CBP Is Flying a Predator Drone Over Minneapolis as protesters continue to demonstrate

[fleur-de-lisa]

Customs and Border Protection Is Flying a Predator Drone Over Minneapolis

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dzbe3/customs-and-border-protection-predator-drone-minneapolis-george-floyd

May 29 2020, 11:57am

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is flying a Predator drone, military technology used for surveilling and killing terrorists abroad, over Minneapolis as protesters continue to demonstrate against police brutality, according to publicly available flight data. The drone flown over Minneapolis is an unarmed version of the aircraft. The drone was first spotted on a flight tracking tool by members of the ADB-S Exchange, a community of flight watchers who use open-source flight data to monitor America's skies. Presumably, the drone is surveilling protests there, though CBP did not respond to a request for comment about what the drone is doing there.

snip . . .

Motherboard verified the flight path of CPB104 with flight data from ADB-S Exchange, a repository of unfiltered flight data. The drone took off from the Air Force Base before making several hexagonal-shaped flyovers around Minneapolis, according to the data. At the time of writing, the drone is still above the city.

CBP-104 is a drone with a history. In a 2007 Popular Mechanics article, author Jeff Wise names that aircraft as a Predator. "CBP-104 has no pilot on board. The plane is a Predator B, a sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)," the article says, describing a surveillance action on the U.S.-Mexico border.

CBP-104 is also named in daily drone flight logs from CBP from 2012, published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The drone's activities at the time included collecting synthetic-aperture radar imagery and full-motion video to aid in actions such as surveilling the border, as well as surveilling and busting cannabis grow ops and methamphetamine labs. In one instance, the logs note that the drone continued to circle and feed video to officers until every suspect in a lab raid was arrested. According to the logs, this ongoing surveillance "played an invaluable role" in the arrests.

[roamer65]

1. Where's an anti-aircraft gun when you need one.

A dry joke.