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Gov't seeks more than 1,700 secret warrants
Thursday - 5/3/2012, 1:24pm ET

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department made 1,745 requests to a secret court for authority to wiretap or search for evidence in terrorism and espionage investigations last year.

That's according to an April 30 letter from the department to the Senate that was first reported Thursday by the Federation of American Scientists.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret to hear classified evidence from government attorneys, did not reject any of the requests, though judges did require modifications to 30 requests.

It was an increase over 2010, when the department made 1,579 requests.

The FBI also made 16,511 national security letter requests for information regarding 7,201 people last year. The letters allow officials to collect virtually unlimited kinds of sensitive, private information like financial and phone records.

That is down from 2010, when 24,287 requests for information regarding 14,212 people were made.

Bruce Quick, attorney for the first American arrested using an unmanned drone says his client was subject to "guerrilla-like police tactics."

Quick tells U.S. News that Lakota, N.D., resident Rodney Brossart should not have been arrested and that authorities had no legal right to use the drone to aid in his capture.

"The whole thing is full of constitutional violations," Quick told U.S. News. "The drone use is a secondary concern."

Brossart was in a dispute with authorities over the ownership of six cows that had meandered onto his land. The Grand Forks SWAT team borrowed a Predator drone from the Department of Homeland security to make sure it was safe to arrest Brossart, authorities told the paper.

Douglas Manbeck, who is representing the state of North Dakota, told UPI that the SWAT team used the drone only after warrants were issued.

"I know it's a touchy subject for anyone to feel that drones are in the air watching them, but I don't think there was any misuse in this case," Manbeck told UPI.

Unmanned drones have been used for years by the US Military in foreign countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. They're also used for surveillance on the boarder between Mexico and the US. But Americans can expect drones to pop up soon in several American cities.

From Salon:

With Congress requiring the Federal Aviation Administration to simplify and expedite drone applications from U.S. police departments by May 15, industry and watchdog groups agree: It won’t be long before cops and first responders put them into action.
Salon also notes that the drones can be easily armed with tear gas canisters or tasers "for remote crowd control."

And for those who think drones are just a more high-tech version of police helicopters, Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald, who has extensively covered the dangers of domestic and foreign use of drones, says think again:

The fact is that drones vest vast new powers that police helicopters and existing weapons do not vest: and that’s true not just for weaponization but for surveillance. Drones enable a Surveillance State unlike anything we’ve seen. Because small drones are so much cheaper than police helicopters, many more of them can be deployed at once, ensuring far greater surveillance over a much larger area. Their small size and stealth capability means they can hover without any detection, and they can remain in the air for far longer than police helicopters.

You people need guns. To protect your rights. That is obviously.