Officials have said that the CIA has expanded its counter-terrorism fight in Pakistan to include targeting unknown people whose life patterns hint they may be terrorists.

The officials have said that the expanded authority, approved in the final days of the Bush administration and accelerated under the Obama administration, lets the CIA use "pattern of life" analysis, or evidence collected by surveillance cameras on unmanned aircraft and from other sources.

The officials told the Los Angeles Times that the information is then used to target suspected militants to be attacked by remotely piloted warplanes, even if the CIA is not certain of the people's full identities.

The CIA was formerly restricted in most cases to killing only people whose names were on an approved list.

The officials further said that the new rules alter the program so it's no longer a narrow operation aimed at killing high-ranking al-Qaida and Taliban leaders, the officials said. It's now grown to become a large-scale campaign of airstrikes in which few presumed militants are off-limits.

A senior U. S. counter-terrorism official told the Times, insisting on anonymity, "We might not always have their names, but ... these are people whose actions over time have made it obvious that they are a threat."

As a matter of policy, the CIA refuses to comment on the covert drone program.

They had evidence a Pakistani Taliban group helped train Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U. S. citizen from Pakistan who was arrested on suspicion he tried to detonate a car bomb in New York's Times Square Saturday night, U. S. officials said on Wednesday.

It was also reported that the Pakistani Taliban claimed credit for the botched bombing, saying the car bomb was in retaliation for drone strikes. (With Inputs from Agencies)