Domestic Surveillance Drones On the Rise 96
Toe, The writes "Predator drones have now racked up over 10,000 hours of airtime in the U.S., largely for immigration enforcement. Homeland Security reports that drone operations lead to the apprehension of 4,865 undocumented immigrants and 238 drug smugglers in the past six years. Compare that to 327,577 illegal migrants caught at the southwest border in fiscal 2011. The only limits on their surveillance are FAA regulations keeping them away from crowded urban areas, and this is for safety reasons, not privacy. While the drones cannot see through windows, they certainly see a lot of what goes on in the (former) privacy of peoples' yards. The article cites Michael Kostelnik from the Office of Air and Marine for the Border Protection service saying he's never been challenged in Congress about the appropriate use of domestic drones. 'Instead the question is: Why can't we have more of them in my district?'"
You know, for terrorists and such (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time I see one of these domestic drone stories, I'm reminded of that scene in Blue Thunder [wikipedia.org] where Roy Scheider, having seen a demonstration of the deadly helicopter, says something along the lines of "You don't expect to use that thing for law enforcement, do you?" to his government minder. The guy just looks creepily at him and replies "Well, that would depend on the CIRCUMSTANCES, wouldn't it?"
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Every time I see one of these domestic drone stories, I'm reminded of that scene in Blue Thunder [wikipedia.org] where Roy Scheider, having seen a demonstration of the deadly helicopter, says something along the lines of "You don't expect to use that thing for law enforcement, do you?" to his government minder. The guy just looks creepily at him and replies "Well, that would depend on the CIRCUMSTANCES, wouldn't it?"
No problem. I'll just go around, hiding under a cardboard box. I have a feeling there will be a lot of us doing this.
Video games: You can learn a lot from them!
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throw a towel over it
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Unintended Consequences (Score:1)
I'm worried with all this effective border patrolling it suddenly makes more sense to have domestic drug production. And as a result all that violence assoicated with the drug trade that Mexico is experiencing springs up here.
Maybe we deserve it more than they do. It's our demand after all.
Re:Unintended Consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
It actually makes a lot more sense to produce drugs locally, except we could also legalize it and completely eliminate the violent crime aspect.
Re:Unintended Consequences (Score:5, Informative)
Steady on, that sounds suspiciously like common sense. If you start applying that to narcotics control, who knows what might happen?
http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blueprint%20download.htm [tdpf.org.uk]
Re:Unintended Consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes and the chip foundries engage in bloody turf wars over who get to supply Apple with the next batch of A5 chips.
You are completely missing the point. Legalizing drugs isn't to get production local. It is to neuter the criminal organizations that currently control drug production and distribution.
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Re:Unintended Consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of them did.
Many of them lost the majority of their income and power (at least until they could expand into drug distribution).
And a very few of them realized that they could still profit by playing inside the law and dropped their other criminal activities.
In any case it dramatically reduced their power and influence.
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I'm worried with all this effective border patrolling it suddenly makes more sense to have domestic drug production.
Domestic Job Creation Plan...
Re:Led (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Led (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps, perhaps not.
1. There may well be people who have US citizenship (and therefore be entirely legal) who have no documentation to prove it (and thus be undocumented). I'm not going to pretend that this would be a large number, but if there is even one such person then they are an undocumented immigrant not an illegal immigrant. This would include US legitimate tourists who have been robbed, people born out of the country with at least one legitimate US parent, etc. The former can apply to the consulate, but that assumes they're rational. Rational people are an endangered species. The latter may or may not have access to the consulate, even if theory says they should have.
2. In the US (not sure about your country), a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Well, that's the theory, at least. Legal doctrine therefore states these people -cannot- be "illegal immigrants" until proven such. In part, this is due to (1), but it's also because you don't want some mad Arizonian sheriff arresting anyone who "looks funny" and deporting them without lawful right to do so. And, no, saying someone "looks funny" is not a lawful right.
3. Once a person is at a detention centre, there is NO evidence of where they were arrested. There are corrupt police - hopefully not many, but it's definitely non-zero. It would not take much to take a lawful US citizen from within the US and make it appear like they're illegally there, especially if said citizen has no documentation on them (ie: they're undocumented). It's entirely plausible for police to eliminate homelessness by dumping the homeless over the border, and for hospitals to eliminate mental illness the same way. (You've seen the stories on hospitals dumping patients in skid row.) These would not be illegals, these would be undocumenteds.
I cannot tell from a police report or a media photo whether the person was legally entitled to be in the US. Nor can you. Nor can anyone. That is why we have courts. Judge without knowledge at your peril, because it is inevitable that when a society converts a potential for a crime into a crime in itself, you WILL be judged without knowledge yourself. And that's a path that goes downhill FAST.
(Most of those who are passionate about convicting without prosecuting would do well to remember that the road to hell is paved with "good intentions" -- not intentions that are actually good, merely intentions you can fool yourselves into believing are good.)
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Common sense is remarkably uncommon, but I guess you knew that as well. Pi is round, not square. And if I thought I was a guru, I'd be charging a hell of a lot more for my time. Spout off BS and I'll call you on your BS. If you don't want me calling you on it, don't spout it. It's very easy. You might even be able to achieve something like that.
Re:Led (Score:4, Interesting)
1. There may well be people who have US citizenship (and therefore be entirely legal) who have no documentation to prove it (and thus be undocumented).
I think you are deliberately misinterpreting the difference between "undocumented" and "illegal alien".
The illegal alien is not illegal because he has no documents. He is illegal because he entered the country illegally to start with, or has remained in the country in violation of his visa or other entry permit. Many people have no documents. They are not "illegal aliens" because of that.
In the US (not sure about your country), a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Well, that's the theory, at least.
That is the presumption that the government is supposed to make in a criminal case. That is NOT a presumption of fact. I.e., if someone steals a car from me, he is a criminal, period, end of sentence (no pun intended). He became a criminal and assumed guilt when he committed the crime. The government will require proof of such, and is supposed to treat him as innocent until proven guilty with regards to punishment, but I need no such proof before I do. You could try to argue with a casino or retail establishment, but they can tresspass someone for shoplifting or other crime committed on their premises without a court ajudicating the matter.
The idea that someone IS innocent until proven guilty is a logical fallacy. How he must be treated by the judicial system and what he actually is are two very different things.
And, no, saying someone "looks funny" is not a lawful right.
The AZ law regarding illegal aliens had nothing to do with deporting people because they "looked funny". Looking funny was not sufficient grounds.
I cannot tell from a police report or a media photo whether the person was legally entitled to be in the US. Nor can you. Nor can anyone.
Actually, you can tell quite a lot from a police report. "Subject was observed crossing the border into the US at MIddle of Nowhere, Texas." Taking the subject to the nearest border crossing facility and allowing him to either gain legal entry or remain in Mexico is quite reasonable.
Most of those who are passionate about convicting without prosecuting would do well to remember that the road to hell is paved with "good intentions"
Now if only those who favor ignoring federal law in their attempts at fuzzy warm feel good would remember that.
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To your example of someone stealing a car, I'd point out that yes the person who *stole* it may be guilty, but mistaken identity happens all the time and that means that you cannot go by one person's word alone that the person labelled as the thief is indeed the thief. There are all kinds of cases where vigilantes have attacked the wrong person for this very reason. Those vigilantes aren't part of the judicial system, so should they presume innocence? Yes. Obviously. Why obviously? Because the scientific me
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To your example of someone stealing a car, I'd point out that yes the person who *stole* it may be guilty, but mistaken identity happens all the time and that means that you cannot go by one person's word alone that the person labelled as the thief is indeed the thief.
You missed the point completely. The person who stole the car is a thief the moment they stole the car. There is no "innocent until proven guilty". What they are is not the same as a presumption that the government is supposed to make regarding their legal status.
The "illegal alien" is illegal the moment he entered the country illegally. He is illegal not because he has no documents, he is illegal because he broke the law. Calling him "undocumented" is incorrect. Telling me he IS "innocent until proven gu
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You lost any and all credibility right there with that statement.
Scientific method is creating a hypothesis and then carrying out tests to prove or disprove your assumption, this is how science works.
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Scientific method is creating a hypothesis and then carrying out tests to prove or disprove your assumption, this is how science works.
You cannot prove your assumption, that's why it is an assumption.
You cannot prove your hypothesis, only disprove it. For every observed phenomenon, there are a huge number of hypothetical explanations, some or many of which can be disproven by modifying the observation system to account for other effects and making a new observation.
The best you can do in science is say that the observed phenomenon behaves as predicted by the hypothesis within the margin of error of the experiment, and that other hypothe
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In truth "innocent until proven guilty" means you are really guilty until you can prove your innocence.
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They are wasting tax dollars on this. In 6 years 10,000 hours of flight time, they have caught fewer than 5,000 illegal immigrants and 238 drug smugglers, as opposed to 327,577 illegals caught at another border and within a years time.
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i now have Immigrant Song in my head.
Really, no big deal (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Really, no big deal (Score:4, Informative)
Unless you have a falcon or hawk weighing several thousand pounds, I don't think they will have any luck no matter how well you train them. Predator drones have around 80 ft wingspan and weigh thousands of pounds.
The MQ-9 Reaper uses a 900shp turboprop engine to cruise at 172-195mph with a max speed rating of 300mph. Wingspan 66ft. Max takeoff weight 10,500lbs. Operational altitude 25,000ft, service ceiling 50,000ft. Internal payload 800lbs, external payload 3,000lbs for a combined 3,800lbs payload.
To bring one down without using ECM (electronic counter-measures) of some sort (or attacking/disrupting the operator and/or one of the control links) you'd need an A/A gun at a minimum, military A/A missile system, or some kind of homebrew R/C nose-camera equipped rocket-drone with an explosive/fragmenting warhead.
It's easier and safer to toss out any politician that's OK with using drones for surveillance of US citizens domestically. Not to say I think them being thrown out any time soon is likely. Or if they would even allow the vote outcome to stand if they were all voted out as nearly simultaneously as possible.
Strat
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The MQ-9 Reaper uses a 900shp turboprop engine to cruise at 172-195mph with a max speed rating of 300mph. Wingspan 66ft. Max takeoff weight 10,500lbs. Operational altitude 25,000ft, service ceiling 50,000ft. Internal payload 800lbs, external payload 3,000lbs for a combined 3,800lbs payload.
The poor drug cartels are powerless, because they use the metric system. They can't shoot down something if they can't understand where it is, or how much it weighs.
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All you have to do is blitz the raido waves with garbage, wait for it to go into "home" mode, spoof the GPS signal, and you got yourself a hot sell on ebay.
How do you propose to sell one on eBay?
For sale: 1 Mobile Airborne Surveillance uh thing 10,000 Buy it now No returns (I won't be here.)
Re:Really, no big deal (Score:4, Funny)
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Easy:
"Why should kids have all the fun? R/C toy for grown-ups includes all the accessories now found on the latest Real Action toys for children, in adult proportions. Real-action missiles come with realistic explosions."
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hang on, don't all you americans have guns?
can a bullet get that high and do damage?
Fixed cameras vs UAVs (Score:3)
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The thing about cameras is that you have to have hundreds of them to cover a mile, and you have to then have dozens of people to keep track of them. Additionally there are inevitably holes in the coverage area and they don't necessarily handle the heat very well.
A predator drone can cover a large amount of ground and be back before anybody crossing would have gotten far.
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Of course, since there are now thousands of tunnels, the border patrol is also going to need drone C-130 transport planes kitted with synthetic-aperture ground-penetrating radar. Which can be done, but is probably going to add a bit to the cost.
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Just off the top of my head: fixed cameras have much more limited vision (so you need lots more, meaning more eyes to watch them as well), are much easier to avoid and/or damage, and (related to the first one and second) can only see a few hundred feet on either side of the border. The border is almost 2000 miles (3,196km), which is a lot of fixed cameras to watch. Can't rely entirely on motion detection either, since trees and animals move too. Also, tunnels can be seen from the air a lot easier.
Those are
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The Mexico/US border doesn't move a lot. I don't understand why UAV surveillance of it is increasing, while the Boeing system of fixed cameras [seattlepi.com] failed after a $1e9 investment. It seems like fixed cameras would be much cheaper than keeping planes in the air, and would create fewer privacy concerns.
Possibly because it's also a lot easier to disable fixed camera systems, being close to the ground and all. And don't forget the need to run cabling... And/or go around them, at least until you have the complete network in place.
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It's easier to deface or destroy a stationary camera.
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Easy. If they succesfully implemented a permanent surveillance system at the border, they wouldn't be able to award further contracts to their cronies.
Everything about government makes more sense if you assume that graft is its primary function.
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Um, because people can learn where the fixed cameras are and avoid them? UAVs allow adaption to changing border crossing patterns.
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The broader worry is that the use of drones does not seem to require warrants or other checks to make sure that the police are not just recording members of your family in awkward pos
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Also, the terrorism angle is not the real concern. The border hawks don't want the non-whites coming in and messing up their paradise.
Not so long ago... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not so long ago, this type of spying on U.S. residents was seemingly so out of the question. I never heard anything about this when growing up (and I'm not all that old). It says something about our country that this is how we're using our technological advancement -- especially when it's not just spying on potential drug dealers or illegal immigrants, but also spying on average citizens behaving themselves. One could (and probably will) argue "what's the problem if you're not doing something wrong?" The problem is this: not everyone wants to be watched, no matter what they're doing. Privacy is something that every human being innately desires and this is encroaching upon that basic need. Also, one could also argue: why should perfectly well-behaved citizens be spied upon when they're not doing anything wrong? The problem here, innately, is this isn't like the cops on the highway sitting in the corners by trees just eagerly waiting for someone to go by at 100mph because in that case not everyone is actually being watched. When the radar beeps, the cop knows who to pay attention to and nothing is really recorded (except for perhaps the camera on the dash recording you after you're pulled over). Whereas with spying, information is recorded about everyone and not just those breaking laws. There needs to be something in place to either anonymize or delete data that's not relevant to court cases.
The bottom line: years ago, this type of behavior seemed out of the question and now the U.S. has become just as bad as the countries we badmouth every day. There's something really disturbing about the direction we're heading in.
Re:Not so long ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm guessing I'm a few years older than you, because the thought that's been occurring to me lately is that our nation does pretty much every single thing that was used as an argument as to why the Soviet Union was evil:
- Political and economic based prison systems.
- Torture.
- Wars of aggression.
- Spying on our own people.
- Freedoms stripped away unless you were already in an established position of power.
- Propaganda media.
- Secrets, secrets, secrets.
- Censorship.
- Not taking care of the needs of the people while an elite class skims everything worth skimming.
- Diminishing rights over time.
The list goes and on....
Re:Not so long ago... (Score:4)
Re:Not so long ago... (Score:4, Insightful)
The collapse of the party oligarchy in the Soviet Union only brought about the rise of a new criminal-based oligarchy (many of whose members were also members of the original oligarchy). Why do you think things would be different here?
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Why do you think things would be different here?
'Cause we have guns! Oh, wait, so did they... OK, how about the Bill of... nevermind, that's already been subverted... well, there's always... uh...
...
...
Shit.
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But they've got guns which are magical things that allow a single person to hold off heavily armed gangs and/or the best equipped army in the world.
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I'm guessing I'm a few years older than you, because the thought that's been occurring to me lately is that our nation does pretty much every single thing that was used as an argument as to why the Soviet Union was evil:
- Political and economic based prison systems.
- Torture.
- Wars of aggression.
- Spying on our own people.
- Freedoms stripped away unless you were already in an established position of power.
- Propaganda media.
- Secrets, secrets, secrets.
- Censorship.
- Not taking care of the needs of the people while an elite class skims everything worth skimming.
- Diminishing rights over time.
The list goes and on....
To be fair: our elites are way better taken care of than their elites...
Re:Not so long ago... (Score:4, Informative)
The list will go on unless the path is abruptly interrupted.
Ron Paul 2012
Gary Johnson 2016
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But don't you know??? They were Freedom-Hating, Baby-Eating Blood-Thirsty Commies!!!! They just HAD to go down! We're so much morally superior than them!
When the same guys who were in power during the Communist Terror took over the new Capitalist Heaven, they became Respectable Entrepreneurial Freedom Heroes. What would have happened if the same people had remained in power today? Oh, wait...
Oh why do you have freedom? Why do you hate America?
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and yet, with nothing to hide, you posted as anonymous...
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The government and various rogue agencies have long supported spying on US citizens - it is naive to think that this is a recent phenomenon.
Of course in recent memory we do have Nixon and his henchmen; J.E.Hoover use of the FBI for his own agendas as well as nebulously-lawful wiretaps, etc. in search of organized crime. Further back we can look at various usually war-framed laws/dictates that imposed information filtering and espionage charges. My small reading of history would lead me to believe that this
Today in South Carolina (Score:3)
They announced the SC National Guard is going to start practicing with UAVs. The National Guard unit is one specifically tasked to civil disorder operations and "homeland security"......
http://www.thestate.com/2011/12/21/2087491/sc-guard-unit-to-fly-small-uav.html [thestate.com]
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They announced the SC National Guard is going to start practicing with UAVs. The National Guard unit is one specifically tasked to civil disorder operations and "homeland security"......
The article you link to says they are training to use the device for an upcoming deployment. Would you rather send the national guard troops into conflicts without training? They have guns, too. Should they be prohibited from training with guns until they get where they are going?
National Guard units are also tasked with civil disaster relief, which includes the ability to remotely asses the damage and prioritize response. A UAV will give them the ability to view the disaster area from above, something th
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Are you guys for real? (Score:3)
(And if any of you think I'm trolling - drink less cool aid)
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Actually, it's spelled Flavor Aid.
Wait for the day they decide to arm them... (Score:3)
Oh, wait. They already have [vanguarddefense.com]. Shadowhawk UAVs are being deployed with taser shotguns.
ROI (Score:5, Interesting)
Predator drones cost $3,234/hour to operate, according to Customs and Border Protection. TFA pegs the up-front cost of the drones as $20 million each (and CBP has eight of them and is buying one more). That means in total they've spent more than $200 million on this little boondoggle.
Even assuming that every single one of those arrests wouldn't have been made at all without the drone, that's over $41,000 per arrest in surveillance costs alone.
It doesn't sound like CBP is producing a great ROI.
Re:ROI (Score:5, Insightful)
-I'm just sayin'
Ahem... military facilities used domestically? (Score:5, Insightful)
The military has absolutely no place being involved in any kind of domestic surveillance at all. This is by far the MOST worrisome aspect of the whole thing! Yet nobody else yet has even mentioned it.
Slashdot, what has happened to you?
Coasties (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry -- posse comitatus doesn't apply to the coast guard [wikipedia.org]. And you get exactly one guess as to what service that "navy" hanger belongs to. Protip: It isn't the navy.
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Well, then, everything's ok, right? Nothing to see here! Move along.
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Also, anywhere less than 100 miles from the border is effectively a constitutional rights-free zone anyway - see for example
http://www.aclu.org/constitution-free-zone-map/ [aclu.org]
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This kind of BS is precisely why we need someone like Ron Paul as President. Any of the other candidates (all of them "more of the same", despite their campaign rhetoric) would just give us... more of the same.