HAS THE GOVERNMENT USED PLANES TO MONITOR PAST PROTESTS? Yes. Aerial surveillance of protests is actually very common. According to an August 2020 Air Force inspector general report, the National Guard used surveillance planes to watch over demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Minnesota, Arizona and California after George Floyd's death in Minneapolis that May. The FBI used aircraft to monitor protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown and in Baltimore to track protests following Freddie Gray's death in police custody in 2015. Democrat Barack Obama was president during both of those events. Law enforcement also used aerial surveillance to monitor a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 that turned deadly. Republican Donald Trump was president at that time.