Posted on 05/17/2012 3:43:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
Earlier this week, the federal government announced that the Air Force might be dispatching drones to a backyard near you. The stated purpose of these spies in the sky is to assist local police to find missing persons or kidnap victims, or to chase bad guys.
If the drone operator sees you doing anything of interest (Is your fertilizer for the roses or to fuel a bomb? Is that Sudafed for your cold or your meth habit? Are you smoking in front of your kids?), the feds say they may take a picture of you and keep it. The feds predict that they will dispatch or authorize about 30,000 of these unmanned aerial vehicles across America in the next 10 years. Meanwhile, more than 300 local and state police departments are awaiting federal permission to use the drones they already have purchased -- usually with federal stimulus funds.
The government is out of control.
If the police use a drone without a warrant to see who or what is in your backyard or your bedroom, or if while looking for a missing child the drone takes a picture of you in your backyard or bedroom and the government keeps the picture, its use is unnatural and unconstitutional.
I say "unnatural" because we all have a natural right to privacy; it is a fundamental right that is inherent in our humanity. All of us have times of the day and moments in our behavior when we expect that no one -- least of all the government -- will be watching. When the government watches us during those times, it violates our natural right to privacy. It also violates our constitutional right to privacy. The Supreme Court has held consistently that numerous clauses in the Bill of Rights keep the government at bay without a warrant.
Even when we don't have an expectation of privacy, we do have a right to be left alone. But merely watching us in public isn't enough for the police, as many street corner cameras are equipped with listening devices and tiny megaphones. We can expect that these devices will soon bark commands: "Put down that BlackBerry." "Look to your right before crossing." "Don't kiss her; a car is coming." Actually, Big Brother is coming, and he's not smiling.
Big Brother is watching from the skies, as well as the streets. This started when the Department of Defense decided to offer help to police -- and they are prepared to accept. Never mind that the military may not lawfully operate within our borders, except in the case of rebellion, and then only when publicly authorized by the president. Never mind that the military may not lawfully be used for law enforcement, except in the case of disaster, and then only when publicly authorized by the president. And never mind that this use of drones by the Air Force was not the result of legislation debated and enacted by Congress, but was done under the authority of the president alone.
Add to all this the use of drones to kill people. President Obama has argued that he can use drones to kill Americans overseas, whose deaths he believes will keep us all safer, without any constitutional due process whatsoever. His attorney general has argued that the president's careful consideration of each target and the narrow use of deadly drones are an adequate substitute for due process. Of course, no court has ever ruled that way. The president's national security adviser has argued that the use of drones is humane since they are "surgical" and only kill their targets. Of course, that's not true, but it misses the point. Without a declaration of war, the president can't lawfully kill anyone, no matter how humane his killing.
How long will it be before the Air Force and the police adopt the unconstitutional arguments of the president's wrongheaded advisers and use the drones not only to spy but also to kill Americans in America?
The whole reason we have a Bill of Rights is to assure that tyranny does not happen here, to guarantee that the government to which we have supposedly consented will leave us alone. Do you think the government accepts that? Would you feel safe with a drone in your backyard? Would you feel like you were in America?
Had a relative work on satalittes. They have the tech to recognize voices and track them for some time (Remember the NYT article on OBL cell phone?...Could we have known where Osama was for years and been monitoring him? Would Obama put his political position (killing him) above the knowledge we were obtaining?
I think the solution is the choke the horse. Feed the drones with an unbelievable amount of false positives. Fake images of weapons, aircraft, etc would require a visit from the police. Of course you have a 1st amendment right to artistic expression so the fake images are perfectly legal. If such fakery can drive up the cost and make the surveillance worthless maybe it’ll go away. Maybe.
Personally, I’m looking forward to adding one to my trophy wall.
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They have to be controlled by a radio signal...
Build a transmitter.
Radio transmitter.
One maybe, 30,000 no chance. Unless, we quit our jobs and or quit running our businesses and take this up full time?
Radio transmitters can easily be built.
Jamming signals like the ones used to disrupt cell phone use in certain places are easily available.
No Constitutional expert here, but don't you already have a right to privacy and against non warranted searches?
Yes...
If you can block cell phone use...
Most of the drones they are talking about here are very small, and will be flying very low. They will have to stay below controlled airspace, and they will be more effective at their task the lower they are.
I think some form of “defense” will be effective.
Check here for a picture of a typical “municipal” drone:
http://personalliberty.com/2011/11/29/aerial-drones-may-be-coming-to-your-town/
They have to take off and land sometime. While expensive, something like this may have some promise....
I teach systems for mission planning. The capabilities for knowing just about everything going on across the planet are imppressive. Modern technologies and the literal web of communications has made nothing truly secret in the world. Big Brother has the tools, it’s whether or not they will be used against Joe-Citizen. I remeber when satelite photo capabilities was classified - today we have Google Earth which has pretty much mapped the Earths and should make it easy for folks to understand that they cannot hide if Big Brother wants to find/look at them - the image of my house is good enough to tell it’s a metal roof and to tell if my lawn mower is out of the shed. That said, they also ensure our military is the most potent force in the world, despite the lack of will to turn her loose. All the technology and capabilities of weapons systems/smart bombs, etc., is useless without the intelligence to allow for identifying/reaching a target.
I’m reminded of a military tactics handbook that asks and answers the question of “how can infantry defeat an armored division.” The answer is basically to shift the battlefield to where infantry has the advantage. These low-flying drones will have a radio-van to control them. Hacking or jamming the data-stream might not work 100 percent of the time. But taking out that radio-van... works every time.
Nope. Not from the air. The FAA authorizes flight paths over your property all the time and you have no standing in court to challenge them.
My understanding is that the drone is controlled from a far remote [military] base. You aren’t going to take out the controller.
I think the “choking” solution is the answer.
Find out what they’re looking for and set up a BUNCH of fakes of that item (in your mother-in-law’s backyard).
You'd be correct where "predator-class" drones are concerned. A lot of military assistance to law enforcement takes the form of providing human technical assistance and selling/lending hardware to police tactical units. Eventually you'll see police forces purchasing their own mini & micro-drones and having the US Army or USAF teaching them how to employ them tactically. I may have been pre-mature in addressing the latter, but only by a few years I think. Those low-flying (small) drones will most likely be controlled by a mobile ground unit.
In Bosnia, the Serbs used broken-down tanks and trucks as bait. They would drag them into a field from the woods on a foggy night, and build a wood fire inside the engine space, for a heat sig, plus set up a microwave, radio etc inside.
We dropped million-dollar ordnance onto old piles of junk, over and over.
If our govt turned overtly tyrannical, they have tools at their disposal to find and eliminate “enemies of the state” that Hitler, Stalin and Mao could only have dreamed of.
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