FBI admits to flying drones over US without warrants
rt.com
rt.com
Do you remember the day they said that drones would never be used against the population, but only for military targets?
I certainly do. And I see a pattern here:
a) it's an evolution, and
b) they are doing all this behind our backs (without the promised transparency)
If we had a website where every such incident would be published and precisely detailed and justified, the situation would already be slightly different, b/c then, we would have an eye on it, every single day.
It was drone strikes. I'm confident that's coming against the domestic population, with concomitant "oops, we didn't mean to hit the playground" events.
No, I don't.
Perhaps they chose "late 2006" because earlier in 2006 there were many more, or more egregious cases.
"National security cases" is also a nice vague catchall that could encompass everything from Occupy to a single person crossing the border illegally.
If you dislike what any group of people are doing:
1. They are typically funding themselves. 2. You can boycott them peacefully. Not pay them, discourage others from paying them, ostracize people who you disagree with etc. Without violence, absolutely voluntarily. (Everyone does that every day on the market by choosing what to buy and where to go and what NOT to buy and where NOT to go.)
So with the government it's a different story. You, for instance, not against drones. That's fine, I will not advocate any violent action against you. But if I am against drones, I cannot withdraw my participation. Taxman will point a gun at my face if I refuse to pay taxes, or try to use alternative currency (to bypass inflation) where it's not "allowed". So people who dislike some gov activity cannot do anything about it. And that's the real source of anger. They can do all the talking, but cannot vote their money out of what they dislike.
Government does not have a 'monopoly of violence.' You are perfectly entitled to defend yourself if attacked by a criminal, for example. You don't have a right to initiate violence. It has not been monopolized by government; citizens have chosen, through law, to pool a part of their soveriegnty in government to fulfill certain ends, such as the creation of a police force.
Taxman will point a gun at my face if I refuse to pay taxes,
No he won't, he'll send you a polite letter and if you're intransigent he may garnish your wages or bank account or real property.
So people who dislike some gov activity cannot do anything about it.
Apart from voting, writing books, testifying on capital hill, enacting ballot measures, running for office, and all the other stuff you choose to ignore. If I've said it once I've said it a million times: government is not a monolithic entity, it's a bunch of people who are in large part simply representing the aggregate views of other people. It didn't land in a spaceship and impose itself on a bunch of free humans, we institute these things ourselves to advance our mutual interests.
That's a misunderstanding of what the phrase "monopoly of/on violence" entails. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence) Though to be fair, I'm not sure the OP really understands that.
The actual application of physical coercion is delegated or permitted by the state ... the law might permit individuals to use physical force in defense of self or property, but in this case ... the ability to use force has been granted by the state, and only by the state.
I wonder if the "hacker" community values being contrarian that much more than the truth, or whether there's deliberate vote stuffing going on.
If a serious threat, how about this: get a warrant. It should be easy, because there's an objectively serious threat. Novel idea, right?
>I'm as anti-spying as anybody
No you aren't, as evidenced by your comment here. This is the "I'm not racist, but _insert_racist_sentiment_here_" line of thinking.
As has been stated elsewhere, none.
> get a warrant
A warrant is not needed to watch someone in public.
OK, I get it. So the law is irrelevant as long as everyone is acting in good faith and a good outcome occurs. Wow, that's really useful.
It's a shame it doesn't apply to subjects, errrr, citizens.
"Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989), was a United States Supreme Court decision which held that police officials do not need a warrant to observe an individual's property from public airspace."
Emphasis added.
> This is a far cry from pervasive Big Brother in the sky.
It's a good start, though, isn't it?
"It's ok. It's ok because it seems reasonable."
It is crossing lines.
It is governmental activity that the citizenry does not know about, does not consent to, and here you are going "Well, it was for a good reason I guess."
My conclusion reading your paragraph is that the rule of law means nothing to you.
Your comment really seems to be a reaction to the NSA issue.. and on that I'm with you 100%.. but...
US police forces and the FBI regularly fly helicopters -- without a warrant. How is this any different?
You make it remote controlled and suddenly it becomes completely different?
You'll have to explain that one to me.. because I really don't get it.
Applying Alito's interpretation of the Fourth Amendment (and everyone who joined with him in the Jones concurrence), the fact that manned aircraft are probability expensive make them fundamentally different than a much cheaper technology. The idea is a reasonable person knows manned aircraft are super expensive and thus law enforcement will only use them in certain situations. Because of this, such activity is not considered a search under the Fourth Amendment. However, according to Alito, this does not mean that the search is still considered reasonable when the same activity becomes much cheaper. Indeed, he held that extremely lengthy tailing of a vehicle on public roads with a cheap GPS device constituted a search while the _same_ activity done manually by law enforcement did not constitute a search.
For what it's worth, I think the FBI's use of drones here is fine. I'm one of the last people on HN who would ever jump on this surveillance bandwagon/train wreck we are seeing. I bring this up because four Supreme Court justices believe that the cost of an activity can determine whether it constitutes a search (yes, it is not settled law). Because of this, drones being cheaper isn't actually an argument for them being ok. The correct argument here is that drones are cheaper, but still probability expensive to deploy en-mass against the public. If drones ever become cheap enough to do that (like the GPS device in Jones), then it's a whole different ballgame.
The problem with the RT article is that it treats any instance of the DoJ using unmanned aircraft as a kind of constitutional crisis.
The only way I would see it being feasible to forbid government from using drones just because they're cheap, is to forbid it for everyone.
That might not be a bad idea (it's what we did for phone wiretapping), but then we still end up in a situation where the government has more power, as they would then exclusively control the use of public airspace for drones. Cops aren't the only ones who could make productive use of drones (nor is the government in general), so I'm not sure we'd want to make that tradeoff, at least unconditionally.
In my opinion the only thing to be concerned about is Ginsberg being replaced by Thomas/Scalia. If that happens, the way the Supreme Court will come down on this issue is not so clear. It's definitely something to worry about. According to a certain block in Congress, winning two presidential elections still doesn't entitle you to make appointments.
Their source is Rand Paul so this is not all that surprising. His 2012 anti-drone bill would have made it so improper use of a drone would exclude the evidence collected by drone, and authorized civil suits against operators of said drones. Sounds good...except it was extremely broad.
Here is an example of drone use that would be covered. An endangered species of bird has nested on a university campus. A bird researcher at the university is using a small drone with camera to periodically observe the nest. His research is partly funded by an NSF grant.
While flying the drone to the nest one evening, the researcher sees a man attempting to rape a woman in a public area of the university, and alerts the police.
This would have been forbidden drone use under Paul's bill unless the researcher had a warrant. The researcher would have been covered because he was partly funded by the Federal government, and that was sufficient to put one under the bill. The evidence stemming from the drone use would be inadmissible and the researcher could be sued by the attempted rapist.
There was an exigent circumstances provision in the bill that provided an exception when swift action was necessary to prevent danger to life. That would at first SEEM to apply to an attempted rape in progress. Alas, the exigent circumstances only applied to drones operated by a "law enforcement party", which the bill defined as authorized by law or funded by the Federal government to investigate or prosecute offenses against the United States. A university bird researcher is not a "law enforcement party", and so the exigent circumstances exception does not apply. (Heck, even state and local police would not be law enforcement parties, because they investigate offenses at the state and local level, not offenses against the United States).
Fortunately this bill died quickly. There is a 2013 version. The House version takes out the part about it covering anyone who is funded in whole or part by the Federal government, so would remove my hypothetical biologist from coverage. It would only apply to drones operated by entities acting under the authority of the Federal government.
The Senate version still covers anyone who is funded in whole or part by the Federal government.
Here's the 2013 House version: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr972
Here's the 2013 Senate version: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1016
Manned aircraft are large and obvious, and as you say they are prohibitively expensive, naturally limiting the extent of their use.
Drones can be expected to continue to get smaller and smaller and less noticeable. They can also be expected to become cheaper and easier to deploy in larger numbers than manned aircraft.
In general, the barrier to monitoring by obvious means ought to be lower, as if it is generally going to be noticed, it can be challenged - whether in person or through the courts.
And high costs of manned aircraft also creates a natural barrier that makes excessive surveillance of this type less likely and so less problematic.
The less obvious monitoring becomes, and the easier to becomes to employ en masse, the more oversight it needs because the resulting abuse potential is substantially higher.
They are not necessarily obvious. With a gyro stabilized camera, you can use very high magnification and still track a target. Here's article about this technology and what it can do: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/30/entertainment/et-cin...
They can get detailed images from two miles away. It would be pretty hard in most city environments to notice that a helicopter two miles away is following you. That covers enough area that the helicopter could fly patterns that make it look like it is doing some kind of survey or training or something innocuous, so that even if you notice it, it would not seem suspicious.
That is not at all how drones are being used according to this article. Until then, plant some trees in your yard and keep calm. There are enough real transgressions going on that we don't need to whip ourselves into a frenzy over hyped stories like this one.
If drones are physically visible I worry that an "implied consent" will develop and the issue becomes unwinnable.
However, at the moment, this is overly expensive and kind of far-fetched, so most people aren't aware of the long-term implications. 30-40 years from now, though?
What you say is true but irrelevant. More than that, if you paid attention to the actual issue at hand instead of performing, I dunno, some basic cost-efficiency exercise, you'd see that "Manned aircraft are prohibitively expensive" is a source of pressure in the system.
Manned aircraft are increasingly flown largely by machine. The recent San Francisco crash may have been prevented if a computer had been more active (if not in full control).
Cost-efficiency might indicate we should push for such a thing, but we're comforted by the thought of a man at the helm.
Why's that? Because that means a man has oversight of the automatic system.
But we're going to want our planes to be fully automated at some point.
So a drone flown by a man elsewhere may well be replaced by a drone flown by a drone elsewhere.
And cost-efficiency means that there can be a great many of these drones in play.
---
All of this would be fine if it were an earnest conversation about the role of government in society. This is not the case.
The rule of law is being violated and it is an affront.
Now I'm not exhorting you to share my viewpoint. I'm quite honestly just contemptuous of what I see as your waffling grey in a situation that is increasingly black and white.
Also: at no point in this or any other thread did I choose to make an argument by calling you a name. Perhaps you could extend everyone else that same courtesy.
Edit: I mean, c'mon. 2006 only stirs the pot further.
>> In June, FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted that his agency uses drones to spy on US citizens without any “operational guidelines.”
I am content to end this conversation here.
Either way: what does it matter that drones have been used as lethal weapons? Manned aircraft have been used as lethal weapons for almost as long as there's been manned aircraft.
All of these arguments are looking increasingly like conspiracy theories.
That's not really fair, right? I mean this is Hacker News, so it makes sense that people are expressing interest in and concern about things related to technology.
>All of these arguments are looking increasingly like conspiracy theories.
I don't get this talk about "conspiracy theories". It's not a theory once it's unveiled and right in your face, is it? Trying to dub people's reactions or sentiment about these topics as conspiracy theories is dismissive and effectively a back-handed ad hominem attack.
It is not a reason-based response to people's legitimate concerns and, worse, it's just plain incorrect. It is not theories that the government is using drones, massive surveillance programs, etc. These are admitted facts.
Obviously I'm not talking about using unmanned drones when I talk about conspiracy theories. I'm talking about Helianthus' entire argument and the arguments I see being perpetuated here. He walks you through it (in true conspiracy-theorist style), asking questions you would never really ask and then answering them as though he makes some big revelation.
They are taking this fact, that the government is flying unmanned blimps around DC as a more cost-efficient way to patrol DC's skies than having manned fighter jets, and using it as proof that the government is spying on civilians with absolutely no evidence. You see these types of folks pop up in news articles like this all the time, because they think they finally have the proof they need to convince the unwashed masses that there's something deeper going on. It just happens that HN is on an anti-government crusade, so they're passing out upvotes like candy to anyone who posts something remotely angry about the NSA.
I don't see them. I do see the following:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6115088
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6113296
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6113582
All have a technology angle.
And, in any case, I was referring to the bad analogies you'd used: No, I don't expect a lot of discussion about women's reproductive rights here. I do expect discussions about search engine privacy.
>You guys are bouncing around in your own little bubble
Who is "you guys"?
>Meanwhile, you stay ignorant to the rest of the country and what it actually cares about
No. I just don't discuss everything here. I'm curious though: what do you think the rest of the country cares about?
>People here are literally saying that we're in a dictatorship or a tyranny because the FBI asked for the use of unmanned drones 10 times in the past 10 years.
No. It's also the NSA surveillance, Patriot Act, Guantanemo, torture, and a ton of other erosions of trust. I am curious to know at what point you think it will be appropriate to have some concern.
>and using it as proof that the government is spying on civilians with absolutely no evidence
But, the evidence is that the FBI admitted to doing just that. You may argue that the number of cases to which they admitted don't bother you, but you can't really argue that there's no evidence that they are doing it, can you?
Listen, if you disagree because you're not concerned, then that's your prerogative. But, please argue your point instead of pretending that these factual things aren't happening and calling everyone who acknowledges them "conspiracy theorists".
Because for me, there need not be anything "deeper" going on to be greatly concerned. The admitted facts are by far enough to make me worry about the future of our nation. And, really, with everything we know, the biggest question in my mind is when do people like you grow concerned?
"Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989), was a United States Supreme Court decision which held that police officials do not need a warrant to observe an individual's property from public airspace."
You keep saying this. Could you tell us WHAT rule of law you think is being violated?
So far, they can't eat and have the cake at the same time,
After all, the whole government idea is a double standard. Some people can be legally violent, while others must obey.
As such, the Police can't eat and keep cake in this case, except if congress changes the law. The supreme court case is quite clear.
To be fair, the original idea is that some people are legally violent on behalf of the rest. Any implementation is thus plagued with principal agent and quorum problems. As the system precesses, it becomes an autonomous entity working to keep up an illusion of subservience lest we stop feeding it.
Yes sometimes police officers will drag somebody into the back of a van and beat the shit out of them for no reason other than their own sadistic amusement, and yes police generally get away with it, but it's not something they are legally allowed to do. The problem is not to do with trite libertarian buzzwords like 'government monopoly on violence'. The problem is a culture of violence within the police, and a culture of closing ranks and not 'snitching', together with a court system that tends to take police officers at their word. Additionally in most of these cases you have a 'police investigating the police' situation, if it even gets that far.
There is also a wider social indifference towards certain section of society which means many people just don't care about the police 'cracking skulls' to put certain groups 'back in their place'. For examples go look at the comments on Fox articles in relation to Occupy protests or cases of police violence against minorities.
It really comes down to people in positions of power getting away with things that less powerful people wouldn't get away with, and that extends to groups other than just the police; the rich and well connected can get away with plenty of crimes that the ordinary person would get locked away for.
You can make a decent argument that giving people as much power over others as we give police (or other people in similar situations like prison guards) will inevitably lead to them abusing that power[1]. That is an argument for stronger oversight and regulation of police forces, not privately funded militias with no regulation at all, which seems to be what the 'government have a monopoly on violence' crowd desire.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
http://www.businessinsider.com/faa-ban-on-commercial-drones-...
The gut feeling, which I share, is that there's a qualitative difference between a few targeted observations and pervasive surveillance. But the law has traditionally not included a numerical aspect in 4th-amendment analyses. Either the police need a warrant to fly a helicopter over a city and photograph it, or they don't, regardless of whether they're flying one or a hundred. Saying that something would require a warrant if done very frequently but not if done occasionally would require a either a novel approach to the 4th amendment, or a new law passed by Congress specifying a new policy.
Two bits of 4th amendment law do point towards development of a new doctrine, but I'm not sure very strongly:
1. In United States v. Knotts (1983), the defendant argued that allowing the government to electronically track a vehicle without a warrant raised the spectre of the government being able to pervasively track all movements. The court dismissed that concern by writing: [Defendant] expresses the generalized view that the result of the holding sought by the Government would be that "twenty-four hour surveillance of any citizen of this country will be possible, without judicial knowledge or supervision." But the fact is that the reality hardly suggests abuse; if such dragnet-type law enforcement practices as respondent envisions should eventually occur, there will be time enough then to determine whether different constitutional principles may be applicable.
It's a bit of a confusing comment, though, because it doesn't explain the basis for treating "dragnet-type" uses of GPS tracking differently from scattered uses, from a 4th-amendment perspective. My guess is that Rehnquist just wanted to dismiss the defendant's dystopian hypothetical by saying it's not happening now and if it happens later, well we'll deal with it later.
2. One lower court has introduced a "mosaic theory" of the fourth amendment by which things that individually don't count as "searches" for 4th-amendment purposes could constitute a search when aggregated. Here's an article on that: http://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...
Certainly the police COULD track me when I'm out in public, but my expectation is that they won't unless they have a valid reason for doing so. So while I may not have an explicit legal protection against being tracked in public as an individual, I have an expectation that I'm not being tracked unless I'm the subject of an investigation.
I suppose this is less of a numerical aspect as it is a reasonable expectation factor for the majority of people who would be tracked with pervasive drone surveillance. People just going about their business don't expect to be randomly tracked by the FBI, but most people would probably expect to be tracked if they were specifically being investigated.
But like I said, I'm not a lawyer, so it might be impractical for the law to work that way. If so, then maybe a change in the law will be necessary if it becomes practical to engage in pervasive drone surveillance and it turns out that's what the FBI ends up doing.
There is a concept that there are types of information which are unclassified individually, but which can 'become classified' if joined as part of a compilation.
Of course the law is not exactly the same as information security but I don't see why the government should use mosaics in one area and then claim they can't be used for similar concepts elsewhere.
EDIT: typo
Knowing that someone might be watching is different than being sure that someone is. And that is just where this train is headed.
Edit: I'm going to go ahead and urge people not to knee-jerk downvote the parent here. Outside of a certain group of the HN crowd, I find this to be the prevailing opinion. A downvote is just a shout of "you're wrong". We need to start educating people of the consequences of ubiquitous surveillance carried to its logical end.
Just putting cameras that might not even work in places or put those dark glass domes like you see in the stores makes one act and feel different.
There is an expectation of how police works with a given set of constraints. It seems like a _quantitative_ difference whether a police car can drive by and see your house or a police car is assigned to follow you vs small drone constantly hovering above your house or a tracking device attached to your car. Legally those are the same but they shouldn't be. The distinction is so dramatic like you put it that it is a _qualitative_ difference between the two cases, not just a matter of degree.
I'd rather have fewer laws and perhaps further increase the burden of proof necessary to bring charges.
If not, there will be even more abuse, meaning: democracy will be curbed or even eliminated.
And that means, general injustice will increase sharply.
And this leads to a lock-in situation where injustice cannot be reversed b/c it protects itself. It's already the case to a certain degree in Washington, today, when you look to what extreme extent money is replacing democracy ("money" of course being a handful of ultra-rich people).
Saying "power simply must be limited" doesn't do justice to the individual-collective trade-off. Yes, power must be limited, but deciding at what point and to what degree is the whole debate. Simply stating that power needs to be limited at some non-specific threshold doesn't add to the conversation.
All this centralized and money-based power has caused too much corruption in the general system.
Generally, I do agree with you. No expectation of privacy. Generally, this doesn't particularly bother me. Which means I would guess (from a very lay point of view) that there's no justification to require warrants for flying drones. Anybody should be able to fly a drone. However we should arguably be fighting against this anyway, to keep the government from being too good at its job, since we can't trust it to do the right thing with whatever power it's asserted.
A police officer on patrol can't police private property without trespassing; the houses bordering the park likely have privacy fences, foliage coverage, etc. to prevent their owners from being watched (by a anyone, not just police) on their pool deck or wherever. Drones (and planes) see right over those, and without warrants they're quite likely to result in privacy violations.
No, actually, he won't. 20 years from now, when things are much worse, he won't complain then either.
While what they say about boiling frogs is patently false for frogs (they will jump out), it's completely true for humans.
Largest prison population, largest military, and the end of the Fourth Amendment.
I'm curious, would you support making the Gestapo more efficient at what they do?
I listed supporting arguments to the contrary..
> and invoking Godwin (two posts in!) is unwarranted
I expressed an unpopular opinion in a civil way, and your response is pure snark. I didn't mean to offend you by saying the G word. Maybe I'll talk about another over-reaching police force. Would that be more palatable for you?
Yeah, and those were fine. It's like writing a great refutation and ending it with "but sure, go have tea with Hitler". The snarky "you don't support us so clearly you must support [insert evil thing]" undermines a valid point made, and verges on ad hominem.
The parallels of the ubiquitous American surveillance state certainly have shades of the Stasi or the Gestapo, but the insinuation that OP must, by virtue of his disagreement with you, support the extreme end of this institution, is unjustified. He stated his opinion with civility, the accusatory, with-us-or-with-pure-evil angle is unwarranted and cheapens the discourse.
OP States: Police or FBI patrolling more efficiently seems progressive and economical.
I'm not insinuating anything. I'm simply questioning OP about his self-proclaimed principles in an obviously Socratic method. The only thing I'm accusing OP of is being ignorant of principled reasoning.
1. If I'm in my backyard and I have a high fence (private). And an FBI target walks by my property (public), how can they claim to not be surveilling me as well?
2. Is it unconstitutional surveillance to use Google Earth to see if I was home on the specific day their imagery was collected?
Even within the curtilage and notwithstanding that the owner
has gone to the extreme of erecting a 10-foot high fence in
order to screen the area from ground-level view, there is no
reasonable expectation of privacy from naked-eye inspection
from fixed-wing aircraft flying in navigable airspace.
See also Oliver v. United States, where even "locked gate + no trespassing signs" does not give you a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Would you have protection from guvmint agents on stilts? I'm not being snarky; this is going somewhere.
What about cameras arranged on poles, aimed at backyards, with ubiquitous deployment?
It's a shame that this "no expectation of privacy" stuff is divorced from "a freedom from observation" (which is really what we're talking about).
Cameras arranged on poles? I'm too lazy to look up cases. See Kyllo and friends.
The reason it's divorced from "freedom from observation" is because the constitution does not guarantee you a freedom from observation, only a freedom from search. These are not the same.
As one of the cases says, "the police are not required to shield their eyes as they pass homes if they do not have probable cause"
For example, nobody who was on the supreme court then is on the supreme court now.
Nobody has cared so far ....
Five of the justices have been on the court more than 17 years
Wandering off-topic just a bit, there's an oddball trade-secret case from 1970 that has always puzzled me: A father-and son photographer team flew over a DuPont chemical plant that was under construction and took aerial photographs. DuPont tracked down the photographers and asked who had hired them; when they refused to say, DuPont sued them for theft of trade secrets.
The photographers moved to dismiss, in part on grounds that aerial photography from the public airspace was fair game. The appeals court upheld the trial court's ruling rejecting the photographers' contention and said they could be compelled to disclose who hired them.
The appellate court said, "To require DuPont to put a roof over the unfinished plant to guard its secret would impose an enormous expense to prevent nothing more than a school boy's trick. We introduce here no new or radical ethic since our ethos has never given moral sanction to piracy. The market place must not deviate far from our mores. We should not require a person or corporation to take unreasonable precautions to prevent another from doing that which he ought not do in the first place. Reasonable precautions against predatory eyes we may require, but an impenetrable fortress is an unreasonable requirement, and we are not disposed to burden industrial inventors with such a duty in order to protect the fruits of their efforts." [1].
[1] E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. v. Christopher, 431 F.2d 1012, 1016-17 (5th Cir. 1970) (affirming denial of defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim), http://gozips.uakron.edu/~dratler/2010tradesec/materials/chr...
While citizens can claim protection of 4th, the government/police while performing their duties - can't as their actions are allowed to be observed by citizens. It will be a police state for police. Right now a citizen recording police is easily intimidated, like by arresting him and shooting his dog for example. Good luck doing it in case of anonymous drone :)
A warrant is not required for anything you can see from public airspace.