DOJ Inspector General: ATF, FBI's Drones Worthless, Expensive And Completely Mismanaged
from the so-lousy-they-can't-even-violate-your-privacy dept
The DOJ's most infamous drone deployments involve justifications for extrajudicial killings. But its agencies also have fleets of (nonlethal) drones, something these agencies tend to avoid discussing until sued into doing so.
The Office of the Inspector General has taken another look at the drones deployed by DOJ agencies and found that, while plenty of money has been spent acquiring and maintaining drones/operators, very little deployment is actually occurring.
Our September 2013 interim report found that between 2004 and 2013, the FBI spent approximately $3 million to acquire small UAS it deployed to support its investigations. As of August 2014, the FBI had acquired 34 UAS vehicles and associated control stations, of which it considered 17 vehicles and a smaller number of control stations to be operational.$3 million spent on drones, with only half currently considered "operational." In eight years (2006-2014), the drones have only been deployed to assist in 13 investigations, with nine of those occurring in the last four years. This may be good news for those concerned about extensive domestic surveillance, but it's not good news for those interested in how their tax dollars are being spent.
The FBI may have the desire for more unchecked surveillance and the drones needed to do the job, but it apparently lacks the manpower…
During the time of our review, the FBI maintained its UAS at one location in the United States and had only one team composed of two pilots on staff who were adequately trained to operate its UAS....or Fourth Amendment concerns…
The FBI told us that that it determined it did not need to obtain search warrants for any of its UAS operations.That's the nice thing about making your own in-house "determinations": they'll rarely be challenged.
As for the half-functional 34-drone fleet "manned" by the FBI's two pilots, it couldn't be more unlike the agency's earlier assertions.
This approach differs from the decentralized deployment approach that FBI officials told us they employ for the FBI’s manned aircraft.If you're wondering where more of your tax dollars are being misspent, it's right there in the following paragraphs. Because the FBI has only two drone pilots, these operators are driven or flown to locations where the drones are needed, sometimes arriving more than a day after the request for assistance was made. The FBI, despite being a national law enforcement agency, houses both its pilots and its drones at the same location.
Considering the FBI claims the drones have been used in potentially life-threatening situations (search-and-rescue efforts, suspected kidnappings), spending a day shipping drones and pilots where needed seems like the sort of thing that would result in unnecessary deaths/injuries. In response, the OIG has asked the FBI to handle its drone fleet less stupidly.
The ATF also has a few drones of its own. (The US Marshals Service and DEA were queried by the OIG, but both claimed to have no drones in their possession, which is true, but misleading. [More on that below.]) And, like the FBI, the drones are expensive, underutilized and, far too often, not worth the money that's been spent on them.
One UAS program manager told us ATF found that one of its smaller UAS models, which cost nearly $90,000, was too difficult to use reliably in operations. Furthermore, the TOB discovered that a gas-powered UAS model, which cost approximately $315,000 and was specified to fly for up to 2 hours, was never operable due to multiple technical defects.The lack of functioning flying eyeballs resulted in the Special Operations Division shutting down the ATF's drone fleet in June 2014. Those drones were transferred to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service "at no cost" -- a fair price for non-functioning drones. With its drones and drone program dead, the ATF did the logical thing: bought more drones.
Less than a week after ATF’s Special Operations Division suspended its UAS program, ATF’s National Response Team (NRT) purchased five small, commercially available UAS at a total cost of about $15,000.These new drones were deployed exactly once. At that point, the ATF determined it would need to permission from the FAA before deploying its drones in the future. With that, the ATF's drone program returned to its briefly interrupted hibernation.
For those agencies claiming they have no drones (US Marshals Service, DEA), that's only true if limited to direct ownership. Every major DOJ agency has availed itself to the DHS's fleet of drones, a majority of which belong to the CBP.
Specifically, four DOJ law enforcement components – the FBI, ATF, DEA, and USMS – have received UAS support from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which operates a fleet of Predator-B UAS. In response to our request, the CBP provided to us evidence indicating it operated UAS at least 95 times on missions that involved DOJ components in some way. Of these flights, the CBP identified that DEA was involved in 73, the FBI in 13, ATF in 4, the USMS in 3, and 2 for multiple DOJ components.So, when the DEA says it has no drones, it's technically correct. But the drones it doesn't own have flown more times than the 34 drones the FBI actually owns. The CBP's drone fleet seems to have enough drones for everyone, and this division of labor (so to speak) allows the DEA and other DOJ agencies to minimize their drone paper trails. But more drones doesn't mean useful drones. The CBP's drone fleet may perform well in other agencies' hands, but it's next to useless when deployed by Customs itself.
While the investigation generally points to limited drone usage -- which is a good thing -- the discovery that the DOJ's drone fleets are expensive, mismanaged and almost completely worthless isn't.
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Filed Under: atf, doj, drones, fbi, inspector general
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FINALLY!!!
Too bad weve been paying so much for them (the drones and the agencies) however...
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drone or drone
Of course, when costs in the millions of dollars start getting thrown around, it soon becomes obvious which kind of "drone" is under discussion.
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Re: drone or drone
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=drone
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I'm guessing now that the "lot of other questionable behavior" involved delivering packages by drone for Amazon.
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Silver lining
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Why are we not surprised?
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ATF wants killer drones,
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Selective Enforcement?
So what that first flight that some ATF employees apparently broke the law on? What's the status of that prosecution?
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Re: Selective Enforcement?
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I would be more shocked at stories about people committing crimes being held accountable by their fellow government employees than just another story about blatant corruption.
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Re:
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If their lips are moving....
Thus, it is more likely that they deployed their drones far more often than they kept records for because the uses they put their drones to were very likely not legal, or were simply, as usual, extraneous personal uses, like spying on the young lady in apartment 203 who never pulls her drapes and walks about in her undies all the time.
It is also very likely that they have far more drones than they admitted to having access to, and that these "officially undisclosed" drones were used generally in preference to the officially "owned" drones, specifically to avoid maintaining records.
It is rather sad when the very first thought that occurs after listening to anything stated by one's official law enforcement authorities, is that they are, once again, lying through their teeth, as usual.
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