More Drones Set To Use US Air Space 223
Dupple writes with a quote from the BBC about more testing of Predator drones in U.S. air space: "Tests have been carried out to see whether military drones can mix safely in the air with passenger planes. The tests involved a Predator B drone fitted with radio location systems found on domestic aircraft that help them spot and avoid other planes. The tests will help to pave the way for greater use of drones in America's domestic airspace."
Who do I have to salute? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hate my country (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pew pew (Score:2, Insightful)
Is the drone stopping and frisking you? Is it taking some kind of infrared scan of your home? An overhead drone can't see anything that isn't in plain view. I'm certainly not saying domestic drones are a good idea, but I'm not seeing how their mere usage could be considered unlawful search and seizure.
Re:hate my country (Score:5, Insightful)
Your country is not the one putting this forth. The current set of "leaders" is. Vote them out next Tuesday.
2008 called, they want their optimism back
Then they too should vote for someone other than the person/group they voted into office back in '08. Because in the past 4 years, we've seen privacy and rights and wealth dwindle to a fraction of what they were prior...
Pilots Soon To Go (Score:5, Insightful)
Make no mistake. As soon as the body of safety data gets large enough we will see the elimination of pilots on commercial air craft. Once it is established that the bots drones are safer than human pilots another trade will vanish. Commercial trucking is on the edge of eliminating human drivers already. The safty record looks good and computized drivers do not break rules, speed, or go mental from the boredom.
The purpose of technology has always been to eliminate human labor. The catch is that we have no social structure at hand to take care of the many millions being displaced by job losses due to better technologies.
Re:hate my country (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who do I have to salute? (Score:5, Insightful)
Say farewell forever to even the concept of posse comitatus, limited as it was. Now it is just a Latin phrase you never heard of.
Oh, don't you worry your pretty little head about that. The military won't technically do any law enforcement(though it may prove necessary to engage in certain 'domestic Force Protection' activities in order to safeguard DoD assets and personel...), they'll just fire-sale off military hardware under the Law Enforcement Support Office [dla.mil](unless you trust DoD certs, you'll probably get an SSL warning here) program to various police SWAT teams who will then use it for them.
See, absolutely nothing to worry about. Yes, the police may be logistically indistinguishable from your average upper-developing-world mechanized infantry; but the org chart says they aren't military, so it's all good.
Re:Pew pew (Score:2, Insightful)
same as GPS tracking in my book. was just fine for someone to follow you around, they couldn't do that to everyone due to manpower limits.
Police cannot have 5 planes wandering around just looking and recording. They could have 5 drones.
What is OK for a person to do becomes no so OK when it is automated.
What, no "skynet" tag? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pew pew (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people freak out if we send unmanned drones up to surveil things, but if you stick a guy in the plane suddenly it's OK?
Most of the protection of your privacy is economic, rather than legal or technological. A guy in a plane or a helicopter is Not Cheap, per hour, which creates a sort of 'de facto probable cause' requirement, since the cops can only justify sending one up if they think that they'll find something worth finding.
Drones are cheaper(still pretty expensive now, getting less so), which means that the economic disincentives to surveillance fall and people enjoy less actual protection from surveillance(since the strict legal protections are markedly lower than the historical economic ones).
Re:hate my country (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:hate my country (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming, incorrectly, that the power of elected officials to avoid being treated like everyone else disappears once they leave office. For proof to the contrary, I give you war criminal Dick Cheney.
Specifically, Cheney proudly said on national television that he ordered waterboarding of prisoners, which the US declared to be a crime against humanity in 1945.
I was waterboarded (Score:4, Insightful)
Waterboarding specifically attempts to avoid water entering the nose, mouth, and airways.
Waterboarding can be done without water entering the victims body, but it can also include procedures where a funnel or syringe is used to dribble water into the back of the victims throat.
Many years ago I went through SERE [wikipedia.org] training, and I was waterboarded as part of the training. The instructors used the less severe method of pouring water onto a cloth covering my mouth and nose. We were given two small dumbells, one to hold in each hand, and told that when it became "unbearable" to just drop the weights and the cloth would be removed. We had a mixture of Navy and Marine personnel, and to give us an extra incentive to last as long as possible they did us one-at-a-time in front of the whole class. I didn't care if I held out longer than the other jarheads, but I was determined not to let any of the "squids" outlast me.
I tried to resist as long as I could, but soon it felt like someone was shooting a blowtorch into my lungs. I would have done anything to make it stop. I was single at the time, but today I have two kids. If I the only way to make it stop was a button that would kill my kids, I think I would push that button. It was that bad. It was certainly enough to make me betray my country and comrades, and no one who hasn't been through it should judge that.
Is it torture? I think it depends on your definition. I had no permanent harm or injury. I think the best answer is to ask if we would consider it torture if it was done to a captured American soldier.
Also, torture can and does result in useful information. Its just not reliable information. There is a difference.
Very true. Anyone who says "torture doesn't work" is clueless. The whole point of our training was to show that it works very well, and expecting anyone to "tough it out" is futile. Instead we need to compartmentalize information on a "need-to-know" basis, and assume that when someone is captured, everything they know is compromised.
There are plenty of methods for getting reliable information. If you have partial information, you can check extracted info against that. Some extracted info can be quickly verified against existing intelligence. If you capture three people, separate them, and continue to torture all three until their stories match up. You can use drugs to help break down resistance, and cloud the detainee's mind so it is difficult to keep the lies consistent. Sodium barbital works well, and can be combined with pain enhancers such as naloxone. If you don't have the drugs available, waterboarding a detainee who is severely sleep deprived works almost as well, but takes more time.
Re:Who do I have to salute? (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the "drug war", they didn't much carry automatic weapons, either, at least since the '20s. Now they do.
The increasing militarization of local police forces is not something to be ignored.
Re:Speaking of local enforcement drones.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm also a pilot. Yes, sport and rec pilots may not have a lot of time (at least not those with new certificates) but they do have "skin" in it, unlike the drone pilots. A drone pilot probably isnt faced with injury or death if he crashes.