Customs & Border Protection recently “discovered” additional daily flight logs that show the agency has flown its drones on behalf of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies on 200 more occasions more than previously released records indicated. 
 
 Last July we reported, based on daily flight log records CBP made available to us in response to our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, that CBP logged an eight-fold increase in the drone surveillance it conducts for other agencies. These agencies included a diverse group of local, state, and federal law enforcement—ranging from the FBI, ICE, the US Marshals, and the Coast Guard to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the North Dakota Army National Guard, and the Texas Department of Public Safety. 
 
 CBP stated that these flight logs and a list of agencies it later prepared based on those logs represented all the missions the agency flew on behalf of non-CBP agencies. Yet after EFF and CBP briefed the remaining issues in the case in our Cross Motions for Summary Judgment and on the eve of the pivotal court hearing on those motions in December 2013, CBP announced it “discovered that it did not release all entries from the daily reports for 2010-2012” responsive to EFF’s FOIA request. 
 
 Not only do these new flight logs and the accompanying new list of agencies show a striking increase in the overall number of flights (700 versus 500), they also reveal a sharp increase in the number of flights for certain federal agencies like ICE (53 more flights than previously revealed) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (20 more flights). And they also reveal CBP flew 32 additional times on behalf of state and local agencies—including previously undisclosed law enforcement like the Arizona Department of Public Safety and the Minnesota Drug Task Force. Unfortunately, CBP continues to withhold the names of many of these state and local agencies, arguing that revealing them would somehow impede ongoing investigations. However, as we pointed out in our summary judgment brief, disclosing that CBP was working with, for example, the Pima County, Ariz. Sheriff’s Department would not be specific enough to affect any particular criminal operation. It would hardly be surprising that CBP was working with Pima County because it shares a border with Mexico. It is also—at 9,200 square miles—one of the larger counties in Arizona and has one of the highest crime rates of any county in the country—a rate of 4,983 crimes per 100,000 people. Given the large geographic size of and crime rate in this county and others like it, it is hard to imagine that releasing information about which county sheriff’s department CBP is working with would enable suspected criminals in the area to link CBP’s drone surveillance to their particular criminal activity. 
 
 The newly-released records reveal other surprising facts, including that CBP was using its sophisticated VADER surveillance system much more frequently than previously thought and was using it for other agencies. This sensor, also known as Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar, was initially developed for use in the Afghanistan War and can detect the presence of people from as high as 25,000 feet. CBP has used this sensor in its surveillance operations since 2011 and used it at least 30 times for other agencies in 2012. The records CBP previously released to EFF contained no specific mention of VADER technology. As noted by the Center for Investigative Reporting, the system has several limitations—not the least of which is that “it can’t tell the difference between a U.S. citizen and noncitizen.” 
 
 The records also indicate that CBP’s drones appear plagued with problems; many of the logs indicate missions were terminated or cancelled due to undisclosed issues affecting both the aircraft (General Atomics was often called in to address issues with the Predators) and the surveillance equipment on board (Raytheon, which supplies the RADAR equipment for CBP’s drones was also called in). The VADER system had its own undisclosed problems. 
 
 CBP noted in a recent Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) that it generally flies its drones in support of its primary mission—“border security.” Yet these records indicate just how blurred that mission has become. This is problematic because, as CBP also notes, drones like Predators enable “the monitoring of large areas of land more efficiently and with fewer personnel than other aviation assets.” 
 
 As the use of Predators moves from maintaining security at the nation’s borders to general law enforcement elsewhere within the country, more and more people in the United States will be subject to drone surveillance. CBP states in its PIA that it stores data unassociated with a particular investigation for no more than 30 days, but much, if not most of this data will be associated with an investigation and may therefore be stored indefinitely—even if it includes footage of property, vehicles and people unassociated with the investigation. 
 
 CBP also states in the PIA that we shouldn’t be concerned about the privacy implications of its drones because their sensors cannot yet identify individual people. However, these sensors are becoming more sophisticated every day, and it won’t be long before surveillance capabilities like "facial recognition or soft biometric recognition, which can recognize and track individuals based on attributes such as height, age, gender, and skin color" are added to CBP’s arsenal. We need to address these issues before that happens. 
 
 Sen. Dianne Feinstein was concerned enough about drone surveillance to amend last term’s Senate Immigration Bill to restrict CBP’s flights in California to within three miles of the border. We should be similarly concerned about CBP’s flights throughout the country—especially when CBP still refuses to reveal exactly which state and local agencies it’s working with. We’ll be arguing just that point in the hearing on our Cross Motion for Summary Judgment in the case this coming Wednesday. 
 
 Documents: 
 
 In order to be comprehensive, we present the documents CBP previously provided alongside the supplemental disclosures referred to in this report. The updates are marked "NEW." 
 
 
 
 Agency Lists 
 
 2010 Flight Logs 
 
 2011 Flight Logs 
 
 2012 Flight Logs ||||| A Predator drone operated by the U.S. Office of Air and Marine taxis toward the tarmac for a surveillance flight near the Mexican border on March 7, 2013 from Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, Ariz. (John Moore/Getty Images) 
 
 Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are increasingly borrowing border-patrol drones for domestic surveillance operations, newly released records show, a harbinger of what is expected to become the commonplace use of unmanned aircraft by police. 
 
 Customs and Border Protection, which has the largest U.S. drone fleet of its kind outside the Defense Department, flew nearly 700 such surveillance missions on behalf of other agencies from 2010 to 2012, according to flight logs released recently in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties group. 
 
 The records show that the border-­patrol drones are being commissioned by other agencies more often than previously known. Most of the missions are performed for the Coast Guard, the Drug Enforcement Administration and immigration authorities. But they also aid in disaster relief and in the search for marijuana crops, methamphetamine labs and missing persons, among other missions not directly related to border protection. 
 
 Because they have sophisticated cameras and can remain in flight for many hours at a time, drones create novel privacy challenges. Civil libertarians have argued that these aircraft could lead to persistent visual surveillance of Americans on private property. Government lawyers have argued, however, that there is no meaningful legal distinction between the use of unmanned and piloted aircraft for surveillance. 
 
 Hundreds of missions 
 
 The issue has become a hot topic in Congress; the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the subject Wednesday. 
 
 For now, drone flights in the United States are tightly restricted for safety reasons. Other than the military, Customs and Border Protection is one of the few agencies permitted by the Federal Aviation Administration to fly unmanned aircraft on a daily basis within the country’s borders. 
 
 As a result, Customs and Border Protection is facing heavy demand to fly its unarmed drones to benefit other law enforcement agencies that lack their own. 
 
 In 2010, for example, Customs and Border Protection conducted 76 drone missions for other agencies. The next year, that number quadrupled, and it remained at nearly the same level in 2012. 
 
 Although the border agency has acknowledged that it flies drones for other law-enforcement departments, it has revealed little about the number and precise nature of the missions. 
 
 All told, Customs and Border Protection flew 687 drone missions for other agencies from 2010 to 2012, according to the records provided to the San Francisco-­based Electronic Frontier Foundation. 
 
 Last summer, the border agency released a batch of records indicating that it had flown fewer than 500 missions during that period. Officials offered no explanation for why the earlier release of documents was incomplete. 
 
 Congress has directed the FAA to gradually open the national airspace to public and commercial drone traffic in the coming years. In the meantime, however, there is a huge, unfed appetite among police agencies for drones and their powerful surveillance tools, which include infrared cameras and specialized radar. 
 
 Customs and Border Protection has a fleet of 10 unarmed Predator B drones. They are virtually identical to an Air Force drone known as the Reaper. Both are manufactured by General Atomics, a major drone producer based in Southern California. 
 
 The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies have their own drones, but they are more rudimentary than those operated by Customs and Border Protection. The Defense Department is prohibited from using its drones in the United States for law enforcement 
 
 David V. Aguilar, who was the acting chief of Customs and Border Protection until he retired last year, said calls for surveillance help from other agencies began to jump as word got out about the drones’ capabilities. 
 
 “As the other entities found out we were able to fly, and where we were able to fly, the requests started to come up,” said Aguilar, who is a partner at Global Security & Intelligence Strategies, a Washington-based consulting firm. 
 
 He said the requests were granted only if there was a pressing law enforcement purpose or a public safety emergency. “There was a sensitivity attached to this,” he said. 
 
 Customs and Border Protection flies its drones within a 25-mile-wide corridor along the nation’s northern and southern borders, as well as over the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 Jenny Burke, a spokeswoman for the agency, said 95 percent of its drone flights “are devoted to CBP’s border security mission.” She said that the drones are sometimes deployed in support of federal disaster-response efforts and that they can be used to provide aerial mapping of flood zones and storm-stricken areas. 
 
 Sophisticated sensors 
 
 The logs, which were heavily redacted before being released, detail hundreds of missions and attempted missions. In every case, the name of the government agency borrowing the drones was blacked out, but CBP officials separately provided overall totals of how often various agencies used its drones. 
 
 The sensors mounted on the drones, records show, often were equipped with radar technology capable of detecting movement on the ground. The drone logs record many uses of a surveillance system called VADER, for Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar, to spot individual people and vehicles, though its reliability varied. 
 
 When one agency used a drone to check out reports of “a launching device” that shot bundles of contraband between homes on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, the drone detected “no suspicious activity” during its flight in May 2012. 
 
 Yet in other cases, the drones watched drugs move across the border in backpacks, speedboats, pickup trucks and river rafts. In June 2012, a drone equipped with VADER spotted a truck south of the border installing a temporary ramp over a fence. A silver Chevrolet Suburban SUV soon drove over the ramp, clearing the fence, in full view of the drone. Agents alerted to the activity recovered 2,317 pounds of marijuana. 
 
 Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, expressed frustration that CBP officials would not release the names of sheriff departments for which the agency flew drones. She also expressed concern about policies allowing for indefinite retention of video feeds and other data collected during flights related to investigations. 
 
 “We don’t know what’s happening with that data, and that creates a bigger privacy risk,” Lynch said.
– Domestic law enforcement agencies have flown a lot more drone missions than they let on, according to newly uncovered data. Customs and Border Patrol lent out drones from its fleet for almost 700 surveillance missions from 2010 to 2012, the agency has revealed, in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Originally, CBP had that number at around 500, but with a major court hearing pending, the agency said it "discovered that it did not release all entries" from its reports. The missions were flown on behalf of the DEA, Coast Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and local law enforcement. CBP refused to identify specific local agencies, nor would it say much about the nature of the missions, or why its earlier figure was so far off. The former acting head of the agency tells the Washington Post that as one of the few agencies with access to the robots, they were swamped with requests. But he says they were granted only in pressing situations. "There was a sensitivity attached to this."