As a former detective I get the issue of maximizing the ability to track from the air the movements of bad guys. But technology has gotten so far ahead of civil rights that the people in authority are no longer seriously considering if they are actually violating anything or not. This is because none of you can point your finger to a single case on incident where the people in charge went to jail for violating a right via a drone. The use of drones has been accepted by the people. Imagine that same statement being made ten years ago. They either don’t get it or are too stupid to care. You’d think the civil liberties gang that show up and protests the silliest things would be in front of DHS every day telling them to stop spying on us.
But nothing.
The silence creates a vacuum and as you know a vacuum won’t stay that way long. Usually, criminal activity will fill it. But in this case in steps bad ideas like this.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has customized its Predator drones, originally built for overseas military operations, to carry out at-home surveillance tasks that have civil libertarians worried: identifying civilians carrying guns and tracking their cell phones, government documents show.
The documents provide more details about the surveillance capabilities of the department’s unmanned Predator B drones, which are primarily used to patrol the United States’ northern and southern borders but have been pressed into service on behalf of a growing number of law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the Secret Service, the Texas Rangers, and local police.
Homeland Security’s specifications for its drones, built by San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, say they “shall be capable of identifying a standing human being at night as likely armed or not,” meaning carrying a shotgun or rifle. They also specify “signals interception” technology that can capture communications in the frequency ranges used by mobile phones, and “direction finding” technology that can identify the locations of mobile devices or two-way radios.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center obtained a partially redacted copy of Homeland Security’s requirements for its drone fleet through the Freedom of Information Act and published it this week. CNET unearthed an unredacted copy of the requirements that provides additional information about the aircraft’s surveillance capabilities.
People in the know are starting to get more than a little alarmed. Especially after seeing the the almost nonchalant attitude inside the administration exposed by people such has Senator Paul. The answer to the question “Do you believe you can drone strike inside the nation’s borders?” is met with a “Well, of course… hmm… thinking about this can you define borders and strike a little more?”
Advocates of drone use give us a number of advantages. One- they are pilot-less, which means if the drone crashes will on duty all you need is another drone. A plane crashes and you need another pilot. I will give them that. Two- they are cheaper. I’ll give them that. Three- they can stay above a lot longer than a manned plane. I’ll give them that.
But what they do that manned planes don’t do is carry equipment that is far more intrusive than a regular plane manned by the police. In a sense, the question becomes balance. Or as I titled this piece. “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” If the drone can see at night to the point where it can see if you are armed or not, is that too close? Wouldn’t be a good thing if the drone could warn the approaching police or border officers that the coyote they are tracking is armed up with an AK? Absolutely.
But then again, is it within the power of the government to fly over your place and see if you are armed up? Say in the state of New York or Colorado where they are “outlawing” certain weapons. And who is collecting that information on whose authority and for what purpose. Imagine a situation where the New York State Police argue they have the right to fly over your farm, using DOD assets, in order to see if you are firing an AR15 type weapon with a long magazine (and trust me they will be able to see that much detail). Then using the DOD information obtain a warrant to search your property and arrest you.
Already the EPA used drones to check if farmers were letting cows poop incorrectly (or something like that) and felt very comfortable doing so. So, imagine the absolute lack of hesitation by the government if they were using drones to catch the notorious AR15 owner!
Here is where the issue of resources versus potential activity occurs. Sometimes bad guys get away with things. It is built into the system to allow such freedom. Remember the old saying “It is better to let a hundred guilty men go than to imprison one innocent man.” Our whole system of criminal justice is built around the “filtering” process that allows for that leeway. However, in the area of gathering intelligence the exact opposite occurs. The statement sounds more like “It is better to spy on everyone in order to catch a single criminal than to not spy on everyone and allow him to get away.”
Creepy huh?
A Homeland Security official, who did not want to be identified by name, said the drones are able to identify whether movement on the ground comes from a human or an animal, but that they do not perform facial recognition. The official also said that because the unarmed drones have a long anticipated life span, the department tries to plan ahead for future uses to support its border security mission, and that aerial surveillance would comply with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and other applicable federal laws.
The documents show that CBP specified that the “tracking accuracy should be sufficient to allow target designation,” and the agency notes on its Web site that its Predator B series is capable of “targeting and weapons delivery” (the military version carries multiple 100-pound Hellfire missiles). CBP says, however, that its Predator aircraft are unarmed.
Gene Hoffman, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who’s the chairman of the Calguns Foundation, said CBP “needs to be very careful with attempts to identify armed individuals in the border area” when aerial surveillance touches on a constitutional right.
“In the border area of California and Arizona, it may be actively dangerous for the law-abiding to not carry firearms precisely due to the illegal flow of drugs and immigrants across the border in those areas,” Hoffman says.
CBP’s specifications say that signals interception and direction-finding technology must work from 30MHz to 3GHz in the radio spectrum. That sweeps in the GSM and CDMA frequencies used by mobile phones, which are in the 300MHz to 2.7GHz range, as well as many two-way radios.
The specifications say: “The system shall provide automatic and manual DF of multiple signals simultaneously. Automatic DF should be able to separate out individual communication links.” Automated direction-finding for cell phones has become an off-the-shelf technology: one company sells a unit that its literature says is “capable of taking the bearing of every mobile phone active in a channel.”
What this technology does that never occurred before it is its ability to gather information that may not be a known criminal act then allow the people who gathered it to review it for criminal activity and decide whether or not to pursue it. Why not “catch” everybody? The honest truth is under the current set of laws you are probably breaking any number of them as we speak. The only reason you aren’t arrested is the police didn’t know, the government doesn’t care, or there are bigger fish to fire (resources issue). Part of that “filtering” system I’m telling you about.
But imagine an information gathering platform positioned over your head twenty-four hours a day waiting for you to screw up. You speed and there are no police around to catch you, you get away with it. If you don’t hit anything, other than a violation of law some politician thinks was proper, what harm have you done? But what if a week later the police show up at your door with a very detailed video of your speeding, because they were tracking your car as you sped through a drone surveillance area and of course you looked up when you got out. Presto here’s your ticket!
Sounds a little Minority Report-ish doesn’t it. But brother, trust me it is coming.
