Why?Because they wanted to for reasons known only to them.Who’s going to stop them?
“Brossart won’t be the last person convicted with the help of a drone as law enforcement deploys more of them. What is worrisome is that drones designed to protect American borders are being used to conduct surveillance on Americans themselves. Records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, found that CBP Predator drones flew 700 missions between 2010 and 2012 for other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and local police departments. CBP Predators were equipped with Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar (VADER), developed by the military to detect insurgents in Afghanistan.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpeck/2014/01/27/predator-drone-sends-north-dakota-man-to-jail/
A trial run.
Trying it out to see if it would work.
How much more innocuous could it be?
*feral* government..... I LIKE it.
A local sheriff came to the property to talk with the owner and the owner pulled a gun on him. When he was trying to leave the property his department called the local CBP air unit for support. They retasked a UAS on its way back from a border track.
The bigger problem is the next day the sheriff had a warrant for this guy's arrest and CBP offered up a drone again. From a technological standpoint the camera system isn't much better than what is on the CBP helicopters. From a political standpoint the CBP Air leadership in that area really stepped in it for not tasking a helicopter for that support request.