Flock Safety is pitching its police-style drone program to private businesses. It could bring aerial surveillance to shopping centers, warehouses, and hospitals. Flock Safety, whose drones were once reserved for police departments, is now offering them for private-sector security, the company announced today, with potential customers including including businesses intent on curbing shoplifting. Companies in the US can now place Flock's drone docking stations on their premises. If the company has a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly beyond visual line of sight (these are becoming easier to get), its security team can fly the drones within a certain radius, often a few miles. "Instead of a 911 call [that triggers the drone], it's an alarm call," says Keith Kauffman, a former police chief who now directs Flock's drone program.

The use of police drones is "poised to explode" in the next year as law enforcement takes advantage of the technology's proliferation, leaving public regulation and transparency efforts in danger of being caught woefully behind, civil rights advocates warn. "A world where flying robotic police cameras constantly crisscross our skies is one we have never seen before," Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in a report released Thursday. "Yet there are strong reasons to believe that such a world may be coming faster than most people realize." At least 1,400 police departments across the country are using drones in some fashion, but only 15 have obtained waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly their drones beyond the visual line of sight, or BVLOS, of operators. That means the vast majority of departments are still limited in the types of calls they can respond to with drones.

The 911 caller reported seeing a man wrestle a woman to the ground in an attempt to rob her before taking off on a bicycle. Beverly Hills police responded, but before a patrol car could get to the scene, officers already had their eyes on the suspect. The police recently added a new drone known as "Hawkeye" to its drone patrol that will give officers a view of crime scenes before they arrive, locate suspects before they're lost, and help patrol the streets of the upscale community. The drone's high-resolution camera is capable of reading a license plate a half-mile away. The city's police department introduced Hawkeye to the city on Tuesday in a set of social media posts that included video of the drone in action.

Jeff Bezos went on 60 Minutes in 2013 and pledged to fill the skies with a fleet of delivery drones that could zip parcels to customers' homes in 30 minutes. Asked when this future would arrive, the Amazon.com Inc. founder said he expected drone deliveries to commence in the next five years or thereabouts. Almost a decade later, despite spending more than $2 billion and assembling a team of more than 1,000 people around the world, Amazon is a long way from launching a drone delivery service. A Bloomberg investigation based on internal documents, government reports and interviews with 13 current and former employees reveals a program beset by technical challenges, high turnover and safety concerns. A serious crash in June prompted federal regulators to question the drone's airworthiness because multiple safety features failed and the machine careened out of control, causing a brush fire.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. A Tennessee man was sentenced Tuesday to 45 months in prison for leaking classified information about the U.S. drone program in Afghanistan while he was working as an Air Force intelligence analyst. Daniel Hale, 33, pleaded guilty in March to violating the Espionage Act by leaking top-secret documents to a reporter. Hale, who was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, said his guilt over participating in lethal drone strikes in Afghanistan led him to leak government secrets.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. A former Air Force intelligence analyst pleaded guilty Wednesday to leaking classified documents to a reporter about military drone strikes against al-Qaida and other terrorist targets. The guilty plea from Daniel Hale, 33, of Nashville, Tennessee, comes just days before he was slated to go on trial in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, for violating the World War I-era Espionage Act. Hale admitted leaking roughly a dozen secret and top-secret documents to a reporter in 2014 and 2015, when he was working for a contractor as an analyst at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

In April, as COVID-19 cases exploded across the U.S. and local officials scrambled for solutions, a police department in Connecticut tried a new way to monitor the spread of the virus. One morning, as masked shoppers lined up 6 feet apart outside Trader Joe's in Westport, the police department flew a drone overhead to observe their social distancing and detect potential coronavirus symptoms, such as high temperature and increased heart rate. According to internal emails, the captain flying the mission wanted to "take advantage" of the store's line. But the store had no heads-up about the flight, and neither did the customers on their grocery runs, even though the drone technology managed to track figures both inside and outside. The drone program was unveiled a week later when the department announced its "Flatten the Curve Pilot Program" in collaboration with the Canadian drone company Draganfly, which was due to last through the summer. But less than 48 hours later after the program's public unveiling, the police department was forced to dump it amid intense backlash from Westport residents.

Flight records and related materials from police drone programs have been uncovered following a security breach at DroneSense, which provides services to a number of private corporations and government agencies. The records included flight paths, pilot names and email addresses, and operation names from more than 200 different drone flights, offering insight into how police use drones in day to day law enforcement. The records come from drone operations at the Atlanta Police Department, Nassau County Police Department, and others. The files also included information from other DroneSense clients, including Boise Fire Department, City of Coral Springs, and the US Army Corps of Engineers. According to a report in Vice, the records show a number of different police drone operations, including the Atlanta police using a drone to surveil an apartment complex and nearby parking lot.

WASHINGTON - Blacksburg was already well prepared when the U.S. government announced in April that the Virginia town would be home to the country's first commercial drone delivery service. Virginia Tech University, based in Blacksburg, has for years hosted a major drone development program, which has carried out experimental deliveries of ice cream, fast food and more. "I moved (to Blacksburg) last August, and when I was telling people I was moving, they said, 'I know somebody there had their Chipotle (Mexican restaurant chain) delivered by drone!' " said Megan Duncan, a communications professor at Virginia Tech. So, when Wing became the first drone company to be approved as an air carrier by the federal government, allowing the Google parent company Alphabet Inc. to start drone deliveries in and around Blacksburg, many of the locals were excited, Duncan said. "I think there's superinteresting possibilities for remote areas that are underserved, particularly with people who need prescriptions and can't make a 45-minute drive," she said by phone.

A report from the Wall Street Journal has revealed the US is using a new type of dive-bombing'missile' that kills targets without exploding. The weapon called the R9X, or the'flying Ginsu,' is designed to crush targets by dropping through buildings and cars with the help of a six large blades that deploy seconds before impact. According to the report, the goal of the weapon is to reduce unintended casualties caused by other more standard missiles that typically detonate and engulf both targets and their surroundings. Hellfire missiles may be effective, but they often endanger innocent bystanders. The R9X or'flying Ginsu' is a weapon developed by the US military to precision-target individuals.