ROBERT
FRIEDMAN
Voices
HUFFINGTON
07.15.12
JOE MCNALLY/GETTY IMAGES
When
the Drones
Come
Home to
Roost
O
NE WAS CALLED in by law enforcement in North Dakota to use thermal imagery in determining whether
three suspects were dangerous. Florida officials want
them for security surveillance at this year’s Republican National Convention. And Virginia’s governor
recently declared it would be great if they were flying
over his state. The Federal Aviation Administration
estimates that up to 30,000 new unmanned aircraft
systems—or drones—could be launched inside the
U.S. in the next decade. ¶ The conventional notion
of drones in the public consciousness conjures up
images of stealthy devices swooping down from the
sky to take out terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan
and Yemen. The Obama Administration’s widely-reported increase in the use of drone strikes has been
accompanied by a healthy public debate about the
moral, ethical and legal implications of these tactics.
Robert
Friedman is
a Fellow at
the Truman
National
Security
Project and a
non-resident
Fellow at the
Georgetown
Center on
National
Security and
the Law