Unmanned Surveilance drones over America

[meazza]

Windows. 

 

Did you hear about the case in London where some "security officials" were spying into the house of a woman while she was changing and such?  But that won't happen here. 

 

Screw the constitution, who needs checks and balances anyway, as long as you have nothing to hide yourself. 

 

Whatever happened to "We'd rather let 1000 criminals go free than to falsely convict one innocent person?"  I thought these were what our country was founded on.  Oh I'm sorry, things have "changed" now and I'm a terrorist supporter if I disagree with the changes. 

 

CW

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Damn terrorist, why don't you want them watching you

[YellowLinesandArmadillos]

I was assuming that the drones had other capabilities, ones that would be a bit more advanced than a pair of binoculars.

 

EDIT:

Frome the article...(emphasis mine)

Seems like a pretty vague statement. Look, I'm not being some paranoid nut.  You know better than I what the drones are capable of carrying for equipment and technology (wave for the camera Osama).  In the possibility that they would ever get used, what constraints on their use would there be?  Would they require a warrant to be deployed?  Why is it out of the realm of possibility that an administration such as the Bush Admin, whose record with regards to civil rights is a bit, shall we say, sketchy, wouldn't use them indescriminently?

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My understanding from a former military guy in LA, when I asked what a couple of helicopter flyers in the distance were checking out, that they were using infrared over Watts looking for gangbanger. "Tin foil days" not that far off from the truth, hmmm.

 

Man the whole thing gives me the hebee gebees. The rest of you might as well join the Communist Totalitarian Party or 1984 group think. No where to hide, no where to run, we are all just drones. How soon before we are goose stepping.

[BB27]

Supreme court has decided that you cannot look inside of a house with an infrared camera to see if someone is growing Marijuana. I can't remember the exact case, but it said that Law Enforcement's use of infrared cameras on a helicopter to look inside a house (through the roof) for the heat associated with growing lamps was a search according to the 4th ammendment and therefore conducted without a warrant (illegally). The evidence in this case(marijuana) was subsequently suppressed and the defendants charges dismissed.

 

Even though Law Enforcement was right, they did not have probable cause to conduct the search (probably had reasonable suspicion). Again, the unmanned surveillance drones could be up there, but I would bet they are not flying over all our houses just looking for anything. These are going to be used to watch specific people, bad people!

 

The new rules regarding spying do not say that the government can look at anyone, they say they do not need a warrant immediately, as long as there is probable cause to conduct the search (they could get a warrant based on probable cause). They do have to get the warrant within a specific time period. They cannot just search anyone.

 

Big brother may be watching, but, unless you are a criminal, he's not watching you.

[MattyT]

yap

keep giving up your freedom.

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Sorry. When I originally posted this I thought it would sound too ridiculous for people to take seriously. Sadly I was wrong. Apparently people who feel this way are considered normal?

 

I dunno...different strokes?

[meazza]

Sorry. When I originally posted this I thought it would sound too ridiculous for people to take seriously. Sadly I was wrong. Apparently people who feel this way are considered normal?

 

I dunno...different strokes?

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well some people do. I figured you were. sorry if i put you in that group

[Fezmid]

Sorry. When I originally posted this I thought it would sound too ridiculous for people to take seriously. Sadly I was wrong. Apparently people who feel this way are considered normal?

 

I dunno...different strokes?

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Sad, isn't it?

 

CW

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

Can it see through windows?

 

If the angle's right. Not from directly above, it would have to be imaging from a pretty oblique angle...which I don't even know if they can realistically do, as I don't know the pan limitations of their cameras.

 

Of course there's other possibilities - signals interception (how many people talk on a cordless phone?) for example. But there's a fundamental point of law here that, if you're putting something "in plain view", privacy doesn't apply. There's nothing anywhere that says a government agent right now can't look through an open window, be it with binoculars or a recon drone. As far as I know, people in cordless phone conversations have a "reasonable expectation of privacy"...but given that they broadcast so that any yahoo with a police scanner can listen in, and that law enforcement can already cruise the streets and scan for electronic signals coming from houses without a warrant (for example; looking for the radio emissions from UV lamps used to grow pot, which has been done and upheld in court), I'd expect the cordless phone exception to disappear any day now.

 

Really, using recon drones for law enforcement isn't going to break any legal protection that hasn't already been shredded in other decisions. There's no fundamentally new surveillence capability a Predator provides that would somehow create new abuses of legal rights.

[Alaska Darin]

If the government has it, I guarantee someone is going to use it in a way that isn't good. Sorry, seen enough of it with my own two eyes.

 

This is another attempt to use the current buzz of the day "BORDER SECURITY! BORDER SECURITY!" to get another anti-liberty thing put into play. Every government program starts as a good idea and eventually morphs into something either sucky or frightening. Speeding tickets used to be about keeping roads safe. Now they're about gaining revenue without levying a tax.

 

I love the righty mentality that it isn't anti-liberty if their guy puts in in place. I guarantee the argument wouldn't be the same if there was a Democrat doing it. Yeah, you've got nothing to hide. I thing there's enough history of innocent people being slaughtered by overbearing and too powerful governments to use a little smarter argument than that.

[Ghost of BiB]

If the government has it, I guarantee someone is going to use it in a way that isn't good.  Sorry, seen enough of it with my own two eyes.

 

This is another attempt to use the current buzz of the day "BORDER SECURITY!  BORDER SECURITY!" to get another anti-liberty thing put into play.  Every government program starts as a good idea and eventually morphs into something either sucky or frightening.  Speeding tickets used to be about keeping roads safe.  Now they're about gaining revenue without levying a tax.

 

I love the righty mentality that it isn't anti-liberty if their guy puts in in place.  I guarantee the argument wouldn't be the same if there was a Democrat doing it.  Yeah, you've got nothing to hide.  I thing there's enough history of innocent people being slaughtered by overbearing and too powerful governments to use a little smarter argument than that.

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OK, give me a more thorough and cost effective way of monitoring remote border areas. Either that, or everyone quit pissing, moaning and whining about border security. FWIW, using military surveillance assetts for border security operations is perfectly legal, well within posse commitatus and doesn't require a warrant, so everyone sit on it and spin.

[Chilly]

If the government has it, I guarantee someone is going to use it in a way that isn't good.  Sorry, seen enough of it with my own two eyes.

 

This is another attempt to use the current buzz of the day "BORDER SECURITY!  BORDER SECURITY!" to get another anti-liberty thing put into play.  Every government program starts as a good idea and eventually morphs into something either sucky or frightening.  Speeding tickets used to be about keeping roads safe.  Now they're about gaining revenue without levying a tax.

 

I love the righty mentality that it isn't anti-liberty if their guy puts in in place.  I guarantee the argument wouldn't be the same if there was a Democrat doing it.  Yeah, you've got nothing to hide.  I thing there's enough history of innocent people being slaughtered by overbearing and too powerful governments to use a little smarter argument than that.

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You echod my thoughts exactry.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

FWIW, using military surveillance assetts for border security operations is perfectly legal, well within posse commitatus and doesn't require a warrant

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I thought that was kind of...well...obvious, really.

[Alaska Darin]

OK, give me a more thorough and cost effective way of monitoring remote border areas. Either that, or everyone quit pissing, moaning and whining about border security. FWIW, using military surveillance assetts for border security operations is perfectly legal, well within posse commitatus and doesn't require a warrant, so everyone sit on it and spin.

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Since when is the government concerned about cost?

[Ghost of BiB]

Since when is the government concerned about cost?

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Often, if you are working within a budget.

[Ghost of BiB]

I love the righty mentality that it isn't anti-liberty if their guy puts in in place.  I guarantee the argument wouldn't be the same if there was a Democrat doing it.

 

I would welcome the idea if the Democrats put it in place. Once again, without avoiding the issue this time, name me some better, more efficient and "less intrusive on your civil rights" border surveil methods?

[Johnny Coli]

Skipping over the possible Fourth Amendment abuses that using a drone to monitor US citizens might result in (Hey, but who cares as long as you're not doing anything wrong), are they cost effective, or even more reliable than what we currently have?

 

The ones that have been tested (by the Border Patrol I might add ) are not considered very cost effective.

"UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] remain very costly to operate and require a significant amount of logistical support as well as specialized operator and maintenance training," Skinner said. "Operating one UAV requires a crew of up to 20 support personnel. OBP [Office of Border Patrol] officials mentioned that the cost to operate a UAV is more than double the cost of manned aircraft, and that the use of UAVs has resulted in fewer seizures."

[...]

Skinner added that 90 percent of the responses to sensor alerts resulted in "false alarms" because the sensors were reacting to road traffic, trains and animals.

 

"Our analysis indicates that OBP agents are spending many hours investigating legitimate activity because the sensors cannot differentiate between illegal and legitimate events," Skinner said.

 

In adition, the Pentagon is questioning their reliability.

The reliability issue has sparked disagreements among military and civilian experts, amid congressional criticism that UAVs are becoming too expensive. Heating the controversy were comments by Air Combat Command chief Gen. Hal Hornburg at an Air Force Association conference in February. Hornburg dismissed the notion that UAVs are simple expendable vehicles. “Number one, we can’t treat these things like disposable diapers and just throw them out,” Hornburg said. “These things cost money, and it comes out of your treasury, just like it comes out of ours.”

[...]

Brad Brown, president of the Association for Unmanned Aerial Aircrafts International, said that reliability will determine further acceptance of UAVs. “According to several senior officers, who wouldn’t admit it publicly, the reason they were against the use of some of these platforms, including Global Hawk, was reliability. It isn’t just a matter of cost. It boils down to a matter of capability. If you only have two, and you lose one, there goes 50 percent of your capability.”

Agreeing that UAV reliability should improve is easy, but how this will be accomplished is another matter. Cost is a concern. More redundancy of flight control systems boosts reliability, but beyond a certain threshold, they negate the UAV cost advantage over manned aircraft, the Pentagon report noted. Similarly, the absence of components needed for manned aircraft make UAVs cheaper, but also affect reliability. And if reliability is overly compromised, then high attrition will require more UAVs to be acquired, thus negating the cost savings.

 

 

Okey dokey. So, not only are they unreliable, they are costly. In fact they cost more than manned flights, and may even be less effective because of the tendency to register a high number of false positives (90% false positives!!!!).

 

I'm sold!

Let's have a really expensive, unreliable toy flying around US airspace generating false alarms. I don't see any problems there.

[VABills]

I would welcome the idea if the Democrats put it in place. Once again, without avoiding the issue this time, name me some better, more efficient and "less intrusive on your civil rights" border surveil methods?

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Well we tried the military thing with them monitoring the border, but they got into trouble when they killed the "farmer" who accidently crossed the border with a rifle and shot at the military.

[Ghost of BiB]

Skipping over the possible Fourth Amendment abuses that using a drone to monitor US citizens might result in (Hey, but who cares as long as you're not doing anything wrong), are they cost effective, or even more reliable than what we currently have?

 

The ones that have been tested (by the Border Patrol I might add  ) are not considered very cost effective.

In adition, the Pentagon is questioning their reliability.

Okey dokey.  So, not only are they unreliable, they are costly.  In fact they cost more than manned flights, and may even be less effective because of the tendency to register a high number of false positives (90% false positives!!!!). 

 

I'm sold! 

Let's have a really expensive, unreliable toy flying around US airspace generating false alarms.  I don't see any problems there.

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As with anything else, the technology will improve and the costs will come down. You are also as usual celebrating your discoveries of negativity. There are other factors at play, such as loiter time and stealth.

 

What seems to be the bigger issue is the principles. I know you advocate free and open borders with all illegals receiving full citizen benefits upon arrival, but is there ANY point at which you think the government should be able to try to stop bad guys before they get here? Or, should we put all of our resources into fire trucks and health clinics?

[GG]

Skipping over the possible Fourth Amendment abuses that using a drone to monitor US citizens might result in (Hey, but who cares as long as you're not doing anything wrong), are they cost effective, or even more reliable than what we currently have?

 

The ones that have been tested (by the Border Patrol I might add  ) are not considered very cost effective.

 

 

Why not provide the link to the actual DHS testimony, instead of the ABC News interpretation, and let people form their opinions based on that?

[Johnny Coli]

As with anything else, the technology will improve and the costs will come down. You are also as usual celebrating your discoveries of negativity. There are other factors at play, such as loiter time and stealth.

 

What seems to be the bigger issue is the principles. I know you advocate free and open borders with all illegals receiving full citizen benefits upon arrival, but is there ANY point at which you think the government should be able to try to stop bad guys before they get here? Or, should we put all of our resources into fire trucks and health clinics?

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So my pointing out that the proposed system that you want to impliment costs more and sucks means I'm unprincipled and want to open up our borders? Seems like a pretty big leap there, Paul.

 

What was it that Ken menioned (edit sic: mentioned) in the other thread? Throwing money at a problem?

Edited March 31, 2006 by Johnny Coli

[Johnny Coli]

Why not provide the link to the actual DHS testimony, instead of the ABC News interpretation, and let people form their opinions based on that?

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I'll go one further. Because you linked to a pdf file, which most people aren't going to open and read, I'll paste in the bit on UAVs (it was on page 8, or "ocho" for all the illegals that will cross over the boarder while the drone leads the Border Patrol to a rabbit warren)...

 

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Border Security

OBP’s use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) along a portion of the southwest border is one positive step toward using mobile technology. Nevertheless, challenges remain in expanding the use of UAVs, as well. While the UAVs that were tested are able to stay airborne for up to 20 hours, which surpasses any current capability of aircraft in OBP’s fleet, there are significant limitations to the UAV system. Weather conditions can impact the operational capabilities of UAVs. Dense cloud cover limits the visual acuity of some sensor and camera packages. Also, icing conditions and thunderstorms cause difficulty for UAV flights. UAVs remain very costly to operate and require a significant amount of logistical support

as well as specialized operator and maintenance training. Operating one UAV requires a crew of up to 20 support personnel. OBP officials mentioned that the cost to operate a UAV is more than double the cost of manned aircraft, and that the use of UAVs has resulted in fewer seizures. However, the fact remains that UAVs can stay on station for an extended period of time, which is a distinct advantage over manned air support. According to OBP, the Hermes UAV costs $1,351 per flight hour and the Hunter costs $923. Those figures included acquisition costs, operations and maintenance costs, and the salaries and benefits of the pilots, payload operators, and mechanics. Flight hour costs were based on leasing the tested UAVs as opposed to a purchase, which OBP says would be less expensive.

 

 

Additional note added as edit:

As for the ABC "interpretation", there wasn't one. The quote in the ABC report was from Richard Skinner, Department of Homeland Security inspector general. I share your horror that the liberal media has infiltrated a high-level post at DHS, though. Have they no shame?

Edited March 31, 2006 by Johnny Coli