Banning drones altogether is unenforceable – they are invaluable for effective law enforcement

Bond 14 [Mark, professor of criminal justice at American Military University “Domestic Drones To
Enhance U.S. Patrol Procedures” MARCH 26, 2014 In Public Safety
http://inpublicsafety.com/2014/03/domestic-drones-to-enhance-u-s-patrol-procedures/ c.shack]
In Tijuana, Mexico, the local police are using unarmed drone aircraft equipped with video cameras as part of their increased patrol presence.
These low-altitude and small unmanned aircraft are stealth and quiet in flight because they use lithium polymer batteries (LiPo), which gives
them approximately 20 minutes of flight time before battery packs need to be changed and re-charged. These drones allow the Tijuana police
to patrol areas without announcing their presence. They also give police a tactical advantage because drone operators can provide timely and
accurate reports to responding patrol officers. Tijuana Chief of Police Alejandro Lares wants to use the patrol drones to prevent crime in his
city. Chief Lares has stated that he is not hiding the drones from the public and wants anyone who lives or visits the city to know that they will
be safe because the police are watching day and night with the drones. The drone cameras are capable of night-vision operations so Chief Lares
is promising 24/7 drone police patrol coverage when his fleet of drones are fully operational. At this point, they are still experimenting and
working out policies and tactics for how best to use the drone platforms for observation and crime prevention. The Tijuana 3D Robotics drones
can be programmed to fly a specific pattern or manually flown by a trained operator. Chief Lares stated that one
drone is equivalent
to 20 police officers patrolling. As the Tijuana experiment continues, early signs indicate that Chief Lares is correct in the fact
that his agency is experiencing quicker response times to crimes because of the drone’s capability of offering
real-time observation and reporting. U.S. Law Enforcement Drone Possibilities The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agency has
deployed unarmed and unmanned drones along the U.S. and Mexican border. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given permission
to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agency to use unarmed and unmanned military Predator drones for observation, but have restricted the
flight area to the border areas for monitoring only. Chaotic Moon Studios is a mobile software and design and development company from
Austin, Texas. They have experimented with an unmanned drone carrying Taser technology that can deploy a non-lethal stunning shock to a
suspect. The combining of these technologies has a lot of promise for domestic law enforcement patrol. Such technology could be used by the
Department of Corrections to patrol prison exercise yards and stop violence when it occurs, without having to deploy deadly force to stop a
prison fight or riot. U.S. Laws on Small Unmanned Commercial Aircraft On March 6, 2014, National Safety Transportation Board (NTSB) Law
Judge Patrick Geraghty ruled that the
FAA policy banning the commercial operation of unmanned aircraft
(drones) is unenforceable. The ruling effectively lifts the ban on commercial operation of small
unmanned drone and aircraft that meet the description of a model aircraft or helicopter. This ruling now
opens the door for departments wishing to experiment with using small unmanned drones under 400
feet to enhance patrol procedures in their jurisdictions. The FAA even admits that they have struggled to
enforce their ban on small unmanned commercial aircraft. The FAA did respond to the ruling stating that they would have
a formal policy in place for these aircraft by the end of the year. As technologies progress that could benefit U.S. domestic law enforcement
U.S. lawmakers will have to weigh in with concerns over privacy issues and the pending new FAA
efforts,
policy on unmanned drones flying over American national airspace.

Prefer our interpretations since our definition actually comes from a dictionary and their
definition doesn’t say anything only that the house curtailed NSA surveillance our interp
also gives the aff and neg more ground

Plan is popular
Walsh 6/24
[Kenneth T. Walsh, US News and World Report, 6/24/10,

http://politics.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/06/24/obamas-big-problems-oil-spill-afghanistan-and-
unemployment.html]
President Obama spent last week focusing on the massive BP oil leak, but two other big issues are creeping
up on him—Afghanistan and unemployment. Each one could easily have a greater impact on his long-term
success or failure than the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. By most accounts, the war in Afghanistan isn't
going well. American and Afghan casualties are on the rise this spring, and the U.S. effort to subdue
insurgents in the key region around Kandahar has run into severe difficulty. American military officials
now say their original timetable for a relatively quick offensive there was too optimistic, and it will be a long,
 tough slog. The problem is the same one that critics of U.S. escalation have always cited: Afghanistan is
known as the graveyard of empires. Suspicion of outsiders runs deep and the United States is widely seen as
an occupying power, like Russia and Great Britain in the past. Each was eventually forced to withdraw. [See
photos of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.] The Afghan war is particularly unpopular among Democratic
liberals who thought Obama was going to be a dovish president when they backed him in the 2008
primaries. Many liberals are so upset with Obama and majority Democrats in Congress that they may sit out
the November elections, which would guarantee Republicans gains. "Afghanistan is pretty close to a deal
breaker for many," says a prominent Democratic strategist.

Drone regulation has bipartisan support

Crump and Stanley ’13 Catherine Crump is a staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and
Technology Project and a nonresident fellow with the Stanford Center for Internet and Society; Jay
Stanley is a senior policy analyst with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project and editor of
the ACLU's Free Future blog. (2/11/13, Slate, “Why Americans Are Saying No to Domestic Drones”,
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/02/domestic_surveillance_drone_bans_
are_sweeping_the_nation.html)

The drone issue has also gained momentum because the concern over it is bipartisan. While Democrats
get most of the credit for pushing back on national surveillance programs, it was the Republican Party’s
2012 platform that addressed domestic surveillance drones, stating that “we support pending legislation
to prevent unwarranted or unreasonable governmental intrusion through the use of aerial surveillance.”

The US Government already feels justified Using Drones to kill American Citizens

Taylor 15(https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/04/23/the-u-s-
keeps-kiling)

Americans have been killed by U.S. drone strikes from the very beginning. In 2002, in an operation
coordinated by the U.S. military, U.S. citizen Kemal Darwish was reported to have been killed in a strike in Yemen. In 2013, the U.S. Justice
Department confirmed that four U.S. citizens, including cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, had been killed by CIA drone strikes since 2009. Awlaki, a
U.S.-born Muslim known as a gifted preacher who incited attacks against the West, was killed in 2011 in a strike in Yemen.Another U.S. citizen,
Samir Khan, died in the same strike that killed Awlaki, the Justice Department revealed. Khan was an al-Qaeda militant who created and
served as an editor for Inspire, the group's magazine. Awlaki's son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was killed in another attack the month after his
father died. The 16-year-old was also a U.S. citizen. The other death announced by the Justice Department in 2013 was that of Jude Kenan
Mohammad, a 23-year-old who was born in Florida. He was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan in 2011. Mohammad had been acting as a
recruiter for al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.Weinstein isn't the only U.S. citizen killed by a drone strike to be added to the list recently. The
same operation also killed an American al-Qaeda militant named Ahmed Farouq, the White House said in a statement. Another strike in the same
region in January killed Adam Gadahn, a prominent al-Qaeda figure who was also a U.S. citizen.The
U.S. government believes it
can legally justify the killing of American citizens in drone strikes: In 2014, the Justice
Department released a secret 2011 memo that explained the legal justification for killing
American terror suspects living overseas without trial. And Obama himself has acknowledged that he gave the order
to kill Awlaki. "I would have detained and prosecuted Awlaki if we captured him before he carried out a plot, but we couldn’t," he said in a 2013
speech at the National Defense University. "And as president, I would have been derelict in my duty had I not authorized the strike that took him
Americans killed by drone
out."But so far, Awlaki is the only U.S. citizen who was actually targeted by American drones. The other
strikes listed above were believed to have been killed inadvertently. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, officials say, even
when they were terror suspects.
No threat of ISIS terrorism – litany of reasons
Byman and Shapiro 2015 (Daniel L [research director @ Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings]
and Jeremy [Fellow @ Brookings]; Be Afraid. Be A Little Afraid: The Threat of Terrorism from Western
Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq; January; www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/01/western-
foreign-fighters-in-syria-and-iraq-byman-shapiro?rssid=LatestFromBrookings; kdf)

Despite these fears and the real danger that motivates them, the Syrian and Iraqi foreign fighter threat
can easily be exaggerated. Previous cases and information emerging from Syria suggest several mitigating effects that may
reduce—but hardly eliminate—the potential terrorist threat from foreign fighters who have gone to Syria. Those mitigating factors
include: • Many die, blowing themselves up in suicide attacks or perishing quickly in firefights with opposing forces.

• Many never return home, but continue fighting in the conflict zone or at the next battle for jihad. • Many of the foreign fighters
quickly become disillusioned, and a number even return to their home country without engaging in further violence. • Others are
arrested or disrupted by intelligence services. Indeed, becoming a foreign fighter—particularly with today’s heavy use of social media—makes a
terrorist far more likely to come to the attention of security services. The danger posed by returning foreign fighters is real, but American and

European security services have tools that they can successfully deploy to mitigate the threat. These tools will
have to be adapted to the new context in Syria and Iraq, but they will remain useful and effective. Key Policy Recommendations The model below shows how the
various mitigating factors and effective policies can (though not necessarily will) lessen the danger presented by foreign fighters. Complex Model of Foreign Fighter
Radicalization Complex Model of Foreign Fighter Radicalization Decide First is the decision stage. It makes sense to reduce the numbers of those going to the
conflict zone in the first place by interfering in the decision to go. After all, those who do not go cannot be radicalized by foreign fighting. Western countries should
push a counter-narrative that stresses the brutality of the conflict and the internecine violence among jihadists. However, in general, governments are poor at
developing counter-narratives and lack community credibility. It is usually better to elevate existing voices of community leaders who already embrace the counter-
narrative than to try to handle this directly through government channels. Also vital is developing peaceful alternatives for helping the people affected by the
conflicts in the Middle East. Some fighters—certainly not all but a significant portion—were originally motivated by a genuine desire to defend the Syrian people
against the brutality of the Assad regime. Encouraging charitable activities, identifying legitimate channels for assistance, and otherwise highlighting what
concerned individuals can do to help alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people may siphon off some of the supply of foreign fighters. Local programs for providing
assistance can also improve domestic intelligence gathering capabilities in two ways, according to Western security service officials. First, simply being out and
about in the community gives government officials more access to information about potential radicals. Families become comfortable with intelligence services, as
do community leaders. Second, such programs allow intelligence officials to gain access to individuals who can potentially be recruited to inform on other would-be
jihadists. Desired Results: • Talked out of joining the foreign militias by family or community intervention. • Choose peaceful alternative to fighting. Travel The
second stage in the foreign fighter radicalization process is the travel to Syria. Disrupting the transit route via Turkey is one of the most promising ways of reducing
the threat of foreign fighters to Europe and the United States. Doing so will primarily require better cooperation between Western governments and Turkish
authorities, who have not always seen stopping the flow of fighters as their highest priority. But as Turkish authorities are now becoming more worried about the
jihadist threat to Turkey, Western security services should establish channels with Turkish intelligence and police to warn them of the presence of specific
individuals headed to Syria through Turkey and to encourage Turkey to turn them away from the Turkish border or stop them at the Syrian border and deport them.
Though there are other ways into Syria, all are far harder and more costly for Western fighters. Security cooperation among European services and between
European and American services is also essential. Intelligence collected from the communications of foreign fighters, shared open source monitoring, and other
information from one service can prove vital for discovering transnational networks. Cooperation within Europe is indispensable for stopping travel as jihadists from
one European country often try to travel to Turkey and then on to Syria via another European country in an effort to avoid detection. Desired Results: • Arrested en
route. • Stopped at border and deported. Train and Fight In the third stage of the process, the foreign fighters receive training and fight in Syria or Iraq, mostly out
of the reach of European or American influence. But even here, there are subtle ways of influencing the terrorist indoctrination process. Western security agencies
should do everything they can to sow doubt in the minds of extremist leaders in Iraq and Syria about the true loyalties of Western Muslim volunteers. Highlighting
information gained from recruits and even disinformation about the degree of infiltration by security services can heighten fears. If jihadist organizations come to
view foreigners as potential spies or as corrupting influences, they might assign them to non-combat roles, test their allegiances by offering them the one-way ticket
of suicide bombings, or even avoid recruiting them altogether. Desired Results: • Die in the combat zone. • Stay abroad and fight. • Become disillusioned with the
struggle. Return Upon the foreign fighters’ return, the fourth stage, it is critical to turn them away from violence and jihad. Western services report that they usually
know when individuals return and that many return with doubts. As a first step, security services must triage returnees, identifying which ones deserve the most
attention: our interviews indicate triaging is done inconsistently (and in some cases not at all) among the Western security services. Inevitably, some dangerous
individuals will be missed, and some individuals identified as not particularly dangerous might later become a threat, but a first look is vital for prioritization. Efforts
to promote a counter-narrative are valuable, particularly if they involve parents, preachers and community leaders. Community programs deserve considerable
attention. The goal should be to move potential terrorists towards non-violence; since many are in that category already, hounding them with the threat of arrest or
otherwise creating a sense of alienation can backfire. In the past, family and community members have at times been successful in steering returned fighters
toward a different path, even getting them to inform on their former comrades. Indeed, sending returnees to jail for relatively minor crimes such as going abroad to
fight with a foreign terrorist organization against a distant enemy may simply put them in prison for a few years and expose them to the radicalizing elements
present in many European prisons, where many minor players become exposed to hardened jihadists and integrate into broader networks. Desired Results: •
Arrested and jailed. • De-radicalized and reintegrated. • No desire to attack at home. Plot To disrupt foreign fighters in the fifth and final stage of plotting terrorist
attacks, security services must remain focused on the returnee problem and have sufficient resources to monitor the problem as it emerges in their countries. The
good news is that going to Syria and Iraq and returning home usually does bring one to the attention the security services. But maintaining vigilance as the numbers
increase will be difficult purely for reasons of resources. Marc Hecker, a French expert on terrorism, commented that France could handle the “dozens” who
returned from Iraq but would be over-whelmed by the “hundreds” who may come back from Syria. Keeping track of that many suspects, is exceptionally resource
intensive, particularly if it involves full-time surveillance. For intelligence services, often the problem is not in accessing or gathering the data, but in processing,
analyzing, and following up on it in a timely manner. At the same time, their own effectiveness can work against them: by reducing the problem considerably, they
decrease the danger, thereby creating the impression that they need fewer resources. One way to mitigate this effect is for security services to spread the burden of
responsibility around by training and sharing information with local police and other law-enforcement and community organizations. Security cooperation among
European services and between European and American services is absolutely necessary. Intelligence from the communications of foreign fighters, shared open-
source monitoring, and other information obtained by one service can prove crucial for discovering transnational networks. As noted earlier, cooperation within
Europe is critical for stopping travel, as jihadists from one European country often try to travel to Turkey and then on to Syria via another European country in order
to avoid detection. Desired Results: • Attack foiled by law enforcement. • Attack fails due to lack of training or wrong skills. Conclusion The
United States
and Europe already have effective measures in place to greatly reduce the threat of terrorism from
jihadist returnees and to limit the scale of any attacks that might occur. Those measures can and should be improved—and,
more importantly, adequately resourced. But the standard of success cannot be perfection. If it is, then Western

governments are doomed to fail, and, worse, doomed to an overreaction which will waste resources and
cause dangerous policy mistakes.

One in three billion chance of terrorism

Mueller 10
John, professor of political science at Ohio State University, Calming Our Nuclear Jitters, Issues in Science & Technology, Winter2010, Vol. 26,
Issue 2
In contrast to these predictions, terrorist groups seem to have exhibited only limited desire and even
less progress in going atomic. This may be because, after brief exploration of the possible routes, they,
unlike generations of alarmists, have discovered that the tremendous effort required is scarcely likely to
be successful.¶ The most plausible route for terrorists, according to most experts, would be to
manufacture an atomic device themselves from purloined fissile material (plutonium or, more likely,
highly enriched uranium). This task, however, remains a daunting one, requiring that a considerable series
of difficult hurdles be conquered and in sequence.¶ Outright armed theft of fissile material is
exceedingly unlikely not only because of the resistance of guards, but because chase would be
immediate. A more promising approach would be to corrupt insiders to smuggle out the required substances. However, this requires the
terrorists to pay off a host of greedy confederates, including brokers and money-transmitters, any one of whom could turn on them or, either
out of guile or incompetence, furnish them with stuff that is useless. Insiders might also consider the possibility that once the heist was
accomplished, the terrorists would, as analyst Brian Jenkins none too delicately puts it, "have every incentive to cover their trail, beginning with
If terrorists were somehow successful at obtaining a sufficient mass of relevant
eliminating their confederates."¶
material, they would then probably have to transport it a long distance over unfamiliar terrain and
probably while being pursued by security forces. Crossing international borders would be facilitated by
following established smuggling routes, but these are not as chaotic as they appear and are often under
the watch of suspicious and careful criminal regulators. If border personnel became suspicious of the commodity being
smuggled, some of them might find it in their interest to disrupt passage, perhaps to collect the bounteous reward money that would probably
be offered by alarmed governments once the uranium theft had been discovered.¶ Once outside the country with their
precious booty, terrorists would need to set up a large and well-equipped machine shop to manufacture
a bomb and then to populate it with a very select team of highly skilled scientists, technicians,
machinists, and administrators. The group would have to be assembled and retained for the monumental task while no consequential suspicions were generated
among friends, family, and police about their curious and sudden absence from normal pursuits back home.¶ Members of the bomb-building team would also have to be utterly devoted to the
cause, of course, and they would have to be willing to put their lives and certainly their careers at high risk, because after their bomb was discovered or exploded they would probably become
the targets of an intense worldwide dragnet operation.¶ Some observers have insisted that it would be easy for terrorists to assemble a crude bomb if they could get enough fissile material.
But Christoph Wirz and Emmanuel Egger, two senior physicists in charge of nuclear issues at Switzerland's Spiez Laboratory, bluntly conclude that the task "could hardly be accomplished by a
subnational group." They point out that precise blueprints are required, not just sketches and general ideas, and that even with a good blueprint the terrorist group would most certainly be
forced to redesign. They also stress that the work is difficult, dangerous, and extremely exacting, and that the technical requirements in several fields verge on the unfeasible. Stephen
Younger, former director of nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos Laboratories, has made a similar argument, pointing out that uranium is "exceptionally difficult to machine" whereas
"plutonium is one of the most complex metals ever discovered, a material whose basic properties are sensitive to exactly how it is processed." Stressing the "daunting problems associated
with material purity, machining, and a host of other issues," Younger concludes, "to think that a terrorist group, working in isolation with an unreliable supply of electricity and little access to
tools and supplies" could fabricate a bomb "is farfetched at best."¶ Under the best circumstances, the process of making a bomb could
take months or even a year or more, which would, of course, have to be carried out in utter secrecy. In addition, people in the
area, including criminals, may observe with increasing curiosity and puzzlement the constant coming and going of technicians unlikely to be
locals.¶ If the effort to build a bomb was successful, the finished product, weighing a ton or more, would then have to be transported to and
smuggled into the relevant target country where it would have to be received by collaborators who are at once totally dedicated and
technically proficient at handling, maintaining, detonating, and perhaps assembling the weapon after it arrives.¶ The
financial costs of
this extensive and extended operation could easily become monumental. There would be expensive equipment to
buy, smuggle, and set up and people to pay or pay off. Some operatives might work for free out of utter dedication to the cause, but the vast
conspiracy also requires the subversion of a considerable array of criminals and opportunists, each of whom has every incentive to push the
price for cooperation as high as possible. Any criminals competent and capable enough to be effective allies are also likely to be both smart
enough to see boundless opportunities for extortion and psychologically equipped by their profession to be willing to exploit them.¶ Those who
warn about the likelihood of a terrorist bomb contend that a terrorist group could, if with great difficulty, overcome each obstacle and that
doing so in each case is "not impossible." But although
it may not be impossible to surmount each individual step,
the likelihood that a group could surmount a series of them quickly becomes vanishingly small. Table 1
attempts to catalogue the barriers that must be overcome under the scenario considered most likely to be successful. In contemplating the task
before them, would-be atomic terrorists would effectively be required to go though an exercise that looks much like this. If and when they do,
they will undoubtedly conclude that their prospects are daunting and accordingly uninspiring or even terminally dispiriting.¶ It is possible to
calculate the chances for success.
Adopting probability estimates that purposely and heavily bias the case in the
terrorists' favor — for example, assuming the terrorists have a 50% chance of overcoming each of the 20
obstacles — the chances that a concerted effort would be successful comes out to be less than one in a
million. If one assumes, somewhat more realistically, that their chances at each barrier are one in three,
the cumulative odds that they will be able to pull off the deed drop to one in well over three billion.¶
Other routes would-be terrorists might take to acquire a bomb are even more problematic. They are
unlikely to be given or sold a bomb by a generous like-minded nuclear state for delivery abroad because
the risk would be high, even for a country led by extremists, that the bomb (and its source) would be
discovered even before delivery or that it would be exploded in a manner and on a target the donor would not approve, including on the
donor itself. Another concern would be that the terrorist group might be infiltrated by foreign intelligence.

Drones not a valuable border surveillance asset—unprecedented costs, limited flight

time, small deployment area, low success
DHS 1/6, Office of the Inspector General, January 6, 2015, “CBP Drones are Dubious Achievers,”
https://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/pr/2015/oigpr_010615.pdf

After spending eight years and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, U.S. Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) has yet to prove the value of its Unmanned Aircraft System (drone) program while
drastically understating the costs, according to a new report by the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS), Office of Inspector General (OIG). Based on its findings, OIG recommends that CBP abandon plans
to spend $443 million more on additional aircraft and put those funds to better use.

“U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Unmanned Aircraft System Program Does Not Achieve Intended
Results or Recognize All Costs of Operations,” the OIG’s second audit of the program since 2012, found
the effort by CBP’s Office of Air and Marine (OAM) still has no reliable method of measuring its
performance and that its impact in stemming illegal immigration has been minimal.

The OIG specifically found that, during Fiscal Year 2013: - OAM calculated that it cost $2,468 per hour to
operate a drone. OIG found the actual price tag to be $12,255 per hour, noting that OAM omitted such
key costs as salaries for operators, equipment and overhead.

- Flight time fell far short of OAM’s goal of 16 hours per day, 365 days per year. OIG found the drones,
which were often grounded by weather, were airborne for only 22 percent of those goal hours.

- While CBP has touted drone surveillance of the entire Southwest Border (1,993 miles from Texas to
California), the majority of deployment was limited to a 100-mile stretch in Arizona and a 70-mile
segment in Texas.
- Drone surveillance was credited with assisting in less than 2 percent of CBP apprehensions of illegal
border crossers. “Notwithstanding the significant investment, we see no evidence that the drones
contribute to a more secure border, and there is no reason to invest additional taxpayer funds at this
time,” said Inspector General John Roth. “Securing our borders is a crucial mission for CBP and DHS.
CBP’s drone program has so far fallen far short of being an asset to that effort.”

Drone program very expensive with very low success rate --- 1.8% success rate ---
Inspector general even thinks it’s a bad idea – you can’t beat this card
Lily Hay Newman 1/6, Staff writer and the lead blogger for Future Tense, “Border Patrol Drones Each
Cost $12K an Hour to Fly, Don’t Do Much” 1/6/15, Future Tense,
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/01/06/homeland_security_s_border_patrol_drones_c
ost_12k_an_hour_to_fly_and_don.html