Houston suburb police dept now has a drone aircraft

And it can be weaponized.

"The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office in suburban Houston, Texas is preparing to launch operations with a newly received Shadowhawk MK-III unmanned aerial vehicle, paid for by grant money received by the Department of Homeland Security. The MK-III is a product marketed for both military and law enforcement applications. Michael Buscher, chief executive officer of manufacturer Vanguard Defense Industries, said this is the first local law enforcement agency to buy one of his units. 'The aircraft has the capability to have a number of different systems on board. Mostly, for law enforcement, we focus on what we call less lethal systems,' he said, including Tazers that can send a jolt to a criminal on the ground or a gun that fires bean bags known as a 'stun baton.' 'You have a stun baton where you can actually engage somebody at altitude with the aircraft. A stun baton would essentially disable a suspect,' he said. The MK-III also has more lethal options available, capable of carrying either a 40mm or 37mm grenade launcher or 12 gauge shotgun with laser designator."

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/29/1236236/weaponizable-police-uav-now-operational-in-texas

England's Metropolitan Police have a cell phone evesdropper

This equipment can be used to "...shut off phones remotely, intercept communications and gather data about thousands of users in a targeted area." It also covers an area "...up to an estimated 10 sq km, forcing hundreds of mobile phones per minute to release their unique IMSI and IMEI identity codes, which can be used to track a person's movements in real time."

Wow. I'm not really surprised, something like this is kind of inevitable. One of the purposes of this is to prevent a bomb from detonating that's rigged to a cell phone, which is kind of stupid, because any bomber worth their salt would have fallback detonators which this would not be able to counter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/30/metropolitan-police-mobile-phone-surveillance