The US drone fleet was not more secure at that time. In 2008, recordings of drone feeds were discovered on the laptops of Shi’ite militants. Four years later, less than half the drone fleet had been upgraded to use encrypted video.
The article pretty clearly details interceptions as recent as 2012. And maybe it still goes on, we don't know, because this apparently came from the 2013 Snowden leak.
Could mean anything from them being able to intercept video from the tail cam to them just tracking the drones based on signal / radar information.
All the imagery from the Israeli drones is from circa 2009-2010.
Israeli sources claim that the reason that this information is published at this timing is a German-Israeli drone deal in which the US Predator lost - http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/international/europ...
They also claim that since 2011 (The last "hacking" incident) there was a major change in the way that drone communication is encrypted.
Edit: changed 2010 to 2011