FBI and Justice Department can’t find their drone privacy reports
Six months ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation refused to release its plans to tackle privacy risks posed by drone surveillance. Now the agency claims it can’t track them down at all. So does the one Justice Department office responsible for making sure such reports get filed in the first place.
The FBI has flown unmanned aerial vehicles since at least 2005, and has fought in court for the past year and change to divulge as little information about them as possible. While the Bureau and its privacy overseers have released hundreds of heavily redacted pages, they have seemingly conflicting answers as to whether one crucial set of legally-mandated privacy documents even exists at all.
Federal agencies must conduct a privacy impact assessment prior to deploying any technology that collects personal information, courtesy of the E-Government Act of 2002. At minimum, such assessments must address what information is being collected and why, how it will be used, who will be able to access it, and other basic details.
