A Frederick man appeared in federal court Friday, accused of flying his drone into restricted airspace in order to post the footage on YouTube.
A military official reported the “Area 82 Surveillance911” channel in September over footage on the channel of a restricted national defense facility, the Justice Department said.
The Naval Criminal Investigative Service’s Washington field office looked into the channel and found videos of multiple facilities, including the Raven Rock Mountain Complex in Pennsylvania.
Stuart Bennett, 66, is accused of running the YouTube channel and illegally filming the footage using a drone, and is now charged with violating national defense airspace, federal prosecutors said.
The investigation purportedly found videos of military sites, critical national infrastructure — and titles suggesting the footage was top secret and classified.
The FBI traced the IP address, email, recovery email and recovery phone number to track down Mr. Bennett. A search at his home turned up a drone, micro-SD cards and a workstation and monitor that still showed the user logged in to the “Area 82 Surveillance911” channel,” the Justice Department said.
In addition, federal prosecutors allege, one of the micro-SD cards contained video footage of the Raven Rock complex that was shot via drone. The complex dates to 1954, and was built to operate as a second Pentagon in the event of nuclear war, according to WBFF-TV.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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