2011, http://www.uasvision.com

The New York Police Department may soon be operating unmanned aircraft “as a law enforcement tool” in New York City, giving that agency the capability to monitor activities in city parks, on streets, and in other public areas from the air.

In January, Gay City News made a Freedom of Information request to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) seeking “any application or applications made by the New York City Police Department or any other New York City agency to operate an unmanned aerial vehicle in the New York City area.”

In its response, the FAA reported that it had not received any such applications, but it released a December 13, 2010 email to the FAA from a police department detective who wanted to know “who has ‘Certificates of Authority’ to fly Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the U.S.”

The detective’s name was blacked out, but he was identified as part of the NYPD Counterterrorism Division in his email. He wrote, “Currently, we are in the basic stages of investigating the possible use of UAV’s as a law enforcement tool.”

FBI Gets Caught Tracking Man’s Car, Wants its GPS Device Back

http://gizmodo.com/5658661/fbi-gets-caught-tracking-mans-car-wants-its-gps-device-back

Remember that strange GPS tracking device found by young man under his car? Turns out that the FBI rushed half a dozen agents to retrieve it after photos started appearing online.

A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do.

It took just 24 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back, the student told Wired.com in an interview Wednesday.

The answer came when half-a-dozen FBI agents and police officers appeared at Yasir Afifi’s apartment complex in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday demanding he return the device.

Afifi, a 20-year-old U.S.-born citizen, cooperated willingly and said he’d done nothing to merit attention from authorities. Comments the agents made during their visit suggested he’d been under FBI surveillance for three to six months.