Last winter at an undisclosed town in the United States, officials with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s hostage rescue unit moved in to begin an extraction operation. Agents fanned out around the scene, some in obvious positions while others sat or lay concealed in other spots.
Digital Addicts Blog Not long after arriving on scene and staging personnel, the FBI team was harassed by a swarm of drones that made “high-speed, low passes at agents in the observation post” in an attempt to flush them out and prevent the Bureau from having eyes on the scene. “We were then blind,” said Joe Mazel, head of the FBI’s Operational Technology Law unit, at the AUVSI Xponential conference in Denver. “It definitely presented some challenges.” The FBI, reports Daily Mail, has stated that the drones were part of an countering operation run by an organized crime gang that arrived on the scene with backpacks before the Bureau showed up.
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson Not only did the gang harass the agents, but they also conducted active elevated surveillance of the team in real time, posting the surveillance to YouTube so the other gang members could view it. The sophistication and novel tactic has given agents cause for concern. The FBI has stated that this is not the first time that they have encountered drones being used for nefarious purposes. Examples include gangs using drones to intimidate witnesses and have even hovered over police departments to record who goes in and out of the building, robbers using drones to scope out houses to break into and some criminals who have attempted to use weaponized drones against agents.
PublicDomainPictures.net Even our southern border has not escaped the presence of criminalized drones. ‘Coyotes’ herding groups of illegal aliens across our border often employ drones to recon the area ahead to avoid border patrol officials and to find the best access point. “In the Border Patrol, we have struggled with scouts, human scouts that come across the border,” Andrew Scharnweber, associate chief of US customs and border protection, said at the conference. “They’re stationed on various mountaintops near the border and they would scout … to spot law enforcement and radio down to their counterparts to go around us.
Max Pixel “That activity has effectively been replaced by drones,” he added. The remotely-piloted vehicles have also been used to shuttle drugs and other contraband across the border. The Federal Aviation Administration, in a laughingly pathetic attempt to appear to be doing something, has stated that it is pushing for a law to prevent drones from being used by criminals. The measure will surely be about as effective as gun restrictions.