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Spy Satellite Photos Used To Fight Drug Smugglers
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue May 19, 2009 04:27 PM
from the we-know-what-you-did-over-the-border dept.
from the we-know-what-you-did-over-the-border dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, part of the Department of Defense, is using satellites to track the activities of drug cartels operating along the US-Mexican border. The agency is supplying photos to pinpoint Mexican narcotics operations and anticipate smuggling attempts into the United States. During a conference on border security held in Phoenix last week, Scott Zikmanis said his agency already has supplied some data to the El Paso Intelligence Center, a federal clearinghouse for investigating drug cartels. Any border-security surveillance will be done over Mexico, not the US says Zikmanis because a federal law, the Posse Comitatus Act, strictly limits US military operations on American soil unless such operations are authorized by Congress. Civil rights attorneys question the use of satellite technology in law enforcement. 'We are in the midst of a really dangerous time in terms of technology,' said Chris Calabrese, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. 'The idea that such a powerful tool might be turned on US citizens is really troubling.'"
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Military required? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is drug smuggling really such a big problem to require the use of military resources? It seems like something like this falls much more into the realm of law enforcement than something the military should get involved in.
I know that it is sometimes called the war on drugs, but is it really so bad that it deserves to be called a war?
Re:Military required? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Military required? (Score:5, Funny)
If that's the case, why doesn't the US just annex MX? I mean, we've already got about half the people here, why shouldn't we get the real estate too? Nice beaches, etc....
Parent
Re:Military required? (Score:5, Funny)
Sexist bastard!
Parent
Re:Military required? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because then we'll need a new "threat to the American way" to rile up the idiots so they can be politically manipulated -- illegal Mexican immigrants won't be usable for that anymore.
Who would we blame for taking our jobs? Who would we blame for the drug trade? Who would we pay terrible wages to labor in our fields and in our kitchens -- they'd need to be paid a decent wage if we annexed Mexico!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The "threat"(s) would be the failed culture, society, government (even if we annexed it we'd have to allow democracy which would return the same people to office), and economy of Mexico.
While it is fashionable to point out what is wrong with the US, it's worth noting that we have vastly more immigration than emigration. If we add annexation of failed states to that, the ideal of a welfare state for Americans becomes even less practical.
Re:Military required? (Score:5, Funny)
How are you going to make it expensive to do something illegal? Are you going to pass a law?
Parent
You Joke (Score:5, Insightful)
But Mexico has/had soldiers on their southern border to prevent people from coming in.
Plus they have draconian immigration laws relative to the USA.
Their hypocrisy vis a vis their complaints about crackdowns on illegal immigration against their citizens is ignored.
Parent
Re:Military required? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people are expressing concerns about Mexico's stability in the face of drug-cartel related violence.
Then legalize the drugs. Then use the profits from the government-sold drugs to start up rehab centers. Problem solved.
Parent
Re:Military required? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yeah. Hell, it's already happening as budget shortfalls are making people realize that spending millions on keeping potheads locked up might not be the best way to spend cash.
or do you go further than that?
What, like give 'em a cookie or something?
What do you do about the thousands of socially marginal people who just lost their jobs (yes, if you are willing to risk prison to distribute drugs, you are likely socially marginal; sorry.)?
And...you lost me. Try this experiment: type in socially marginal jobs in Google, and be just fucking amazed at all the hits you'll get.
And so on.
So on what? you said in your first sentence that the implications of what GP said border on the hilarious, but the rest of your post...devolved somewhat. Care to actually explain yourself?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
(I do think that there are some people who might feel like maybe the time they spent in prison was a bit unjust when they get out because the law was changed because it was decided that putting people in prison for the things they did was unjust; they might not be entirely satisfied with just getting out)
And? No really, and?
You realize almost no one is in prison for life without parole due to drugs... they're going to get out eventually, and regardless of whether the law has changed, they are probably going
illegal drugs (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, yes, pot heads shouldn't be in jail. But... Get to drugs much harder than that and they should be. Harder, more addictive, drugs add to crime, and not just drug crimes. Hard drug users are a deeper social problem than the mere moral crime of marijuana use.
Where is the evidence from peer reviewed scientific studies that shows drugs cause deep social problems? Oh and don't forget to include alcohol, I bet it causes a lot of problems.
Falcon
Yeah right (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree with you in principle, but this description of how it would play out borders on the hilarious.
I mean, what do you do with the hundreds of thousands of people who are currently in prison on drug charges?
Set them free. More people are in prison in the US, and the US has the highest highest prison population in the world [wikipedia.org], because of drugs than any other reason. And many of them are non violent.
Right now people in prison now for drug offenses are a drain on taxpayers when they could be taxpayers themselves.
Do you just let them out, or do you go further than that?
You apologize for falsely imprisoning them.
What do you do about the thousands of socially marginal people who just lost their jobs (yes, if you are willing to risk prison to distribute drugs, you are likely socially marginal; sorry.)? And so on.
Citation NEEDED!!! I dare you to find science studies that reach that conclusion.
I don't any now but I knew many people who bought, sold, and used illegal drugs and not one was worse than alcoholics I also knew. Those addicted to a legal drug are worse than those who use illegal drugs.
Falcon
Parent
Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
They were not, by and large, falsely imprisoned. They were found guilty and sentenced according to the law. I'm sure there are a few that are in there on questionable evidence, but the overwhelming majority of them were caught, tried, and sentenced as the system is supposed to work.
That you do not agree with the law does not make it false imprisonment. I believe that a good portion of them should be let out, and that certain uses should be decriminalized (if not outright legalized), but that's a far cry from accusations of false imprisonment.
Parent
Re:Military required? (Score:5, Informative)
If only there was some country that had already experimented with this... Oh wait. There is.
In 2001 Portugal did just this. They decriminalized everything. [opioids.com] and 7 years later it's working better than imagined [salon.com].
Everyone caught using is suggested to go to a class (but it's not required.). Sure they're a bit smaller than the US, but there's no reason it couldn't work here.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Military required? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just doing that will cut the profit...and take a lot of the crime out of it.
Start with pot...I mean, if people can grow it themselves, why buy from Juan the MX drug thug?
Parent
Re:Military required? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, most people won't grow it them selves, they will probably buy in from a legal distribute, like cigarettes.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, most people won't grow it them selves, they will probably buy in from a legal distribute, like cigarettes.
Yeah, and to me the biggest downside of legalization would be that the cigarette companies would start selling mj cigarettes that are significantly cut with tobacco. To them, THC's lack of chemically addictive properties would be a downside, and they'd want to continue to enjoy the benefits of an addicted customer base.
It's so easy to grow (in the right climate) I can see many hippies doing i
Re:Military required? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because many industries, including agricultural today, have a natural tendency towards consolidation? Because I fear that there will be licensing required to grow or sell and this will only help encourage the creation of a few mega-corps around it? Because the big tobacco companies would be the ones best poised to take advantage of legalization from the outset? Because that's what's happened with tobacco in the first place?
Try buying a cigarette that isn't loaded with additives that just make the damn things even less healthy. Your choices are American Spirits and... yeah, hope they have American Spirits at the convenience store. It's hard just getting a cigarette that's pure tobacco, so I just don't see many of the big players not cutting joints with at least some tobacco, and using whatever financial muscle is necessary to push the ones who won't play lets-keep-our-customers-addicted ball.
Now I don't think this will happen, it's just my biggest worry over legalization. I worry that the way in which it will be legalized, combined with economic forces, will result in problems. As long as both possession and cultivation are made completely legal, then it probably won't be a big deal.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So start a company that doesn't do that. Jeez, you make it sound like the world is static. Not everybody drinks budweiser.
Yeah, so I'll just run down to the store and buy some non-pasteurized beer...
Oh wait.
My fear is that in the course of legalizing it, in order to get to the next step which is taxing it, the government will have to keep control over who is allowed to grow and sell it. Much like with tobacco and alcohol today. Which is why there is, as far as I know, one cigarette brand that doesn't use
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Next, legalize opium... I mean, if people can grow it themselves, why buy from Arif the Taliban drug thug?
For suggested reading I would recommend The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit drugs http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/LIBRARY/studies/cu/cumenu.htm [druglibrary.org] . It's free online. It details how prohibition got us from relatively harmless opium to the dangerous drugs such as heroin.
Re:Military required? (Score:5, Insightful)
Alcohol is legal. Operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol is not legal. Why would you ever assume that just because drugs became legal that operating a vehicle under their influence would suddenly be OK?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Military required? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Military required? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we need to maintain a wall of separation between the military and law enforcement. Even if it's expensive to do so.
I wouldn't welcome any more steps towards the US becoming a fascist state.
Parent
Re:Military required? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's pretty out of control down in Mexico. The cartels outgun the law enforcement agencies and they have paramilitary training. It isn't unheard of for drug gang enforcers to use bodyarmor, automatic weapons and hand grenades.
I'm not as worried about the spy satellites as I am about the government using Mexico's problems as justification to limit our 2nd amendment rights. The handwriting is on the wall with this one. There are numerous stories in the news about how the guns in Mexico are coming from the United States. I can see what is going on in Mexico being used as yet another justification for a NAU style homogeonization of laws (read: a further erosion of the Constitution by entering into treaties with foreign countries).
Parent
Re:Military required? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Protecting the borders (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't protecting the borders exactly what the military are supposed to do?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Over ten million people have illegally entered this country, destroyed our economy, and likely influenced our elections.
I call that an invasion.
States have every right and duty to demand border enforcement from the federation.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The guy also had a day job. If border crime is as ruthless as the media says it is (and I doubt that because I've lived on the border for 18 years of my life), then a man with a family would be wise to stay out of the traficantes' business.
[tinfoil ha
what is needed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, electronic fencing with video based surveillance is all you really need with camps every few miles or so.
No, what's really needed is to get rid of stupid, liberty denying, racist laws.
Falcon
Parent
License, regulate, tax. (Score:5, Insightful)
Enough said.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No kidding. More people have been killed in 2008 due to drug violence in Mexico than US casualties in Iraq for the same year!
Re:License, regulate, tax. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:License, regulate, tax. (Score:4, Insightful)
Alcohol destroys lives too. We tried prohibition, and found that it only made things worse. Given that anyone who wants meth can get it anyway, why not legitimize the trade, make a profit off of it, and treat those with a problem medically instead of criminally?
Parent
Re:License, regulate, tax. (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you an expert on addiction? On the physiological and psychological pathways to addiction?
No? Didn't think so.
Plenty of people have gone from boy scout to raving meth head. Addiction to meth, like addiction to alcohol, often results in comorbidity with other psychological diseases (like chronic depression, different types of schizophrenia, etc). It's a bit of chicken-or-egg problem, but modern research suggests that not only can meth and/or alcohol addiction exacerbate existing pysch disorders, but they can cause disorders in people with no prior history of mental disease.
Anything that screws with your neurotransmitters can screw with your mental health.
Parent
Re:License, regulate, tax. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying anybody is immune to meth addiction, or addiction generally. Once you hit the neurochemistry, anything is possible. I am suggesting that people don't just pick up meth the way they just pick up scrapbooking or model airplanes. The fact that meth is seriously bad news, even by drug standards, is well known. I'm saying that, without some impetus, people don't just pick up things with reputations like that.
Different societies, and different subsections of society, have different rates of drug use, drug abuse, and adverse drug outcomes. They also use different drugs in different proportions. That is what I'm talking about. As you say, meth can get to pretty much anybody once they start using it. However, some circumstances are more likely than others to induce them to do that. That was the point of my question.
What is it about the economic, social, political, arrangement of the area that causes people to pick meth up in greater numbers?
I'm sorry if I expressed myself poorly. I neither think nor intended to imply that resistance to drugs one has been exposed to differs substantially between people(though, with some drugs, there does seem to be a genetic factor). I do think that there are significant differences between social contexts in how many people are induced to be exposed to drugs.
Parent
Re:pcp? meth? (Score:4, Informative)
PCP is a disassociative and is not habit forming. The only folks who claim it is claim MJ is addictive.
That you cannot use some drugs and walk away is again bullshit. No one gets addicted in one use, that takes time and effort. You have been believing to much propaganda.
If you do not have the freedom to decide what chemicals you can consume you are not very free.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_scale_to_assess_the_harm_of_drugs_(mean_physical_harm_and_mean_dependence).svg [wikipedia.org]
moron:
alcohol isn't nearly addictive as meth
its a simple pharmacological fact
so there's a legal difference
does that radical concept have any meaning to you?
So they'll get someone else to do it (Score:3, Interesting)
So, does anyone think the US is interested in, say, chinese or russian sattelite images of the US for this purpose?
Anyway, I find it hard to believe that law enforcement is not following the letter of the law and saying "It's not on soil! It's in SPACE!"
query: (Score:3, Funny)
Did we check to see that US military flights over another sovereign nation would be OK with them?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Once you get above the magic 100 km marker, its all international space.
Originally, when Sputnik flew over what might have been considered US airspace, the Eisenhower administration intelligently agreed that it was legal and valid... otherwise you couldn't have any kind of orbit that wasn't geostationary.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Originally, when Sputnik flew over what might have been considered US airspace, the Eisenhower administration intelligently agreed that it was legal and valid... otherwise you couldn't have any kind of orbit that wasn't geostationary.
Ok, I'll bite... if it's international space, then why worry about posse comitatus in this case?
Damn (Score:3, Funny)
I knew we shouldn't have run the whole drug-smuggling operation on the roof.
At least all of our communications were done inside, on the phone. Those should be safe.
Afghanistan drug activity (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting that while US is trying to do something about Mexican drug smuggling (probably because it borders with US), they turn the blind eye (or even worse) to the Afghanistan drug production, which floods the Europe with locally-produced opium. It is estimated that Afghanistan is accountable for more than 90% of world's opium production, and most of it goes to the Europe.
It is also worth to note that before the US invasion of Afghanistan, Taliban was able to contain the problem - the drug production declined some 94% during its reign.
But ever since the fall of Taliban regime, opium production has continued to rise each year at an alarming rate:
"The increase in opium production in Afghanistan was from 185 metric tons in 2001 to 6,100 metric tons in 2006." http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/afghanistan/drugs-market.htm [globalsecurity.org]
One has to wonder about the US involvement in this:
"Who benefits from the Afghan Opium Trade?" http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3294 [globalresearch.ca]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The LA Times has been on it much longer than CNN and Fox have.
http://projects.latimes.com/mexico-drug-war/#/its-a-war [latimes.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Drug smugglers" aren't a problem exclusive to brown people outside the border(if they were, your position would be merely jingoistic). They are also a problem inside, and among various other groups(not much of a market among people a few inches from the border).
"As much military intervention as it takes" will mean domestic surveillance, domestic military actions, search and seizure, all kinds of forced entry, and so forth against American citizens. That is an outrageously authori
Re: (Score:3, Funny)