Reuters |  President Barack Obama's administration has decided to give the Pentagon control of some drone operations against terrorism suspects overseas that are currently run by the CIA, several U.S. government sources said on Monday.

Wired.com | America’s ship-launched X-47B killer drone prototype took off for the first time from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush sailing near the Maryland coast on Tuesday morning — the first step in proving that a high-performance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is compatible with the Navy’s fleet of 10 gigantic nuclear-powered flattops.

Spreadlibertynews.com | A bill nullifying warrantless drone spying was signed into law by Florida Governor Rick Scott today. The bill passed the House 117-0 and the Senate 39-0. SB92 prohibits any law enforcement agency from using unmanned drones to gather evidence or other information without a warrant.  It reads, in part:  ”A law enforcement agency may not use a drone to gather evidence or other information.”

Youtube | Ron Paul talks about drone technology and it's use in the new American police state, and the martial law that was declared when the Boston police went after the Boston Marathon Bomber.

Infowars.com | Technology would make robots “truly autonomous” A Pentagon-funded team of scientists have constructed a machine that functions like a human brain and would enable robots to think independently and act autonomously.

US News |  A California-based company is beginning to market mobile control centers that law enforcement or rescue workers can use to launch drones. The company, Information Processing Systems of California, calls them "Mobile Incident Command Platforms"—they are modified Ford trucks that can house security cameras, sensors, radar and communication infrastructure and can be outfitted with trailers to carry drones, which can then be commanded from within the center. The company demonstrated the van at the Sea Air Space Expo held here Tuesday.

PopSci | The Sea-Air-Space Exposition opened in Maryland yesterday. It is one of the U.S. defense industry's largest trade shows--a place where government agencies and private-sector companies gather to peruse the shiniest and most fearsome new military equipment. It is also a good barometer of where the industry is headed. Here are the four most important trends I spotted:

Infowars.com | In a stark about turn, most Americans now have significant reservations about the use of drones by government and law enforcement. Just six months ago, a survey conducted by The Associated Press and The National Constitution Center found that more Americans supported than opposed the use of surveillance drones by domestic law enforcement agencies.

Cnet | The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has customized its Predator drones, originally built for overseas military operations, to carry out at-home surveillance tasks that have civil libertarians worried: identifying civilians carrying guns and tracking their cell phones, government documents show.

Infowars.com | Promotional material for Shadowhawk depicts firearm transaction as criminal activity The promotional video for a surveillance drone now being purchased by law enforcement bodies across the country with the aid of DHS funding shows a UAV spying on a private gun sale, falsely depicting the scenario as a criminal activity.

Antiwar | One of the things itching the people who demand more transparency and accountability in Obama’s drone war is that the secrecy of the program means that the government doesn’t publicly release casualty estimates. This has led a number of journalistic and think-tank organizations to do their due diligence and come up with their own estimates with their own methodologies. Even United Nations special rapporteur Ben Emmerson is in the beginning stages of an investigation into drone deaths in Pakistan and Yemen.

ZeroHedge.com | We were hoping to evade coverage of the latest mass distraction du jour, that of the former LAPD officer Chris Dorner who recently went rogue following a three man murder spree and who has vowed to kill again as per his 6,000 word manifesto, but the US government had made it impossible following confirmation
that the search for Dorner is now the first official drone-hunt in US history.

Wired | “Imminence” used to mean something in military terms: namely, that an adversary had begun preparations for an assault. In order to justify his drone strikes on American citizens, President Obama redefined that concept to exclude any actual adversary attack.That’s the heart of the Justice Department’s newly leaked white paper, first reported by NBC News, explaining why a “broader concept of imminence” (.pdf) trumps traditional Constitutional protections American citizens enjoy from being killed by their government without due process. It’s an especially striking claim when considering that the actual number of American citizens who are “senior operational leader[s] of al-Qaida or its associated forces” is vanishingly small. As much as Obama talks about rejecting the concept of “perpetual war” he’s providing, and institutionalizing, a blueprint for it.

USNews.com | Charlottesville, Va., has become the first city in the United States to formally pass an anti-drone resolution. The resolution, passed Monday, "calls on the United States Congress and the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia to adopt legislation prohibiting information obtained from the domestic use of drones from being introduced into a Federal or State court," and "pledges to abstain from similar uses with city-owned, leased, or borrowed drones."

Sky News | British troops are using a nano drone just 10cm long and weighing 16 grams on the front line in Afghanistan to provide vital information on the ground. They are the first to use the state-of-the-art handheld tiny surveillance helicopters, which relay reliable full motion video and still images back to the devices' handlers in the battlefield.