At the time, his office also criticized the FBI’s failure to develop specific policies to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens or the integrity of the evidence the drones aim to collect.
The final audit released on Tuesday night revealed that the Justice Department has committed to – but has not yet – finalized policies across its agencies.
As with the last report, the inspector general remained concerned about waste and the structure of the program.
From one “centralized” location, the FBI’s “single team of two pilots” deploys drones “in the context of 13 investigations, such as search and rescue operations, kidnappings, fugitive manhunts, national security missions, and anti-drug trafficking interdictions,” the audit says.
Speaking of this layout, the auditors wrote: “We believe these circumstances could limit the FBI’s ability to deploy [drones] to distant locations quickly or to multiple locations simultaneously.”
