Free Republic

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has customized its Predator drones, originally built for overseas military operations, to carry out at-home surveillance tasks that have civil libertarians worried: identifying civilians carrying guns and tracking their cell phones, government documents show. The documents provide more details about the surveillance capabilities of the department's unmanned Predator B drones, which are primarily used to patrol the United States' northern and southern borders but have been pressed into service on behalf of a growing number of law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the Secret Service, the Texas Rangers, and local police. Homeland Security's specifications...

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says President Barack Obama has approved the use of armed Predator drone aircraft in Libya. Gates told a Pentagon news conference that the Predator is an example of the unique U.S. military capabilities that Obama is willing to contribute to a coalition military campaign in Libya, while other countries enforce a no-fly zone.

MIR ALI, Pakistan -- U.S. drone aircraft fired four missiles at a building in a militant sanctuary in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, killing 38 people in an unusually deadly strike, Pakistani officials said. A senior Pakistani intelligence official said the dead were militants meeting to discuss plans to send fighters to Afghanistan; the local governor said they were innocent tribal elders and police. Masood Kausar, the governor of northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, condemned the strikes and said the families of the victims should receive compensation. "We have criticized drone attacks before and we will continue to raise our voice to...

Ten more Islamist terrorists -- this time belonging to the Taliban -- were killed by Predator drones in Pakistan's North Waziristan on Friday, just days after a similar attack took out al Qaeda's No. 3. But as far as the United Nations is concerned, both strategic assaults constitute war crimes. Looks like the timid titans of Turtle Bay are up to their old tricks. A recent UN Human Rights Council report slammed Washington for its use of CIA-directed unmanned drones to root out terrorist havens in Pakistan. Philip Alston, the UN's special investigator on extrajudicial executions, complained of the US...

WASHINGTON – Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have hacked into live video feeds from Predator drones, a key weapon in a Pentagon spy system that serves as the military's eyes in the sky for surveillance and intelligence collection. Though militants could see the video, there is no evidence they were able to jam the electronic signals from the unmanned aerial craft or take control of the vehicles, a senior defense official said Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence issues. Obtaining the video feeds can provide insurgents with critical information about what the military may be targeting,...

The War: The killing of al-Qaida's 2006 airline bomb plot planner by an American Predator drone is only the latest terror-war victory. From Anbar to Waziristan, they're dropping like flies.Rashid Rauf, mastermind of the 2006 trans-Atlantic airline bomb plot, became the latest al-Qaida casualty when a missile launched from a Predator drone struck a tribesman's house in the village of Alikhel in North Waziristan. If Rauf believed he had found sanctuary there, he was sadly mistaken. There have been at least 20 such strikes in the last three months as the Bush administration seeks to thwart the ability of militants...