Pentagon admits it has deployed military spy drones over the U.S
usatoday.com
usatoday.com
Military resources, such as The National Guard, get called up for disaster relief all of the time. I think I'd rather drones helping people in these scenarios than what they're primarily used for.
Also, I don't think UAVs are the best option for mass surveillance. I mean, there's cameras on every corner, phones in every pocket, etc. There's enough cameras to spy on people, you don't need to stick a very expensive drone that will last only a couple hours/days and not be able to peek in houses as well as someone's webcam.
I'm not sure how I feel about this bit though.
> an unnamed mayor asked the Marine Corps to use a drone to find potholes in the mayor's city
I mean. Is it helpful? Yes. Is it a really good way to find potentially dangerous potholes? Probably. It just seems... excessive.
I agree for these kinds of UAVs, but ARGUS [1] blimps are probably super effective and worrisome.
It can even make the potholes first by firing off a few missiles
Maybe he's trying to figure out if he can use a DHS grant to buy "OMG TERRORISM" drones, that just happens to look for potholes whenever it has a few minutes off between terror attacks?
EDIT: On second thought, is finding the holes really the bottleneck in The War on Potholes? And if so, isn't this better fixed with an answering machine, and/or a $5000 Rails app?
You can locate such "interesting" flights right now, using your browser. Just open up ADSB Exchange Virtual Radar [1], which doesn't filter out flights with certain squawk codes like other online virtual radar sites do. If you do, select "Menu" from the map (with the gear icon), then "Options". Select the "Filter" tab, select to "Enable filters", select "Interesting" from the dropdown listbox, and select "Add Filter". Now you can zoom out over the country, and see all the "interesting" flights using the table on the left. Note any flights with the "LE" or "FBI" or "DHS" user tag.
Right now, as I write this, an FBI-owned aircraft is circling over the Norwood/Bronx area of NYC [2], tail number N912EX, registered to OBR Leasing (one of the "shells" that the US Gov't uses for registering its law enforcement aircraft), as mentioned in an AP story last summer [3]
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jjwiseman
[1]: http://www.adsbexchange.com, select "Currently Tracking [number] Aircraft on upper-right"
[2]: http://i.imgur.com/EUYqx98.png
[3]: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4b3f220e33b64123a3909c60845da...
Edit: Another one, flying around NW Los Angeles, right now: http://i.imgur.com/PwRpqRe.png
Edit2: Any aircraft squawking transponder beacon codes between 4401-4433 are engaged in law enforcement operations. More on the various squawk codes reserved by US Gov't operations can be found here (pdf link): http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/FINAL_Order_7...
Thanks for all the information by the way, very informative.
There's more info on how I track aircraft and how I figured out that the FBI was flying over 100 aircraft registered to front companies, some of them doing aerial surveillance, here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zwRyuVJGaQwG6mYMSYWo...
--Dan
This is really neat. However, it's only showing 10 flights in the Southwest (USA) area. O_o How come it shows nothing in the El Paso area? I find that hard to believe (also: There are none flying in OR, ID, UT, CO or NM?)
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillan...
Yep, and that's really neat.
My point is it is obviously b.s. data. there are far too few aircraft being shown for it to be realistic.
That's why you don't see a lot of aircraft on the map, not a failure of realism.
> not a failure of realism.
Actually it's exactly that. What you just said proves it. In reality, there are a lot more aircraft than being shown on that map due to the low number of volunteers and stealth nature of the aircraft.
I remember during the San Bernardino shooting online tracking showed 2+ LEO aircraft
Edit: it's showing two Hawker Hunters over CA right now...
Flies in circles
Flies over one region for hours
Flies at around 5000 feet altitude
Squawks 4414 or 4415
Uses a callsign that starts with JENA or JENNA
Registered owner in Bristow VA, Greenville DE, Wilmington DE, or Manassas VA
Typo?
http://blog.enigma.io/track-84-aircrafts-the-fbi-uses-for-su...
I'm sure that there's a good reason for it but the Turkish military has a plane over Columbus, Ohio. I would have never expected to see that.
It's not an invasion if we invited them and they're not attacking.
N725DT CESSNA 750
Fascinating tool! thanks for sharing!
I still believe this should have illegal as they had no warrant and it violates the Posse Comitatus Act.
The Act only specifically applies to the United States Army and, as amended in 1956, the United States Air Force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Customs_and_Border_Protec...
So, totally legal, then.
That's news to me!
The exact timeline is unclear, but many of the stories indicate that the drone was brought in after the arrest turned into an armed standoff, with the drone being used to figure out where the armed people were so that the arrests could be made safely.
Under those circumstances, I don't see how using the drone would require a warrant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Riley
The interesting question is what about infrared and other "through the wall" technologies that give an indication as to what's inside a structure. In Kyllo, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 (with Scalia writing the majority opinion) that using a thermal imaging camera to investigate heat emitted from the wall of a house was a "search" that required a warrant.
"Any member of the public could legally have been flying over Riley's property in a helicopter at the altitude of 400 feet and could have observed Riley's greenhouse. The police officer did no more."
They targeted a specific farmer and used a high power camera in a drone to check the cows. So, they did quite a lot more than the general public could have done. This was closer to Kyllo than Riley. Beyond that, the legality of using a drone over other people's property is going through the courts now.
This case is more like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_v._Ciraolo , where the police intentionally targeted a suspected marijuana farmer with a flyover (without a warrant). The farmer lost. I can't imagine the court would think that a ranch with cattle is entitled to more privacy protection than a fenced-in backyard growing pot.
To my knowledge, no Supreme Court case has ever said that advanced visual optics can't be used outside the home.
At the same time, I guess on a personal, gut reaction level, it seems a bit more threatening or overreaching to think about any aircraft, manned or not, constantly flying around just recording everything for reference under the argument that it could help identify other crimes or locate individuals.
It may be illogical to be OK with a police chopper but not other surveillance craft but I think the potential for abuse and overreach skyrockets when you have the ability to find and track individuals at any time or create a record of their actions and travels for later analysis. I guess my emotional reaction stems from law enforcement responding to reports of crime versus just recording everything in case there's a crime. In the latter case, it wouldn't be hard to find something to nail someone on if you had a long enough record of their lives and activities and that's what unsettles me.
From a tech angle it's impressive and, sure, it seems great that they're able to use this sort of tech to track down seriously dangerous people responsible for brutal crimes.
At the same time, I can't help but be a bit uneasy with the potential for abuse. When you've got a complete aerial recording of a (city/town/etc) for days or weeks in a row, all you've got to do if there's someone you're after is "rewind" far enough before you catch them doing something you can nail them on.
Taken to extreme, imagine you're an a public official or law enforcement agent with an authoritarian bent. There's a pesky blogger or activist or reporter that's been making your life difficult and you'd like them out of the picture. How far back do you need to rewind before you catch them speeding or running red lights? What will the public think when you've got video of them visiting their secret lover or they learn how this person goes to the bar or liquor store every night to get drunk? Or how about the easy unmasking of their confidential info sources you're able to track backwards from their meetings?
I'm not necessarily one to kneejerk against any application of tech because of the potential for abuse because it misses the potential for very positive outcomes. At the same time, genies don't go back in their bottles willingly and I think it's important to identify these abuse potentials so they can be addressed early and decisively rather than after the abuses have become par for the course.
Even if the government used a specific fleet of non-combat related drones, that wouldn't stop them from switching over to combat-ready drones tomorrow if they so wished it.
Like it or not, since the 1980s it has been the law that from "public airspace" police can use any visual technology to look at the outside of your property. Right or wrong, it's pretty settled law that if the public can fly somewhere then law enforcement can also fly there without a warrant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Riley
Ciraolo is another case where police, without a warrant, intentionally flew over a backyard that was enclosed by a fence. In that case, the police found marijuana plants growing. The court upheld the conviction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_v._Ciraolo
The interesting question is what about infrared and other "through the wall" technologies that give an indication as to what's inside a structure. In Kyllo, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 (with Scalia writing the majority opinion) that using a thermal imaging camera to investigate heat emitted from the wall of a house was a "search" that required a warrant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States
(a) it took a freedom of information request to make this information public.
(b) the Pentagon did it's own internal report and found that there was no wrongdoing.
(c) that nobody in the government is going to hold these clowns responsible or create any sort of legitimate process for determining whether these flights were legal or not.
"A senior policy analyst for the ACLU, Jay Stanley, said it is good news no legal violations were found"
"the Pentagon established interim guidance in 2006 governing when and whether the unmanned aircraft could be used domestically. The interim policy allowed spy drones to be used for homeland defense purposes in the U.S. and to assist civil authorities."
disgusting how broad that is, almost anything could be under that umbrella
The Sec Defense can make available for "expert advice" and "training" and stuff like that, and that's what JSOC operates under. AFAIK they're the only army command running under those rules on a continuous basis.
Note that the Army does bust active duty MPs for doing things off base.
Another rarely understood part of the Posse Comitatus act is a state governor can do anything he wants inside his own state with NG / ANG troops. Its only when they're federalized or operating outside their state that they can't enforce laws. NG troops can "pretty much" do anything their governor orders them to do within their state borders. The active, reserve, and guard components are at least sometimes deeply intermeshed. Would not surprise me for a guard pilot to casually be called an "army dude" by a journalist with no military experience (aka all of them)
Just because something is legal or some twisted definition thereof (eg waterboarding is not torture) does not mean that it's right. And for people of power to hide behind the guise of legality is so often not sufficiently called out and deterred.
For example, there have been multiple laws passed/proposed in various countries because "think of the children" or "terrorism". The Patriot Act was written before 9/11 and passed in a hurry. To the point, where the original architect of the act now regrets his actions [1]. Or the fact that the act is now overwhelming used for prosecuting drug activities instead of its original intended purpose [2].
> "Weather the surveillance is manned or unmanned isn't of ethical concern"
I would disagree with this statement. It's the difference between a police stakeout and them planting a webcam [3].
I repeatedly stress at work to people involved with big data projects that want to advance the notion of a data lake. "Just because we can does not mean that we should". I'm not convinced that the legal route is sufficient to check such activity and is why I'm a proponent of systems that prevent bad actors from intercepting (zero knowledge?) instead of "we promise not to look" solutions.
I'll end with:
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
[1] http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/15/patriot-act-author-meets-w...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/29/...
[3] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/cops-illegally-na...
I think all of us on HN are familiar with the qualitative effects of "big data" both in general and as it pertains to surveillance. I hope we're all sophisticated enough to realize that the issues at hand revolve around scale, probable cause, and data retention/mining, rather than the canard of whether the platform involved was manned or unmanned.
As to your statement that it's <20 over 9 years, at the risk of sounding a little tin-foilish, but that's what is publicly being admitted to.
Such activities always start small. https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/U...
2. The people who investigated it believe is is legal.
What more do you want from them?
Let's play a guessing game! San Diego? We've got Miramar and Camp Pendleton here, along with crumbling infrastructure and terrible potholes. Although the city certainly doesn't need help finding potholes around here...
Using drones for this kind of thing actually makes a lot of sense, although not a $20 million militarized Predator.
For just potholes, yeah, but there is a lot of other municipal infrastructure that could benefit from aerial inspection, especially if they are in non-public, low traffic or otherwise inaccessible areas.
Waze also has Morgan Freeman's voice for navigation. Glorious!
Militarizing cities for potholes is just plain wrong. That's something you'd expect to hear from a Stalinist regime, not a democratic nation.
[0] http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/Kentucky-Transportation-C...
I wonder, which do we have?
The later might make some sense, though, as part of training for the drone operators. Spotting a small disturbance in the surface of a street such as a pothole could require similar skills to spotting a small disturbance in the surface of a street due to someone having buried a timed or remote-control explosive there.
Similar considerations could apply to many other uses of military drones in civilian operations. Using a military drone to find a missing hiker in a state park, for example, would involve similar skills to using a drone to find a missing military pilot shot down in hostile territory.
In fact, aside from actually shooting guns or missiles at people or dropping bombs, I'd expect that for most skills that a military drone pilot needs for their military missions there are civilian situations where those same skills are useful, and for which using their skills in those civilian situations would improve their ability to do their military missions.
As long as proper safeguards are in place to make sure that they are not put to use in ways that violate our rights, and these civilian uses have a military justification (such as providing cheap or convenient training for the drone operators), I'm open to considering allowing these uses.
Okay never thought of that situation, it would be a good training scenario.
According to Time Magazine the operating cost of a single MQ-1 Predator per flight hour is $3,679 which might actually make it cost effective depending on the size of the area to be imaged.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predato... http://nation.time.com/2013/04/02/costly-flight-hours/
Sometimes, maybe. I'd argue rarely. I don't see much difference between an unmanned drone and an unmanned satellite or a manned helicopter in terms of applicable law.
Believing that a new law is needed because computers/drones/robots/AI/whatever now exist can lead to bad laws, or laws that are out-of-balance in terms of punishment. (i.e., commit a crime - 5 years. commit the same crime WITH A COMPUTER - 10 years)
> "It's important to remember that the American people do find this to be a very, very sensitive topic."
I think the media finds this to be an eyeball-grabbing topic, but AFAICT, the American people do not care much about it.
I think the important distinction is police vs millitary, not drone vs satellite vs helicopter. As @protomyth pointed out, there is existing law (Posse Comitatus Act) which may prohibit such things. The article does say that the drone flights were done in accordance with existing laws. But, given the propensity for the FBI to flaunt laws and mislead the public about doing so, I'm not sure how much I trust that statement in the article.
> Believing that a new law is needed because computers/drones/robots/AI/whatever now exist can lead to bad laws, or laws that are out-of-balance in terms of punishment. (i.e., commit a crime - 5 years. commit the same crime WITH A COMPUTER - 10 years)
I agree with this. I don't think new laws should necessarily be specifically created for this. At any rate, it seems like the Posse Comitatus Act should cover this already.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/05/18/obama...
Indeed.
> see the drone that killed my grandson
Say what?
The victim in the title was a US citizen, in foreign territory (Yemen) at the time of the incident.
Some of the things we once defined as just we now consider to be heinous human rights violations that only occur in the worst corners of the world - slavery, inequality etc. Some laws are commonly considered out of date and failing today's society - drugs, mass-incarceration, copyright, patents, marriage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarization_of_police
I'm curious about the flight plan approval and filing process they go through with the FAA.
Also wondering if the flights show up on the 5 minute delayed ASDI API:
http://www.fly.faa.gov/ASDI/asdi.html
And if the drones carry ADS-B transceivers and if they show up on other transceivers during flight. (Which would make them visible/trackable to anyone ground or air based that is listening)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillan...
Personally, from a law enforcement perspective I don't see the big difference between drones and manned aircraft. What really matters is what kind of sensors are on the aircraft and what they do with the data.
It is the same difference as exists between automatic license plate readers and people standing on a corner with a pad and paper. I realize that a certain mindset (active in legal circles, but not exclusively so) that doesn't see that capabilities end up swallowing the original tradeoffs in some contexts.
Put a different way, you're right. There's no capability difference. Lower cost and automation will simply allow much, much more of the same. Like how automatic weapons offer no capability difference over a single shot rifle - they just do the same thing faster. Hm...
A)Conducted by United States Army or the United States Air Force, and
B)Conducted to enforce domestic policies within the United States
Would be in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. However, there is disagreement over whether this language may apply to troops used in an advisory, support, disaster response, or other homeland defense role, as opposed to domestic law enforcement.[1]
[0]http://legisworks.org/sal/20/stats/STATUTE-20-Pg152.pdf
[1]https://www.jagcnet.army.mil/DOCLIBS/MILITARYLAWREVIEW.NSF/2...
"Legal" is quite a bit less so – although not totally objective even then.
If the goal of these drones is to spy on terrorists, then isn't it possible that terrorists exist in the US too? If we shouldn't have drones spying on US citizens because it violates our privacy, then shouldn't other citizens of other nations have privacy too?
Maybe it's not so bad (or illegal?) if these drones fly over some middle eastern nation, but what if we started flying them over some western nation like the UK, or Germany (potentially without their consent). Is it still okay then?
It looked like a giant model aircraft getting launched when the wind hit it. Pretty cool at the time, although after reading this, I hope it was just a training mission over some non-existent Nevada AFB...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/23/us-justificatio...
Now his son on the other hand is extremely questionable and smacks of revenge.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-drone-memo-...
Drone strikes are used as a replacement for manned air strikes, which in turn are used when a target is too isolated to engage with ground forces.
The reason that we're not going to see drone strikes on US soil is the same reason we don't see air strikes on US soil: you can deploy SWAT teams on US soil.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/27/435301160/...
So you are correct in that we won't see hellfire missles deployed on US ground, but rather small arms on wings... which is almost scarier to me simply because a hellfire would raise eyebrows, but a news snippet of using a armed drone to engage a $villan is sure to become normalized far too quickly.
"militarization of police "
http://www.npr.org/2015/05/13/406505210/philadelphia-marks-3...
No, it isn't. They have intentionally targeted and assassinated US citizens. What makes you think they care so much more about geography?
"The Pentagon has publicly posted at least a partial list of the drone missions that have flown in non-military airspace over the United States and explains the use of the aircraft. The site lists nine missions flown between 2011 and 2016, largely to assist with search and rescue, floods, fires or National Guard exercises.
"A senior policy analyst for the ACLU, Jay Stanley, said it is good news no legal violations were found, yet the technology is so advanced that it's possible laws may require revision."
This sounds a lot less dramatic than the article headline, but it's good that this is being reported and discussed publicly.
Gee, what oversight. I'm sure they'll be denying approvals left and right.
One case in which an unnamed mayor asked the Marine Corps to use a drone to find potholes in the mayor's city. Input text indented 4-spaces is "PRE" formatted and HN won't line-wrap it.=======================================
I also learned at NSA, we could watch drone videos from our desktops. As I saw that, that really hardened me to action. - In real time? - In real time. Yeah, you... it'll stream a lower quality of the video to your desktop. Typically you'd be watching surveillance drones as opposed to actually like you know murder drones where they're going out there and bomb somebody. But you'll have a drone that's just following somebody's house for hours and hours. And you won't know who it is, because you don't have the context for that. But it's just a page, where it's lists and lists of drone feeds in all these different countries, under all these different code names, and you can just click on which one you want to see.
=======================================
He doesn't say explicitly that this includes the U.S., but I made that assumption and here it is: proven.
I doubt any level of wrongdoing within the US Government could shock me anymore.
Worse is that less and less of the population sees any of the things they do as wrongdoing. After all, they're not doing it for power grabs or control - they're doing it to keep us safe and stop the terrorists and catch the paedophiles!
Mass surveillance is one of the first signs of a totalitarian state. History is easier to read about than to learn from. "Not this time." or "That wouldn't happen in {currentYear}" are the defenses.
I'm sure those were the same defense several centuries ago. But this time will be different!
I'm really scared of what the world will look like in another 2-3 decades.
We're being governed by criminals.
/signed by the rest of the world.