Drones over U.S. get OK by Congress

EagleAye · Feb 15, 2012

Blue_State said:
The individuals behavior is fine.

If this is so, why do we still have crime?

I watched video of young kids robbing an old woman at train stop, then beating and choking her, finally throwing her onto the train tracks. I'm sorry, but I cannot accept that behavior as "fine."

Blue_State · Feb 15, 2012

EagleAye said:
If this is so, why do we still have crime?

I watched video of young kids robbing an old woman at train stop, then beating and choking her, finally throwing her onto the train tracks. I'm sorry, but I cannot accept that behavior as "fine."

A UAV with a tow missle would have fixed the situation.

At some point there is a limited return on your investment for security. A platform cop would have been cheaper than a UAV for the situation described. This world will never be perfect, but at least it isn't lawless or a police state. We need to find the happy medium.

Blue_State · Feb 15, 2012

EagleAye said:
A drone can't see everything everywhere every moment. Most likely drones would be employed over "hot spots" where crime is most frequent. So if you're living in a sleep suburban neighborhood it's unlikely a drone would be monitoring there. But if I lived in a dangerous neighborhood, I would damned well insist on a drone keeping an eye out the moment I left the door.

So we are going to only monitor dangerous neighborhoods. Which, as you pointed out, are not in suburban neighborhoods. And if we start additional monitoring in these neighborhoods, when will it become that we are oppressing a class in our society? Why would one class require more monitoring than say, millionaires?

Chaddelamancha · Feb 15, 2012

Didn't Iran hack one of our drones and bring it down? What is to say that couldn't happen here?

EagleAye · Feb 15, 2012

Blue_State said:
A UAV with a tow missle would have fixed the situation.

I'll assume sarcasm here. UAVs would best be unarmed in domestic use and relegated to surveillance.

Blue_State said:
At some point there is a limited return on your investment for security. A platform cop would have been cheaper than a UAV for the situation described. This world will never be perfect, but at least it isn't lawless or a police state. We need to find the happy medium.

Let's assume you have 60 platforms, and 20 are in high risk areas. Then you'd need 40 full-time cops in the 20-platform high risk area (best to operate in pairs). That's a lot of cops requiring a massive budget. But with one or two UAVs you could monitor the high risk area and deploy cops as needed. You'll actually save money while providing more protection.

Blue_State said:
So we are going to only monitor dangerous neighborhoods. Which, as you pointed out, are not in suburban neighborhoods. And if we start additional monitoring in these neighborhoods, when will it become that we are oppressing a class in our society? Why would one class require more monitoring than say, millionaires?

I guess you're considering "profiling," yes? It's deploying forces to high-risk areas. It's not profiling in the slightest. If millionaires are committing crimes then you start deploying to their areas too. I don't consider police cars surveilling my neighbor an imposition of my rights, I call it safety. Their mere presence drives the criminal element away. For the same reason I would not call drone surveillance in imposition on my rights either. I would call it safety.

Blue_State · Feb 15, 2012

EagleAye said:
I'll assume sarcasm here. UAVs would best be unarmed in domestic use and relegated to surveillance.

Yes it was sarcasm. But to your point, were did it say they would be unarmed for domestic use?

Let's assume you have 60 platforms, and 20 are in high risk areas. Then you'd need 40 full-time cops in the 20-platform high risk area (best to operate in pairs). That's a lot of cops requiring a massive budget. But with one or two UAVs you could monitor the high risk area and deploy cops as needed. You'll actually save money while providing more protection.

Being that I have experience with UAVs, I don't think they will work the way you are thinking. Wouldn't it be cheaper to have video cameras on these platforms? We can have a guy eating donuts and watching TV to take care of this. Lower cost in training too.

I guess you're considering "profiling," yes? It's deploying forces to high-risk areas. It's not profiling in the slightest. If millionaires are committing crimes then you start deploying to their areas too. I don't consider police cars surveilling my neighbor an imposition of my rights, I call it safety. Their mere presence drives the criminal element away. For the same reason I would not call drone surveillance in imposition on my rights either. I would call it safety.

I get what you are saying, but there is a limited return on this investment. Furthermore, it goes past the Supreme Courts ruling which was just passed down on the use of GPS systems on cars of suspects.

The other GPS data, which implicated him in the crimes charged, was admissible, the district court concluded, because “[a] person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned the conviction, concluding the police’s use of the GPS device violated Jones’ Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and thus the evidence obtained from the GPS was inadmissible.

The Supreme Court unanimously agreed that police violated the Fourth Amendment. But the majority left the door open for future issues relating to a person’s expectation of privacy in a highly digital world, including whether a warrant is always required in GPS cases.

State Bar of Wisconsin | InsideTrack | GPS tracking: U.S. Supreme Court lays foundation for future Fourth Amendment cases

EagleAye · Feb 15, 2012

Blue_State said:
Yes it was sarcasm. But to your point, were did it say they would be unarmed for domestic use?

I don't know that it does, but I would be opposed to domestic drones armed with military weapons.

Blue_State said:
Being that I have experience with UAVs, I don't think they will work the way you are thinking. Wouldn't it be cheaper to have video cameras on these platforms? We can have a guy eating donuts and watching TV to take care of this. Lower cost in training too.

My idea for handling this is also not included in the article. But if you set up an easy number to call for cell phones (999) for instance, A system could locate that cell phone and a drone could retask to survey the source of the call. Someone experiencing a crime or witnessing one could actually get a drone into the area extremely fast.

Blue_State said:
I get what you are saying, but there is a limited return on this investment. Furthermore, it goes past the Supreme Courts ruling which was just passed down on the use of GPS systems on cars of suspects.

State Bar of Wisconsin | InsideTrack | GPS tracking: U.S. Supreme Court lays foundation for future Fourth Amendment cases

I don't think a drone should be tasked to monitor cars in general. Common traffic violations should be the purview of regular mobile police. It would best be used to keep eyes on people who have already committed or are in the process of committing a crime. So probable cause rules would be in place. I don't think that would violate the supreme court's ruling.

Blue_State · Feb 15, 2012

EagleAye said:
I don't know that it does, but I would be opposed to domestic drones armed with military weapons.

My idea for handling this is also not included in the article. But if you set up an easy number to call for cell phones (999) for instance, A system could locate that cell phone and a drone could retask to survey the source of the call. Someone experiencing a crime or witnessing one could actually get a drone into the area extremely fast.

I don't think a drone should be tasked to monitor cars in general. Common traffic violations should be the purview of regular mobile police. It would best be used to keep eyes on people who have already committed or are in the process of committing a crime. So probable cause rules would be in place. I don't think that would violate the supreme court's ruling.

Probable cause was how the police got the warrent for the GPS. They had to throw out a lot of evidence they gathered off the GPS device.

EagleAye · Feb 15, 2012

Blue_State said:
Probable cause was how the police got the warrent for the GPS. They had to throw out a lot of evidence they gathered off the GPS device.

It looks like they threw the evidence out because the expiration had expired, NOT because they were using a GPS tracker.

Police had a warrant to attach the GPS, but it expired before installation, and they attached it in a jurisdiction not covered by the warrant. Thus, police installed the GPS device without a warrant

.

samsmart · Feb 15, 2012

Temporal said:
Why is 1984 becoming more and more of a reality?

To be fair, with pictures and videos being voluntarily put all over Facebook, it's just as much becoming "A Brave New World."

EagleAye · Feb 15, 2012

EagleAye said:
It looks like they threw the evidence out because the expiration had expired, NOT because they were using a GPS tracker.
.

Argh...too late to edit. The "warrant had expired"

Risky Thicket · Feb 15, 2012

KevinKohler said:
So..if both the liberals and the conservatives pretty much hate this, why have our elected "reps" voted positive on it?

Because the idea that we are self-governed is an illusion and most of the citizens of America are clueless or could not care less. It saddens me when everyone still sings "in the land of the free", no we aren't. The idea is of course that if we repeat that mantra enough we will believe it and sadly many Americans still do.

Grant · Feb 16, 2012

Risky Thicket said:
Because the idea that we are self-governed is an illusion and most of the citizens of America are clueless or could not care less. It saddens me when everyone still sings "in the land of the free", no we aren't. The idea is of course that if we repeat that mantra enough we will believe it and sadly many Americans still do.

Perhaps, Risky Thicket, but we can still take some solace in the fact that it is not yet as bad as the UK. They may still have time to turn it around.

Grant · Feb 16, 2012

EagleAye said:
If this is so, why do we still have crime?

I watched video of young kids robbing an old woman at train stop, then beating and choking her, finally throwing her onto the train tracks. I'm sorry, but I cannot accept that behavior as "fine."

No, need to be sorry at all.

Who took the video you were watching?

Blue_State · Feb 16, 2012

EagleAye said:
It looks like they threw the evidence out because the expiration had expired, NOT because they were using a GPS tracker.
.

Agreed, that was an important part of the case, but the ruling came down on the 4th amendment vs advanced surveillance equipment.

EagleAye · Feb 16, 2012

Blue_State said:
Agreed, that was an important part of the case, but the ruling came down on the 4th amendment vs advanced surveillance equipment.

Okay, but if you read under the section labaled, "Advancing technology and the Fourth Amendment," you'll find this (my bold):

Thus, in cases where police have not used a “physical intrusion” to install a GPS device, one’s “reasonable expectation of privacy” may depend on the length of surveillance. And it may depend on the wealth of data that police can acquire through GPS monitoring.

[...]

Four justices agreed that police violated Jones’s Fourth Amendment rights, not because of a physical intrusion, but because the monitoring went on too long.

So justices are finding a 4th amendment violation because of the duration, not the means. Lastly, we find this (my bold):

Alito’s concurrence noted that the line was surely crossed before the four-week mark, but other cases may be different. “~~hort term monitoring~~ of a person’s movements on public streets accords with expectations of privacy that our society has recognized as reasonable,” Alito wrote, suggesting that warrantless GPS monitoring may be reasonable in certain cases.

EagleAye · Feb 16, 2012

Grant said:
No, need to be sorry at all.

Who took the video you were watching?

I believe it was captured by the platform surveillance cameras. Unfortunately, the camera feed wasn't being monitored.

Drones over U.S. get OK by Congress

Sewer Rat