The drone flight log data, which stretches from March 2024 to March 2025, shows CBP flying its drones to support ICE and other agencies. CBP maintains multiple Predator drones and flew them over the recent anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles.#FOIA
CBP Flew Drones to Help ICE 50 Times in Last Year
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This article was primarily reported using public records requests. We are making it available to all readers as a public service. FOIA reporting can be expensive, please consider subscribing to 404 Media to support this work. Or send us a one time donation via our tip jar here.Customs and Border Protection (CBP) flew its drones, which could include the agency’s MQ-9 Predator drones, at least 50 times last year in support of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to new data obtained by 404 Media.
The data shows that CBP continues to support not just ICE but other federal agencies, such as the FBI, with its fleet of drones. In June, 404 Media reported CBP flew two high-powered Predator drones above protests in Los Angeles, flights which CBP said were to provide “officer safety surveillance.”
“This is especially concerning, given ICE’s ongoing unlawful immigration sweeps and this administration’s concerted effort to suppress any dissent,” Jennifer Lynch, general counsel for activist organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has previously researched CBP’s use of drones, told 404 Media. “These records show that CBP has never stopped operating its drones on behalf of other federal, state, and local agencies, including ICE. In fact, the program has expanded exponentially since EFF first reported on it in 2012.”
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Do you know anything else about CBP’s drones or other technology? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.The new data spans more than 3,100 flights between March 2024 and March 2025. It includes the date of each mission, its category such as whether the flight was for training or enforcement purposes, the mission type (such as reconnaissance against a target), the region the flight took place in, which branch was responsible, and a column that often mentions if the flight was in support of another agency.
For example, on October 22, 2024, CBP flew a drone as part of “investigative support” for ICE as part of its enforcement mission, according to the data. CBP also flew drones for ICE over the next four days, the data shows.
On November 7, 2024, CBP flew a drone to assist ICE with a “special security event,” according to the data.
On February 21, 2024, CBP helped ICE with “reconnaissance surveillance target acquisition,” the data shows.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
In all, CBP flew drones to assist ICE in some capacity a total of 50 times during the one year period the data relates to. 404 Media obtained the data through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with CBP. The majority of the data covers the Biden presidency, and shows that CBP collaborated regularly with ICE during that administration. But given Trump’s recent crackdowns on protests and the administration’s mass deportation effort, Lynch is concerned about that collaboration during the current presidency.The data also shows CBP flying drones to assist the U.S. Coast Guard; the DEA and FBI with investigative support; U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), a part of the military; and in one case the Office of the President of the United States. Other flights are listed as assisting “states” and “local,” indicating CBP assisted local and state agencies too. Some flights are for relocating the drones or for maintenance, the data shows.
The EFF previously obtained similar drone flight logs. Some of those records list more specific organizations CBP has flown drones for, including particular state bodies. In 2014, the EFF found CBP loaned its drones to other agencies more than 700 times in three years.
A screenshot from the data.
CBP’s fleet includes around ten drones, according to a presentation available online. They include the Predator B, which is essentially an unarmed version of the same drone the U.S. flies overseas as part of combat operations. The drones are typically loaded with cameras and other surveillance technology. After flying Predator drones during the recent Los Angeles protests, the official Department of Homeland Security X account posted footage collected by the drones.“CBP’s drones are equipped with many different types of surveillance technology, from thermal imaging to high definition cameras to tools that can track movement over time. Smaller drones can identify faces and license plates while larger drones like the MQ-9s used to surveil protestors in Los Angeles have extensive range and can stay in the air for 30 hours at a time,” Lynch said.
CBP told 404 Media drones are a critical part of the agency’s border security mission. The agency said this includes illicit border crossings, investigations, intelligence, and reconnaissance patrols. CBP said its drones are only equipped with electro-optical/infrared cameras and Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar (VADER). This can detect vehicle and human movement, the agency said.
Lynch added “Drone surveillance, especially when combined with ICE’s unregulated access to sensitive data like millions of drivers’ license plate records, threatens the privacy and security of people all across the country.”
CBP Confirms It Is Flying Predator Drones Above Los Angeles To Support ICE
The confirmation follows 404 Media's reporting using flight data and air traffic control (ATC) audio that showed the agency was flying Predator drones above Los Angeles.Joseph Cox (404 Media)
New documents obtained by 404 Media show how a data broker owned by American Airlines, United, Delta, and many other airlines is selling masses of passenger data to the U.S. government.#FOIA
Airlines Sell 5 Billion Plane Ticket Records to the Government For Warrantless Searching
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This article was primarily reported using public records requests. We are making it available to all readers as a public service. FOIA reporting can be expensive, please consider subscribing to 404 Media to support this work. Or send us a one time donation via our tip jar here.A data broker owned by the country’s major airlines, including American Airlines, United, and Delta, is selling access to five billion plane ticketing records to the government for warrantless searching and monitoring of peoples’ movements, including by the FBI, Secret Service, ICE, and many other agencies, according to a new contract and other records reviewed by 404 Media.
The contract provides new insight into the scale of the sale of passengers’ data by the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), the airlines-owned data broker. The contract shows ARC’s data includes information related to more than 270 carriers and is sourced through more than 12,800 travel agencies. ARC has previously told the government to not reveal to the public where this passenger data came from, which includes peoples’ names, full flight itineraries, and financial details.
“Americans' privacy rights shouldn't depend on whether they bought their tickets directly from the airline or via a travel agency. ARC's sale of data to U.S. government agencies is yet another example of why Congress needs to close the data broker loophole by passing my bipartisan bill, the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act,” Senator Ron Wyden told 404 Media in a statement.
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Do you know anything else about ARC or the sale of this data? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.ARC is owned and operated by at least eight major U.S. airlines, publicly released documents show. Its board of directors includes representatives from American Airlines, Delta, United, Southwest, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, and European airlines Air France and Lufthansa, and Canada’s Air Canada. ARC acts as a bridge between airlines and travel agencies, in which it helps with fraud prevention and finds trends in travel data. ARC also sells passenger data to the government as part of what it calls the Travel Intelligence Program (TIP).
TIP is updated every day with the previous day’s ticket sales and can show a person’s paid intent to travel. Government agencies can then search this data by name, credit card, airline, and more.
The new contract shows that ARC has access to much more data than previously reported. Earlier coverage found TIP contained more than one billion records spanning more than 3 years of past and future travel. The new contract says ARC provides the government with “5 billion ticketing records for searching capabilities.”
Screenshots of the documents obtained by 404 Media.
404 Media obtained the contract through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) with the Secret Service. The contract indicates the Secret Service plans to pay ARC $885,000 for access to the data stretching into 2028. A spokesperson for the agency told 404 Media “The U.S. Secret Service is committed to protecting our nation’s leaders and financial infrastructure in close coordination with our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners. To safeguard the integrity of our work, we do not discuss the tools used to conduct our operations.” The Secret Service did not answer a question on whether it seeks a warrant, subpoena, or court order to search ARC data.
404 Media has filed FOIA requests with a wide range of agencies that public procurement records show have purchased ARC data. That includes ICE, CBP, ATF, the SEC, TSA, the State Department, U.S. Marshals, and the IRS. A court record reviewed by 404 Media shows the FBI has asked ARC to search its databases for a specific person as part of a drug investigation.
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The ATF told 404 Media in a statement “ATF uses ARC data for criminal and investigative purposes related to firearms trafficking and other investigations within ATF’s purview. ATF follows DOJ policy and appropriate legal processes to obtain and search the data. Access to the system is limited to a very small group within ATF, and all subjects searched within ARC must be part of an active, official ATF case/investigation.”An ARC spokesperson told 404 Media in an email that TIP “was established by ARC after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and has since been used by the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement community to support national security and prevent criminal activity with bipartisan support. Over the years, TIP has likely contributed to the prevention and apprehension of criminals involved in human trafficking, drug trafficking, money laundering, sex trafficking, national security threats, terrorism and other imminent threats of harm to the United States.”
The spokesperson added “Pursuant to ARC’s privacy policy, consumers may ask ARC to refrain from selling their personal data.”
After media coverage and scrutiny from Senator Wyden’s office of the little-known data selling, ARC finally registered as a data broker in the state of California in June. Senator Wyden previously said it appeared ARC had been in violation of Californian law for not registering while selling airline customers’ data for years.
Airline-Owned Data Broker Selling Your Flight Info to DHS Finally Registers as a Data Broker
It’s a legal requirement for data brokers to register in the state of California. ARC, the airlines-owned data broker that has been selling your flight information to the government for years, only just registered after being contacted by the office …Joseph Cox (404 Media)
The Department of Energy said it will close FOIA requests from last year unless the requester emails the agency to say they are still interested. Experts say it's an "attempt to close out as many FOIA requests as possible."
The Department of Energy said it will close FOIA requests from last year unless the requester emails the agency to say they are still interested. Experts say itx27;s an "attempt to close out as many FOIA requests as possible."#FOIA #FOIAForum
Trump Administration Outlines Plan to Throw Out an Agency's FOIA Requests En Masse
The Department of Energy (DOE) said in a public notice scheduled to be published Thursday that it will throw out all Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests sent to the agency before October 1, 2024 unless the requester proactively emails the agency to tell it they are still interested in the documents they requested. This will result in the improper closure of likely thousands of FOIA requests if not more; government transparency experts told 404 Media that the move is “insane,” “ludicrous,” a “Pandora’s Box,” and “an underhanded attempt to close out as many FOIA requests as possible.”The DOE notice says “requesters who submitted a FOIA request to DOE HQ at any time prior to October 1, 2024 (FY25), that is still open and is not under active litigation with DOE (or another Federal agency) shall email StillInterestedFOIA@hq.doe.gov to continue processing of the FOIA request […] If DOE HQ does not receive a response from requesters within the 30-day time-period with a DOE control number, no further action will be taken on the open FOIA request(s), and the file may be administratively closed.” A note at the top of the notice says it is scheduled to be formally published in the Federal Register on Thursday.
The agency will send out what are known as “still interested” letters, which federal agencies have used over the years to see if a requester wants to withdraw their request after a certain period of inactivity. These types of letters are controversial and perhaps not legal, and previous administrations have said that they should be used rarely and that requests should only be closed after an agency made multiple attempts to contact a requester over multiple methods of communication. What the DOE is doing now is sending these letters to submitters of all requests prior to October 1, 2024, which is not really that long ago; it also said it will close the requests of people who do not respond in a specific way to a specific email address.
FOIA requests—especially complicated ones—can often take months or years to process. I have outstanding FOIA requests with numerous federal agencies that I filed years ago, and am still interested in getting back, and I have gotten useful documents from federal agencies after years of waiting. The notion that large numbers of people who filed FOIA requests as recently as September 2024, which is less than a year ago, are suddenly uninterested in getting the documents they requested is absurd and should be seen as an attack on public transparency, experts told 404 Media. The DOE’s own reports show that it often does not respond to FOIA requests within a year, and, of course, a backlog exists in part because agencies are not terribly responsive to FOIA.
“If a requester proactively reaches out and says I am withdrawing my request, then no problem, they don’t have to process it,” Adam Marshall, senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told me. “The agency can’t say we’ve decided we’ve gotten a lot of requests and we don’t want to do them so we’re throwing them out.”
“I was pretty shocked when I saw this to be honest,” Marshall added. “I’ve never seen anything like this in 10 years of doing FOIA work, and it’s egregious for a few reasons. I don’t think agencies have the authority to close a FOIA request if they don’t get a response to a ‘still interested’ letter. The statute doesn’t provide for that authority, and the amount of time the agency is giving people to respond—30 days—it sounds like a long time but if you happen to miss that email or aren’t digging through your backlogs, it’s not a lot of time. The notion that FOIA requesters should keep an eye out in the Federal Register for this kind of notice is ludicrous.”
The DOE notice essentially claims that the agency believes it gets too many FOIA requests and doesn’t feel like answering them. “DOE’s incoming FOIA requests have more than tripled in the past four years, with over 4,000 requests received in FY24, and an expected 5,000 or more requests in FY25. DOE has limited resources to process the burgeoning number of FOIA requests,” the notice says. “Therefore, DOE is undertaking this endeavor as an attempt to free up government resources to better serve the American people and focus its efforts on more efficiently connecting the citizenry with the work of its government.”
Lauren Harper of the Freedom of the Press Foundation told me in an email that she also has not seen any sort of precedent for this and that “it is an underhanded attempt to close out as many FOIA requests as possible, because who in their right mind checks the federal register regularly, and it should be challenged in court. (On that note, I am filing a FOIA request about this proposal.)”
“The use of still interested letters isn't explicitly allowed in the FOIA statute at all, and, as far as I know, there is absolutely zero case law that would support the department sending a mass ‘still interested’ letter via the federal register,” she added. “That they are also sending emails is not a saving grace; these types of letters are supposed to be used sparingly—not as a flagrant attempt to reduce their backlog by any means necessary. I also worry it will open a Pandora's Box—if other agencies see this, some are sure to follow.”
Marshall said that FOIA response times have been getting worse for years across multiple administrations (which has also been my experience). The Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have cut a large number of jobs in many agencies across the government, which may have further degraded response times. But until this, there hadn’t been major proactive attempts taken by the self-defined “most transparent administration in history” to destroy FOIA.
“This is of a different nature than what we have seen so far, this affirmative, large-scale effort to purport to cancel a large number of pending FOIA requests,” Marshall said.
Emails obtained by 404 Media show the LAPD was interested in GeoSpy, an AI tool that can quickly figure out where a photo was taken.#FOIA
LAPD Eyes ‘GeoSpy’, an AI Tool That Can Geolocate Photos in Seconds
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This article was primarily reported using public records requests. We are making it available to all readers as a public service. FOIA reporting can be expensive, please consider subscribing to 404 Media to support this work. Or send us a one time donation via our tip jar here.The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has shown interest in using GeoSpy, a powerful AI tool that can pinpoint the location of photos based on features such as the soil, architecture, and other identifying features, according to emails obtained by 404 Media. The news also comes as GeoSpy’s founder shared a video showing how the tool can be used in relation to undocumented immigrants in sanctuary cities, and specifically Los Angeles.
The emails provide the first named case of a law enforcement agency showing clear interest in the tool. GeoSpy can also let law enforcement determine what home or building, down to the specific address, a photo came from, in some cases including photos taken inside with no windows or view of the street.
“Let’s start with one seat/license (me),” an October 2024 email from an LAPD official to Graylark Technologies, the company behind GeoSpy, reads. The LAPD official is from the agency’s Robbery-Homicide division, according to the email. 404 Media obtained the emails through a public records request with the LAPD.
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The Air Force paid a company that is doing generative AI work for the government. The Air Force won't say what it did, though.
The Air Force paid a company that is doing generative AI work for the government. The Air Force wonx27;t say what it did, though.#FOIA
Air Force Documents on Gen AI Test Are Just Whole Pages of Redactions
The Air Force paid a company that is doing generative AI work for the government. The Air Force won't say what it did, though.Joseph Cox (404 Media)
The Secret Service has used a technology called Locate X which uses location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on phones. Because users agreed to an opaque terms of service page, the Secret Service believes it doesn't need a warrant.
The Secret Service has used a technology called Locate X which uses location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on phones. Because users agreed to an opaque terms of service page, the Secret Service believes it doesnx27;t need a warrant.#FOIA #Privacy
'FYI. A Warrant Isn’t Needed': Secret Service Says You Agreed To Be Tracked With Location Data
The Secret Service has used a technology called Locate X which uses location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on phones. Because users agreed to an opaque terms of service page, the Secret Service believes it doesn't need a warrant.Joseph Cox (404 Media)
