Using Drones For Domestic Police Work

LA Times (via Balloon Juice):

Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.

Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.

He also called in a Predator B drone.

As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.

But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.

If they aren't already using drones for pre-arrest surveillance (stakeouts and intelligence gathering), I'd be damned surprised.  It appears to me that is exactly what the last line of the quote implies.  My guess is that technology is well on its way to trampling the Fourth Amendment.  Data mining and drone surveillance will likely be used to "find" criminal activity, turning up suspects without having any reasonable cause to investigate them.  You better watch what you say on the phone, text or email, since we know the government is sorting through all of our communications.