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Uncle Sam Prepares To Unleash Up To 30,000 Drones Over America For "Public Safety"
The Federal Aviation Administration is working towards putting the finishing touches on rules and regulations for widespread domestic drone use, and the agency expects as many as 30,000 UAVs will be in America’s airspace by the decade’s end. As Russia Today notes, given that the department has already addressed the issue of acquiring drones to give the DHS a better eye of domestic doings, though, those law enforcement operations in question could very well transcend away from legitimate uses and quickly cause civil liberty concerns from coast-to-coast. All drones will be equipped with Electro-Optical/Infra-Red sensors, as well as the technology to sniff out certain chemicals from thousands of feet above our heads. Have no fear though, since the "Robotic Aircraft for Public Safety" program is for your own protection, we are sure Janet Napolitano would suggest.
Via RT.com:
Don’t be surprised if you catch a federal fleet of sneaky spy drones soaring over your head in the near future, but don’t be too terrified — it’s all in the name of public safety.
The US Department of Homeland Security is asking the makers of small unmanned aerial vehicles to submit their crafts for consideration as the agency ramps up the construction of a full-fledged surveillance state across America. The DHS plans to soon conduct drone tests over the Fort Sill, Oklahoma US Army base, and they’re already soliciting spy planes from the private sector so they can select what kind of UAV to use.
According to a request for information published on the Federal Business Opportunities website recently, the DHS is determined to begin drone tests over the military base soon and is seeking submissions from drone makers that don’t mind making a few bucks by having their products put into the US airspace to conduct sweeping surveillance.
The Borders and Maritime Security Division of the DHS “will conduct flight testing and evaluation of airborne sensors and small unmanned aerial systems,” the request reads, and now invites vendors to submit drones to be tested “under a wide variety of simulated but realistic and relevant real-world operation scenarios.”
The solicitation says that drones will be evaluated to see how well they perform law enforcement operations and conduct search and rescue missions, but once a craft is handed over to the DHS then the details will be put under lock and key. Specifically, the call for work says, "the information within each test report will be classified as For Official Use Only, and will not be shared with the general public."
Given that the department has already addressed the issue of acquiring drones to give the DHS a better eye of domestic doings, though, those law enforcement operations in question could very well transcend away from legitimate uses and quickly cause civil liberty concerns from coast-to-coast.
Homeland Security Janet Napolitano told a House Committee panel in July that the DHS was “looking at drones that could be utilized to give us situational awareness in a large public safety [matter] or disaster” and the next piece of the puzzle is already being put into place. With their latest solicitation, the DHS acknowledges that it is specifically testing a “Robotic Aircraft For Public Safety,” but the components necessary to be considered suggest that any drone adopted by the agency will be brought in for sweeping surveillance.
The solicitation request requires that all drones be equipped with Electro-Optical/Infra-Red sensors, as well as the technology to sniff out certain chemicals from thousands of feet from above. The UAV must also have an integrated laser designator, can be hand-launched by a single person and must be able to be remotely managed by a pilot with only one day of training.
The Federal Aviation Administration is working towards putting the finishing touches on rules and regulations for widespread domestic drone use, and the agency expects as many as 30,000 UAVs will be in America’s airspace by the decade’s end.
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What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?
Thomas Jefferson
The all important question is, how accurate is this article from Russian Times?
Why do you rely on the word of RT. Just ask your friendly government:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42701.pdf
http://homeland.house.gov/sites/homeland.house.gov/files/07-19-12%20McCa...
It's all there in black and white = grey drones everywhere.
Why worry? Soon you will have your own iDrone. It will get your groceries and attack burglars, it will max out your cards and it will do all your trading, hand in hand with the algo's.
Get some sleep.
So that is about 1 drone for every 100 sq mile.
The drones will probably be prohibited from flying over radical Islamist sleeper cell camps.
HOO-RAH!! TARGET PRACTICE !!!
Long ammo companies - just realized I only have about 2000 rounds - need 28,000 more.
Need more than 28k....zombies.
Good thing we're such a rich country and can afford the price tag 30,000 drones to spy on us...Oh wait. We can't afford it so we'll just cut social security to fund it and borrow the rest for our great grand kids pay it off. Price to pay for security and piece a mind and knowing the Obama Bin Ladin will never be able to snatch my sleeping babies from me in the middle of the night. Please join me in singing "God Bless America." just subsitute the words spy drones and monitor all email coresponence for "from the mountains, to the sea."
the iranians and chinese hacked into one of those drones recently. i pray our younger patriot entrepreneurs rise to the occasion
Now that they have matched your tsa body scans to your ID, they have better ability to positively identify you. They can use their drones to find you anywhere.
The drone fleet is only another real time input device for the Utah Data Center..
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/%E2%80%9Cwe-are-far-turnkey-totalitarian-s...
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face...; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime..."
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5
30 000 Domestic Drones + NDAA. I think most people here on ZH know where this is going. FUBAR comes to mind.
Another reason not to fly. Anyone know at what altitude these drones operate? How long before one collides with a commercial aircraft?
"Drone" Weaknesses: (all purely hypothetical of course)
1. Ground support crews (maintainers, flight/sensor operators, sensor exploitation analysts)...they have to live somewhere
2. SATCOM uplink/downlink stations (and their operators)
3. Unencrypted RF emmissions for line-of-sight control
4. Reverse CC&D (overload their analytical capabilities with too much shit to digest, such as some of the suggestions on this board...naughty posters on the roof, random piles of ammonium nitrate, mock-up AAA in the backyard, answer every cell phone call with"allah akbar", plant suspicious objects at the belly of the beast while wearing POTUS halloween masks)
5. AGL versus MSL...even if it's at FL100, it's only a thousand or two above several NA mountains (.338 or .50 have the legs)...sorry FL, you're f-cked
What's next, brown shirts jack booting down main street?
No, blue shirts, equipped with latex gloves. TSA.
This article is misleading.
Do you realize that for $300, you can purchase, on Amazon, a "personal drone" equipped with a video camera. Ok, it has a weak radio controller, which will not allow you to fly it very high. And, you can not stay airborne very long.
But, if you are will to spend 5 or 6 times that amount, you can legally purchase a drone close to military specs. You can legally fly it almost anywhere, but not higher than 400 feet and and not in restricted airspace or within 3 miles of an airport.
I do not own a drone - but might buy one in the future for "self-defense". Here is an article which will give you the basics:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/ff_drones/all/
30,000 new drones is good for the economy -- have to hire 30,000 remote pilots and all those people to build them.
not good for freedom though
Just wait until a drone here and a drone there have mishaps and end up in someone's house, killing everyone inside. Or just wait until one crashes on the I-5 during rush hour traffic.
imagine all the hackers that will hack and commandeer a few drones and crash them into buildings, and then the buidlings collapsing from drone strikes
Correction
the buildings and one next to it collapsing from drone strikes.
There fixed it.
I don't know what is going on, but I've witnessed at least 30 jets flying in a cross hatch pattern over my house. What was a completely cloudless sky is completely clouded with con/chemtrails.
Bummer. After it is done sniffing out marajuna fields...(should hyperinflation take place)...could it detect the methane produced by cows' waste? Sad day if the Feds show up to take the 30 cattle away "for the good of the country" because of a food shortage or they want to share the wealth with the iPhone addicts of the inner city.
I say "no" to this.