Revealed: robot spyplanes to guard Europe's borders

[low_phreaq]

Revealed: robot spyplanes to guard Europe's borders
By Severin Carrell
Published: 04 June 2006

Fleets of unmanned "drone" aircraft fitted with powerful cameras are to be used to patrol Europe's borders in a dramatic move to combat people-smuggling, illegal immigration and terrorism.

The Independent on Sunday can today reveal that the tiny planes will fly at more than 2,500 feet over the English Channel and Mediterranean beaches as part of a £1bn programme to equip Europe's police forces, customs officers and border patrols with hi-tech surveillance and anti-terrorism equipment.

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A senior commission official said: "We're convinced that this is a very good way of using military technologies for non-military purposes."

Alongside the new "spies in the sky", officials in Brussels have launched more than a dozen research projects to develop new technologies for counter-terrorism, policing and border security. They include body scanners that can see through clothing and detect explosive vests, guns or chemical weapons; portable devices that can "see" through walls and detect people moving inside buildings; and tiny radio tags that would be fitted on people inside buildings under surveillance.

However, the research programme, which will start in earnest early next year, has caused alarm among civil liberties groups and MPs.

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A British-built "spy in the sky" is already in service with the US Immigration Department, patrolling the Mexican border where millions of illegal workers cross into the US every year.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article624667.ece