Pentagon Testing Mass Surveillance Balloons Across the US (theguardian.com) 144
The US military is conducting wide-area surveillance tests across six midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons, documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveal. From a report: Up to 25 unmanned solar-powered balloons are being launched from rural South Dakota and drifting 250 miles through an area spanning portions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri, before concluding in central Illinois. Traveling in the stratosphere at altitudes of up to 65,000ft, the balloons are intended to "provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats," according to a filing made on behalf of the Sierra Nevada Corporation, an aerospace and defense company. The balloons are carrying hi-tech radars designed to simultaneously track many individual vehicles day or night, through any kind of weather. The tests, which have not previously been reported, received an FCC license to operate from mid-July until September, following similar flights licensed last year.
Good thing they fly at 65,000 ft (Score:5, Insightful)
otherwise they'd be shot at in short order, and rightly so.
Re: Good thing they fly at 65,000 ft (Score:2)
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Republicans have overlarge amygdala problems. It makes them unable to think, fearful, and unreasonably poor decision makers. Everything the do is a lower-brain-order function fear response. They are barely humans as we know them.
Thinking like that is EXACTLY why Donald Trump won..
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Thinking like that is EXACTLY why Donald Trump won..
Yes, I'm sure there's a plethora of voters who totally agreed with Hillary on everything, but just couldn't tolerate her smug self-righteous supporters, so they held their nose and voted for Trump.
We've got candidates who are literally getting up on stage and promising these people free shit (paid for by taxing the wealthy), and they still aren't convinced to switch sides. At some point you just gotta figure they must enjoy getting the shaft.
Re: Good thing they fly at 65,000 ft (Score:1)
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Because we want them....just like any other property choice a US citizen might want to make.
Re:Good thing they fly at 65,000 ft (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not going to argue anything here, but how people in the US can be so interested in their right to be armed and have so little interest in having access to healthcare is really puzzling to pretty much the rest of the world.
Dying because you can't afford treatment is a right worth dying for.
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whats in the news today (Score:2)
No, because quite a few people in the US are cowards and would do anything to give themselves an illusion of "protection".
Just another case of bystanders watching in horror as someone is butchered on EU streets, and the police threaten punishment for those who share the video on social media.
It's only the threat of armed insurrection does the elites have any respect for us peasants at all. Once that threat is removed, you'll discover how kind your masters actually are.
no masters (Score:2)
...or you could live in a country that practices direct democracy.
then there are no separate masters, the masters taking the ruling decision are the majority of the voting population.
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Well asshole, it didn't take long to make a joke of your notion that everyone should be have guns. See the latest killing spree in El Paso at a Walmart.
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Hey, when a drunk gets in a car and drives it into a van and kills the entire family.....or, even if a terrorist rents a truck and drives it into crowds of people killing them all, you don't blame the truck/car, and call for a ban on them......
You blame the fuckng driver.
The weapons in TX and OH didn't jump up and kill people by themselves, they are inani
o rly (Score:2)
What part of "well regulated militia" don't you understand?
What part of "being necessary to the security of a free state" don't you understand?
What part of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" don't you understand?
What part of "shall not be infringed" don't you understand?
single shot muzzles into perpetuity... lol.
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A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
A well fed Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Food and Drink, shall not be infringed.
I suppose you think that means you go hungry if you're not in the militia.
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What part of a "well-regulated Militia" do you not understand? You figure the founders expect to support armed gangs running around as a "well-regulated Militia"?
The English language has shifted a bit since that was written. Perhaps I can translate.
Militia: Anyone who is armed and capable of using the weapon. Essentially, the people. Of course given social attitudes at the time, they meant men who were not yet feeble with age or infirmity and boys who were on the verge of manhood. These days, there is no reason not to include women.
Well regulated: Proficient. In other words, you could hit what you were aiming at and not hit what you weren't aiming at. In other conte
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So that we can shoot at you when you invade, Ivan.
Its mission is the border not South Dakota (Score:2)
otherwise they'd be shot at in short order, and rightly so.
Perhaps rightly so over South Dakota if it were not being tested, but no so over the border. Such surveillance of the border is justified.
Re:Its mission is the border not South Dakota (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yeah, I'm certain they'll point the camera at the border for the purpose of border patrol, and nothing else. Right...
I'd rather have illegal Mexicans cross the border than the government spying on me. The Mexican are far less nefarious.
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Mexican is a race now?
Godwin subsection (R) alert (Score:2)
I can't help but chuckle every time the flying fickle finger of racism is vomited out in a response. I think that there should be a corollary to Godwin's Law regarding racism.
If people talk about ANY innocuous subject long enough, racism will inevitable be brought up -- e.g. a long discussion about music will devolve into the idea that pianos are racist because they have a majority white keys and that the black keys are repressed because they are further to the back on the keyboard...
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They don't even claim to want these to stop illegal immigration. It's yet more money burned on the alter of the war on (some) drugs.
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This is the end result of project ARGUS.
https://www.theverge.com/2013/2/1/3940898/darpa-gigapixel-drone-surveillance-camera-revealed
A high-altitude high-resolution camera pointed at the city and capable of delivering petabytes of data to the ground. The idea is for police and local governments to make data requests for this camera to slice pieces of a gigabit streaming video and deliver them to the ground such that emergency services can gain a road/block/district-eye view of an incident.
More likely it'll b
1984, a training manual (Score:4, Insightful)
I read 1984 in highschool. When I read it I thought to be boring and completely pointless. At the time I didn't think of it as a training manual for the future.
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silver diagrams and polygons
are you a wizard
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Na, he is a dragon.
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At the time I didn't think of it as a training manual for the future.
Actually it's more of a diary of the author's everyday experiences.
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Clue: The balloons are flying in South Dakota as a test. Their planned deployment is the border.
Clue 2: "1984" had the cameras in your TV, in your home. An altitude of 60K over the
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Do you want a 1980s "Escape from New York" type wall on the border or do you want aerial surveillance that can direct Border Agents to where they are needed?
Actually... I want both. A good boundary wall is still needed to prevent situations where a large number of people co-ordinated simultaneously decide they would like to make a mad dash via diverging paths
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And how exactly do you keep balloons flying along on our side of the border? They go where the wind takes them. What happens when they drift over mexico? These balloons are not for use near the border.
Google dirigibles, barrage balloons, etc. Keeping balloons where we want them is 1930s technology.
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How about a third option?
Instead of working to undermine stable governments that don't kowtow to United States Corporations, like we've done for the last 100 years, how about we work with the Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, and all the South American countries to encourage democratically elected governments, and help them improve their economies so that people don't feel they have to emigrate to the US for a better life? Nobody worries about hordes of Canadians rushing the border.
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Less people want to leave Canada because it is a healthier nation. It enforces its borders and has merit based immigration.
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This stopped being about border control a long time ago
Not this project.
The real intrusive aerial surveillance for US population centers is done by light aircraft. Things far more maneuverable and taskable than balloons, things that don't look odd over a region.
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Aerial surveillance by the feds isn't 1984-esque. What's 1984-esque is things like drone photography being used by local governments to detect unauthorized backyard sheds having been installed and issue permitting citations -- license plate readers being used by local governments to write parking tickets;
facial recognition devices being used by local municipalities and businesses to do who knows what -- or in China, for example, where your social credit score may be impacted by cameras detecting you as
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Nothing you describe is anything like 1984. What does backyard sheds and license plate tickets have to do with 1984? 1984 was about the state controlling the populace, not writing tickets because you decide to park wherever you want.
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"Nothing you describe is anything like 1984."
How about Samsung TVs and Alexa then, does that satisfy you?
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The only thing is the Tele-TV communicators with built-in cameras+microphone+screen
and pervasive wireless networking are not yet available and mandatory --- In the future, they may become more and more
mandatory: starting as a security feature for combatting CC fraud requiring customers to appear on camera to order things
online, then a gradual elimination of older ways of performing various types of transactions that can be done without using a Tele-screen TV,
until it completely replaces the telephone
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1984 was about the state controlling the populace, not writing tickets because you decide to park wherever you want.
These actions, such as the state using drones to invade peoples' backyard that would be impractical and spark outrage to attempt to investigate using humans -- automatic plate readers to automatically Identify and remember what is impractical for humans to do (such as how long a car was parked at place X, or that car XYZ123 was spotted at point Y at 8/2/2019 7:23pm) are examples of the s
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wait, what? (Score:2)
... through an area spanning portions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri...
the balloons are intended to "provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats,"
Wait, what? Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri are the places that the military thinks they need surveillance in for "narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats"?
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... through an area spanning portions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri...
the balloons are intended to "provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats,"
Wait, what? Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri are the places that the military thinks they need surveillance in for "narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats"?
Wouldn't the bigger question be why is the military getting involved with law enforcement actions within the territorial United States? Narcotics trafficking is a legal issue. From the Posse Comitatus Act:
Sec. 15. From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section
So unless the Coast Guard suddenly got a balloon section (and not much in the way of international coastlines in Iowa or Missouri anyway), seems to me we got a little problem here....
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So unless the Coast Guard suddenly got a balloon section (and not much in the way of international coastlines in Iowa or Missouri anyway), seems to me we got a little problem here....
Uhm, the 8th Coast Guard District is responsible for US Coast Guard operations on the Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and Tennessee river systems. When the Mississippi was closed to all boat and barge traffic at St. Louis this spring because the high water was causing dangerous currents, it was the US Coast Guard issuing and enforcing the closure order.
But the Coast Guard wasn't operating these balloons, so... None of the data acquired by the balloons is admissible in criminal court.
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Wouldn't the bigger question be why is the military getting involved with law enforcement actions within the territorial United States?
The current administration has already been using the military as policemen along the southern border... so why not around the northern border as well? We don't want those Canucks to get uppity.
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No use looking for pot fields in the states where it's legal.
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Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri are the places that the military thinks they need surveillance in for "narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats"?
Yes [wordpress.com]
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They were losing luster on "because terrorists" so they needed to ratchet the wording a little.
YOU ARE NOW SECURE.
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I'm kind of thinking that there's maybe at best some pot moving across the border from Canada, but not really much in the way of "narcotics" (loosely defined as meth or heroin). Even pot I'd have questions about considering how much leaks out of Colorado or is just grown locally.
Fentanyl and other sythetic opiates are too concentrated to require the type of midnight frontier crossing. You just mail that shit or carry it in a sealed envelope.
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It is just a test in rural areas with little air traffic. Eventually it will be rolled out.
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Just like the US mil will do in any war zone
Every truck, bus, car, motorcycle, person walking entering the US gets look down tracking.
The US mil is also working on tracking people well before they "enter" the USA.
No extra privacy laws about what the US mil does in another nation once that nation invited the US mil in
A camera and license plate reader gets the driver, any passenger, CCTV for every face on a bus.
The
Weather balloons (Score:3)
Paranoid, Much? (Score:2)
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He spent all his money on "omniscience" and had to use a wildcard for one of the nouns.
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I was going to explain the joke, but then I saw your userid.
You have no excuse for not understanding the joke.
I just hope you got change, Scrabble isn't even a big word.
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Will they be flying over Roswell? (Score:2)
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Back in the 1980's AC. Nothing new, nothing more legally complex.
More and better tech. Nice jobs for contractors. Winning jobs in the US.
Every illegal migrant will be seen day/night, 24/7 all weather
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Where can I get one? (Score:2)
How powerful a laser would you need... (Score:2)
... to shoot that shit down? Asking for a friend...
It's a shame Obama didn't do this (Score:2)
If only Obama had done this, the right would be up in arms over it rather than silently complicit. But then I guess it wouldn't have made a difference if their guy did it again later, so, meh.
Re:It's a shame Obama didn't do this (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama already did his part in ratcheting up the surveillance state and prosecuting whistleblowers with the espionage act.
I wonder what would happen if people cared more about being Americans than merely just Republicans or Democrats, and defended what was in the mutual interest rather than squabbling over cheap political points.
Why? (Score:2)
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This is just the government wanting "Enemy of the State" (movie) level imaging, realizing that it isn't really possible from space/satellites due to the limits of optics and atmospheric impacts (makes for a decent movie, especially given this article).
65,000 feet high should allow for 1-2 foot resolution. Depends on the optics.
Once you get a zoom lens that allows you to see things your eyes can't see it's a different world. Then 100X that (add a telescope).
Welcome to the border (Score:2)
Where did you expect them to be tested? (Score:2)
US government department testing US equipment in the US.
Should the equipment be tested in a foreign country, or deployed without being tested?