U.S. needs limits on use of drones
December 6, 2012 at 4:47 pm in Grand Forks Herald
Unmanned aircraft systems are hugely important for the future of Grand Forks. The field is sure to see spectacular growth, companies will want to “cluster” near UAS centers at universities and military bases and Grand Forks fills those bills. Continue Reading
If only we could trust law enforcement to go by the rules … but I sure don’t. They stretched them in the Brossart case and will again. Just wait and see. And to think how many creeps enter law enforcement just to get their thrill pushing people around. I can see this going badly. If used properly it could be helpful but it will be exploited by unruly members of law enforcement to spy on their ex’s or the woman who they have been harassing who doesn’t want a thing to do with them. They already do it with the laptops in their squad cars. Why not this handy little tool?
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Good point. read Joseph Wanbaugh’s novel from years ago: “The New Centurions.” It treats the mind set of the police as they develop an us vs them philosophy, whereby all citizens are potential criminals.
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Isn’t that basically the TSA? You go to the airport and are basically guilty until you can prove you’re not?
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While I can’t stand the TSA, at least they abrogate everyone’s rights equally, from Kissinger and senators to old ladies in wheelchairs wearing Depends.
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Right from the start any drone should only be able to see what the necked eye can see. No looking through walls or roofs. Then a search warrant should be required prior to deployment.
But I would rather their use be limited to SWAT and, search and rescue.
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Chuckle at the privacy concerns of aerial surveillance. Just look at the advances of Google earth, let alone the even greater capabilities of satellite imagery available now. As to law enforcement, it comes down to the bill of rights and unreasonable search and seizure. What constitutes unreasonable search? For the constitutional literalists, what would the framers of the constitution say about satellite imagery?
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I think Google is one of the private enterprises that wants drones in some areas for real time viewing. I think it would be more places like major cities in the metro areas instead of the residential areas, and lanmarks around the country. I know the last Google shots around Forks are stamped either 2010 or 2008….We don’t rank very many updates.
On the other hand with drone tech suppose someone like a trucker on the road might be suspecious of his woman playing around…I’ll bet there’ll be services that will have hourly fly bys that can be checked on a computer…You might wonder why your old buddy’s car is in your driveway for so long day and night…..Good thing or bad? I guess it depends on which side of that story you’re on…Like Dylan sang, “Times are a changing”
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TB, GF recently became the 1st ND city to be updated with 3D areial views.
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I’ve looked, but the couple of places I looked at still had views around 2010
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NEVER trust government to do the right thing. Government is power & by definition power corrupts. It does not matter who you are or what you believed when you started. If you are in power any length of time you will stop making the right decision. That is why we change our leaders every few years.
The slippery slope: US Post Office requires a court order to read your mail. Spy’s & bad guys have been mailing each other information with confidence for generations. The effect of this service on National Security: negligible at best.
The government can & does read every email from, within, & to the US. When questioned about this practice people are told to mind their own business. Big Brother requires this ability to prevent another 9/11. Really? They had the ability before 9/11 & it worked really well didn’t it?
The Patriot Act, a piece of legislation that can only be described as fascist passes without a murmur.
America has lost its moral underpinnings. We are not talking abortion on demand or same sex marriage.
At one time to be an American meant you were willing to die in order to be free. You consciously gave up a modicum of safety in order to preserve your individual rights.
It seems that type of thinking is no longer en vogue. We would rather concentrate on extraneous subjects while the government rebuilds America into something it was never meant to be
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A community like ours does NOT need drones flying overhead. Their use should be reserved for larger cities in which crime is more rampant. Here all drones will see is law-abiding citizens going about their day. It’s all a waste of time and money.
We already have a heavy amount of air traffic overhead anyway. Let’s not add to it. I used to live near an airport and never got used to the noise and air traffic.
We are entering into “dangerous and scary” times with the use of traffic cameras and drones. People are going to get used to these things so much that when something REALLY BIG comes our way, they won’t even flinch.
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Devilschild, Gene, and FN are spot-on and utterly correct.
The supporters of the “Patriot Act” should have been charged with Treason. Oh, wait. That was the majority of Congress.
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On 9/11 the terrorists won. They converted the US into a country under the Napoleonic Code. Pass through an airport and you have to prove your innocence. You are subject to searches which years ago would have proved unconstitutional. Courts have granted the police powers which abandoned probable cause to intuition. Car trunks can be opened. Drivers can be stopped at search points for alcohol consumption. The police view is now “seek and ye shall find.” And the seeking is without restriction. This is not paranoia, it’s the ways things are.
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Agreed. As I said above, we have lost our moral compass as a nation.
We have always been under attack from the outside. This latest episode is nothing new. It is simply an extension of what we have always faced.
Either America is an idea that is worth preserving or it is not. You do not preserve it by weakening what it means to be American.
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I see vehicles on the side of the road with everything pulled out (sometimes thats a lot for people going cross country…Even saw a Uhaul with stuff taken out on the road). I see this all over the country. Something that before the towers generally only happened if there was real probable cause, but who knows what cause they are going by now? It is alarming how close to a police state we seem to be getting at times. One of the first steps to control the masses is to make them believe that the government needs to have strict proceedures for our own security after some major event happens. Often this turns into dictatorship…Something I doubt we’ll ever get close to, but troubling none the less…
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Naturally this is a done deal in law enforcement just from a cost savings compared to other eyes in the sky. On the other hand there’s going to be an ever increasing amount of drones from the private sector for several different purposes….Including security in certain gated communities and business interests. Once there’s the ability to have private drones in the air you just know the criminal side will find a lot of interesting uses between casing places, getting other info they shouldn’t be privy to, and stalking. At which point I’m guessing we’ll be glad that law enforcement has drones trying to find the bad drones too…
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You’re right Tundra…there have been “eyes in the sky”…in many forms, for many years.
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As I understand it, satellite resolution is so good, it can zero in on one house. So everyone better wear clothes when they shower.
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Well let them all spy on me in the shower then. They will all go blind!
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I heard a news report the other day where some law enforcement were in trouble because they had collectively viewed one ladies ‘information’ more than 150+ times. Information that is only to be accessed if that person is under surveillance or stopped etc.
I don’t believe we can ever trust our law enforcement to ‘do the right thing’. They have become just as corrupt as the government they serve.
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No excuse for it but the woman was a policewoman in the police dept. where she was being looked at on the internet by other officers.
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She got a big settlement for it too. Basically she made as much or more than a Playboy bunnie and never had to remove a stitch of clothing. They were just general pics
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They invaded her privacy. It doesn’t matter what appeared in the photos. They used their position in law enforcement to gather the information.
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You just want to argue with me for the sake of arguing now huh? You know damn well I was just making a comparison and not some political statement regarding her means of receiving the money. It just seemed very strange that she had all those cops and such checking her basic photos out, yet in the end she made out better then some who pose for a living….
Now go ahead and give me what for….I was off line a couple days…I guess you must have missed me huh?
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Does the type of picture make a difference? They were viewing information not generally available to the public. I have a big enough issue with Facebook creapers much less something like this. I can imagine that the woman is going to need years of therapy to get over this incident per the statement clip I heard on the radio. These guys all need to be put on the unemployment line. They created a hostile and abusive work environment and they need to be treated as such.
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Come on now. All you have to do is pay a subscription fee to a people search service & you can get just about whatever info you want on someone. If you are on Facebook you better be ready for about anything involving intrusion of privacy.
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In my opinion that is even worse. That makes them work place stalkers. I find it completely reprehensible that people hired into a position of power are able to get away with this type of activity.
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I think you might be blowing it out of proportion. Wasn’t the issue that she lost a lot of weight so basically people were doing a before and after comparison and not some kind of voyer fest. If I remember right she was embarrassed by all the attention to her bigger shots. Or wasn’t that what happened? I really didn’t give it a lot of attention
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TB, I agree. IMHO, they were inappropriate though if they were on the clock even if on the dept. site.
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We’ve got a cop right here in River City that thinks “taking a leak” is a sex crime; and is on-the-record about it.
Who is going to police the police? They’re out-of-control RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.
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One insight into policing the police is revealed that in the big depts Internal Affairs officers are viewed as traitors.
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Correct. Unfortunately many police officers actually believe the “thin blue line” hype. Most do not. Most know exactly what policing is and how it is to be done. Most police officers do their 20 as best they can and leave the badge at work. Unfortunately there is a percentage that believe they are the badge and the badge is them. They are the ones the psychological exams try to weed out, but with marginal success.
I work with two ex cops. Both did their 20-25 years and moved on. Both have great stories, and both are good citizens and coworkers. Both were also ostracized at one time or another for arresting other cops (DUI, Domestic Violence, etc) instead of falsifying their reports.
It is a shame that some people do not take professionalism more seriously.
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T-B the issue is these men and women are hired to enforce laws not use personal information to satisfy their lust. If we can’t trust them to use a laptop according to the law why should we give them another tool that could easily be used to infringe on our privacy?
And … I read that woman’s story. It’s not as innocent as you suggest.
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I don’t know, but from what I remember lust didn’t seem to be the issue. She was big and then lost weight and I thought it was a bunch of snoops who heard she was big before and wanted to see what she looked like then. She was embarrassed and brought litigation. It wasn’t right, but I don’t recall it being about peaking at photos out of lust….More out of dumb curiosity. I think it had more about what was being said in the gossip mill than what was available to see.
Actually this seems like something some of the females would do….Isn’t going after someone’s looks a typical Mean Girls ploy?
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As I recall, central to the story was one cop kept hitting on her and she rejected him. He then sought revenge.
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I really don’t know. I skimmed the article back then and basically remember she had lost weight and was horrified when someone told her that her file was getting so many hits. In any case it was wrong….But I don’t think a drone was involved in any way so there’s that…
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It seems that it would be a shame to have this technology and not use it to fight crime as well as terrorism. As criminals become more and more sophisticated it seems like we need every edge we can get in addressing crime. We use helicopters and airplanes so why not drones? I’m surprised we aren’t using them against Mexican drug kingpins. Maybee we are. The only thing to keep in mind is that criminals and terrorists may start using them as well. We need to gaurd against that.
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“We use helicopters and airplanes so why not drones?” That is the major law enforcement argument for drones. It all comes down to how much freedom you want to give up to protect yourself from the bad guy?
“I’m surprised we aren’t using them against Mexican drug kingpins.” We most certainly are. We have between 2-5 Predators patrolling the US/Canada border. You do not even want to know how many are over our southern border. Iraq and Pakistan have less flying over their heads than US citizens in AZ, NM, and TX. We also accidently “veer” off course into MX quite often. We have not fired any HellFire missiles into MX that I am aware of , but it is coming.
“The only thing to keep in mind is that criminals and terrorists may start using them as well. We need to gaurd against that.” Border Patrol recovered a non sophisticated drone in the AZ desert. They used it to carry bales of marijuana. They overloaded it and it crashed. These people have more money at their disposal than many countries. They have their own submarines for crying out loud. It will not be long before they get the act down.
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They have some drones that are about the size of the old radio planes you could build yourself, but are far more advanced. I doubt they can be picked up by any radar. So they could use them to spy on law enforcement and even the drones being used so they can get over the border in areas that aren’t being covered right then. Like you said…They have a lot of money to put into these. I souldn’t doubt that down the road they’ll get some bigger ones that can be armed and take their wars between cartels to a much more dangerous level
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If a missle hit some of the Mexican drug lords or gangs who have routinly left scores of inoccent people in the dirt tortured and minus thier heads I think alot of people would celebrate. We need all the tools at our disposal to rid the world of these beasts. A day will come when South American governments will activley seek our help in doing so.
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The trouble is that when they war with each other they have zero concern about collateral damage and innocents are often caught in the middle. On the other hand an armed eye in the sky could also bring enforcement ot it’s knees once they target DEA and other law enforcement.
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We need not look any further than the situation going on right now between the State’s Attorney and the Sheriff in Nelson Co to see that law enforcement officials can become drunk off power and think “I am the Law!!!” (Judge Dredd voice)
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If you’re responsible for trying to defuse a group of people held up with weapons you thin you’d rather just go in blind and wish for the best? I think you’d say “Follow me” and not hear any footsteps behind you….
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