Following recently passed legislation to allow 30,000 drones to operate over the U.S. by 2020, a newly discovered Air Force document posted by Steve Watson at InfoWars has some interesting implications (Via Drudge Report).
The USAF intelligence brief says that if any of those drones should accidentally capture footage of Americans, the data can be stored for three months to be scrutinized by the Pentagon.
From InfoWars:
"The instruction, dated April 23, admits that the Air Force cannot legally conduct “nonconsensual surveillance” on Americans, but also states that should the drones ”incidentally” capture data while conducting other missions, military intelligence has the right to study it to determine whether the subjects are legitimate targets of domestic surveillance.
“Collected imagery may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent,” the instruction states.
The brief goes on to say that the Pentagon can then give the data to any other law enforcement agency it likes.
Discovered by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, the Air Force report has the ACLU concerned, "[It] would push the nation willy-nilly toward an era of aerial surveillance without any steps to protect the traditional privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and expected.”
Activists are also concerned that the drones can be equipped with facial recognition software.
Please follow Military & Defense on Twitter and Facebook.