The FAA is expected to announce plans to expand the use of domestic drones in American airspace. These would be similar to the unmanned aircraft that the U.S. has been using to target terrorists abroad. In the U.S., the surveillance systems would be used to track terrorists, drug dealers or to find missing children. But critics warn that the use of drones presents a major threat to our personal privacy.
Jonathan Hunt reports that there could be as many as 30,000 drones flying overhead within the next decade.
Judge Andrew Napolitano commented that officials don’t have the authority to spy on us from above and that “bureaucrats gave themselves the authority to capture images of us in the privacy of our backyards.”
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RELATED LINKS:
Judge Napolitano Blog: What If the Government Rejects the Constitution?
MI Police Using High-Tech Device to Retrieve Info from Cellphones
Napolitano Reacts to Reports That One Texas Sheriff’s Office May Be Getting a Drone
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The judge said pointedly that this is not permitted by the Constitution or federal law, and wondered why more people, including Congress, aren’t up in arms about it. He said, “The same Congress that let the president bomb Libya is going to let his Air Force spy in our backyards and like potted plants, they’ll look the other way.”
He concluded, “The Third Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment and the Ninth Amendment were written to guarantee us the right to be left alone … Suddenly the government, silently, from 30, 000 feet above is violating those amendments.”
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