An Israeli filmmaker attracted the attention of the FBI when he posted an ad on Craigslist, looking for U.S. drone pilots. While doing some research for his short film about drone strikes, 5,000 Feet Is The Best, Omer Fast posted an anonymous ad looking to talk to pilots based at Creech Air Force Base, one of the main bases where pilots remotely operate the flying bots from ground control stations (see the picture below).
That's when the FBI called. "We were told to stop what we were doing and threatened in suggestive, spy-movie language," Fast told UK magazine Photoworks. The FBI was able to trace the ad back to Fast and his production team even though the ad was anonymous.
"I imagine it's probably quite a routine thing for them to do but it sure took us by surprise because they had to trace our phone number via the IP address used to publish an otherwise anonymous ad on Craigslist," Fast told The Verge.
The FBI's intervention didn't stop production, but it had some undesirable effects. "After the call, our contacts went dead," said Fast. In the end though, he was able to republish the ad and he didn't have any issues when he landed in the United States.
The 30-minute film is not intended to be a documentary. Although it is based on two interviews with a real drone operator, the film also casts an actor to depict the operator, telling his story with flashbacks and fictional scenes reproducing drone strikes.
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Photo via Ethan Miller/Getty Images
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