Spy-In-The-Sky Drone Sets Sights on Miami
MIAMI - Miami police could soon be the first in the United States to use cutting-edge, spy-in-the-sky technology to beef up their fight against crime.
A small pilotless drone manufactured by Honeywell International, capable of hovering and “staring” using electro-optic or infrared sensors, is expected to make its debut soon in the skies over the Florida Everglades.
If use of the drone wins Federal Aviation Administration approval after tests, the Miami-Dade Police Department will start flying the 14-pound (6.3 kg) drone over urban areas with an eye toward full-fledged employment in crime fighting.
“Our intentions are to use it only in tactical situations as an extra set of eyes,” said police department spokesman Juan Villalba.
“We intend to use this to benefit us in carrying out our mission,” he added, saying the wingless Honeywell aircraft, which fits into a backpack and is capable of vertical takeoff and landing, seems ideally suited for use by SWAT teams in hostage situations or dealing with “barricaded subjects.”
Miami-Dade police are not alone, however.
Taking their lead from the U.S. military, which has used drones in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, law enforcement agencies across the country have voiced a growing interest in using drones for domestic crime-fighting missions.
Known in the aerospace industry as UAVs, for unmanned aerial vehicles, drones have been under development for decades in the United States.
The CIA acknowledges that it developed a dragonfly-sized UAV known as the “Insectohopter” for laser-guided spy operations as long ago as the 1970s.
And other advanced work on robotic flyers has clearly been under way for quite some time.
“The FBI is experimenting with a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles,” said Marcus Thomas, an assistant director of the bureau’s Operational Technology Division.
“At this point they have been used mainly for search and rescue missions,” he added. “It certainly is an up-and-coming technology and the FBI is researching additional uses for UAVs.”
SAFETY, PRIVACY CONCERNS
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been flying drones over the Arizona desert and southwest border with Mexico since 2006 and will soon deploy one in North Dakota to patrol the Canadian border as well.
This month, Customs and Border Protection spokesman Juan Munoz Torres said the agency would also begin test flights of a modified version of its large Predator B drones, built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, over the Gulf of Mexico.
Citing numerous safety concerns, the FAA — the government agency responsible for regulating civil aviation — has been slow in developing procedures for the use of UAVs by police departments.
“You don’t want one of these coming down on grandma’s windshield when she’s on her way to the grocery store,” said Doug Davis, the FAA’s program manager for unmanned aerial systems.
He acknowledged strong interest from law enforcement agencies in getting UAVs up and running, however, and said the smaller aircraft particularly were likely to have a “huge economic impact” over the next 10 years.
Getting clearance for police and other civilian agencies to fly can’t come soon enough for Billy Robinson, chief executive of Cyber Defense Systems Inc, a small start-up company in St. Petersburg, Florida. His company makes an 8-pound (3.6 kg) kite-sized UAV that was flown for a time by police in Palm Bay, Florida, and in other towns, before the FAA stepped in.
“We’ve had interest from dozens of law enforcement agencies,” said Robinson. “They (the FAA) are preventing a bunch of small companies such as ours from becoming profitable,” he said.
Some privacy advocates, however, say rules and ordinances need to be drafted to protect civil liberties during surveillance operations.
“There’s been controversies all around about putting up surveillance cameras in public areas,” said Howard Simon, Florida director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Technological developments can be used by law enforcement in a way that enhances public safety,” he said. “But every enhanced technology also contains a threat of further erosion of privacy.”
Reporting by Tom Brown; Editing by Michael Christie and Eddie Evans
© 2008 Reuters
Wouldn’t it be smarter to spy on, seek out, and destroy things like poverty and mental illness in this country …than to go after their symptoms with flying Star Wars garbage cans?
Man, we are f*cking sideways, backwards and upside-down! I know, I know, it’s a cliche to even think this.
I am NOT a hunter, Not a KILLER…however I DO believe..FIRST AND FOREMOST, IN THE CONSTITUTION, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS..
I ALSO believe that ANY and ALL surveillance technology WILL be MISSUSED by the police and the FBI especially..((See INFRAGARD if you need a refresher course in FBI misuse of taxpayers money(not MY money..by the way..YOUR money..unless you decide you don’t wish to pay for the errosion of your rights…))
Okay..the POINT? it is this:
I ENJOY PRACTICING TARGET SHOOTING, I PARTICULARLY ENJOY UTILIZING TARGETS THAT ARE THE SIZE AND SHAPE OF…SURVEILLANCE EQUIPMENT..So THANKS! Reuters..for the INFO…I need to add a 14LB …hmm..maybe a BUCKET…on a ..BUNGEE…so it sort of…HOVERS…and I can try to hit that thing…reliably..at well THANKS again Reuters…500 yards…and well…10,000 feet is..jeez almost 2 miles…so THAT is out of the question…but..well…800 yards…sure..
I already have a GOOD idea of what it takes to hit a PRINGLES can at 300 yards…I like to put these on fence posts out on the “land”..((remote..don’t worry..unless you are a person who has moved here from an “Urban” area and immediately begins to try to change the scene to a more…”gated community” nightmare..which i must say..is unfortunately..the NORM with..”transplants” from urban areas…why move to the country, just to live in another suburb? why buy 20 acres and then build your house 60′ from the next home..??But I digress..)) So..I have become quite ADEPT at shooting…’imaginary cameras’ and it’s quite..therapeutic…
ATTENTION TECHNOLOGY GRADS!! We really need..COUNTER MEASURES to SURVEILLANCE…NOW!…sunglasses with image scrambling led lights in the frames…uhh…baseball hats with the same…however it could work..we need our privacy protected FROM technology..WITH ..technology..you dig?
So..to those of you who ACTUALLY care about the future of Privacy and the Constitution..well..you do not have to be a hunter or a “gun person” to like to target shoot..it is just destructive enough to be really enjoyable…AND if you use the right targets..HUP! you are prepared to rid your block of the SPIES in the SKIES..so..get to it…or kiss your privacy “so long” been good to know ya…
AND do not pay for this…if you do not want to pick up a rifle to protect your liberty…THEN…by all means..NON-VIOLENT…NON-GUNPOWDER RELATED PROTEST IS EVEN MORE EFFECTIVE…especially in the form of NON-PAYMENT OF INCOME TAX…WHICH IS BEING USED TO MAKE THE “INSECTOCOPTER” OR THE LIKE…SO..DO NOT PAY FOR IT..DO NOT DECLARE..!!
An’ like that
“seems ideally suited for use by SWAT teams in hostage situations or dealing with barricaded subjects.”
Really? How is a drone going to see inside a building? The only purpose of these things is to collect “around the corner” intelligence. It’s interesting that Miami is getting some, given their treatment of protestors during the FTAA protests.
What a joke. Hopefully, rednecks will be shooting those things down for the fun of it.
I wonder when these devices will be able to fire Tasers.
Just before Skynet goes online….
These things should be lots of fun for target shooters. And, I believe it would be only a short time before they decide to start mounting small guns on these things.
“wonder when these devices will be able to fire Tasers”.
I’m sure they are already capable of that and much more. If a dem prez was ordering this kind of spying, he’d probably be impeached. Where are the good ‘ole boys who used to shout “big brother” when this kind of stuff was happening? Too busy drinking beer and watching American Idol I guess.
Well, thought I’d comment on their vulnerability, but shoot, ya’ll’ve done that already. So go ahead all you law enforcement agencies, spend your limited funds on these expensive skeets.
Somebody’s making some big money, here.
Besides the human spirit, soul or whatever one would call it, are there any aspects of policing which technology cannot replace or automate?
It is ALWAYS open season on ALL surveillance devices that are deployed on any but very specific crime related missions. That includes UAVs…… as well as traffic cameras and general surveillance cameras. It is the duty of those who value their personal and civil liberties to destroy them at every opportunity. A much more challenging target than the ordinary clay pigeon. Like all captured spies they should be shot on sight!
Howard
I too was gonna think of the skeet shootin’ comparison… come on, this is just begging those of us with shotguns to go for it. Rich people are so stoopid.
And how do we private pilots avoid these things? They’re not easily visible, probably don’t have strobes. Transponders? Can Flight Following see them?
I was on short final to Santa Monica when suddenly “HI FLIER” appeared right in front of me. Bad enough to hit a kite, but one of these things?
For those of you who are talking about target shooting these Eyes of the Illuminati, they will probably be legally considered “aircraft”. The punishment for shooting aircraft is very strict/severe, and understandably so for manned aircraft. Any such assault would be attempted murder: there is no need to defend yourself from an innocuous (other than pollution) Cessna, TV-copter, or passenger jet. No doubt, in an age of arrests and detentions for no charges, Der Cheneyland will protect its tools of general, civil imprisonment as much as possible.
((jcrumb… I like where your heart is at, but be careful. Are you really Jesse?))
Reply: John F. Butterfield March 26th, 2008 12:45 pm
“I wonder when these devices will be able to fire Tasers.”
Tasers?! I wonder how much C-4 they can haul. They’re going to fly these into windows, and set them off. Winged drones are used for assassinations, these can be launched from smaller sites. They’ll fly these somewhere into a free press warehouse space and blow it up. Then there’s a news report that’ll say the dissidents were obviously manufacturing bombs for terrorism, or such.
(I use this example as the free press were some of the earliest “terrorists” that the Nazi’s clamped down on. As George Bush is the grandson of Prescott Bush, Hitler’s man in the US, and the Patriot Act is completely styled after a NAZI act proclaimed after the Reichstag fire, I posit that Bush is basically using German history as a step by step manual.)
Any time that money’s spent on control and conformity, instead of education, medicine, housing, and research into a sustainable society… it’s so not good.
cannot wait for the Colombians to shoot it down, hahahah
end the stupid military
ask your recruiters about KHAT in Iraq
IMPEACH and hang NOW
but coming soon any way
‘the signal’
I wonder how they have developed a ‘constitutionally protected action’ sensor.
You know, the kind that snuffles out those who need ‘ rights reeducation counseling’ in the internment camps er….I mean ‘mental readjustment retreats’ built by KBR.
I think what’s unclear is what the legal repurcussions would be if someone shot it down. Destruction of government property? What if the police were privatized? Every man to himself, I assume.
Gee are our kids going to hate what we are doing to them. Their world will likely have the hovering drones, RFID chips, cameras on every corner and…? You do know the evil empire of star wars was supposed to be fiction?
A class of ‘Security Officers’…that is, those who will be the watchers, monitoring us… monitoring the world of our kids twenty years from now.
I always wonder who will be the watchers when their watching is classified and the information they obtain classified? Who will watch the watchers when no one really knows who the watchers are anymore?
Oh yeah…our kids will love that when they grow up. That’s what we are doing to them. We create a watched society with those who do the watching in a separate class from those who are watched.
Who watches the watchers when their watching is secret?
You can build a remote control helicopter that can fly upside down, mounted with a gyro and a camera for about $250.
You can buy one out of the box here:
http://www.xheli.com/20neupveea50.html
I recommend putting cameras to watch your yard and always wearing a hidden camera. Digital storage is quite cheap these days. You might USB connect your yard cameras to a PC.
Then take these fascist criminals down in court when they mess with you. Protest totally peacefully. When it’s time to bare arms there won’t be anytime for talking, or typing like the watch list winning comments above. It’ll be obvious enough that you won’t need seek support as it will swell around you. The vastly murderous control the best weapons today, robot attack jets, space lasers, minigun toting helicopters… To take control of their weapons is a better option than to fight them with your extraordinarily weak weapons, 22s and handguns, until they come chasing you in your hole and then you’re best to have a few levels of greetings for them and a way to make another exit. Taking control of their weapons is simplest done from the peoples perspective by winning hearts and minds. Right now their weapons are controlled by people who are on payrolls which will soon expire, money becoming obviously more expensive than defeating the financially dominant. Attempting to hold financial dominance will prove more expensive than relinquishing the power it wields.
@Stilba: you said it the best.
Notice how the art & entertainment coming out of Hollywood and the Pentagon Box Office has already embedded the reality of today in minds through vehicles such as the Terminator franchise?
There’s a docco (documentary) on this page: http://freedocumentaries.org/index.php?ct=5 called Operation Hollywood. The relationship goes back to 1920! Think you that these guys are not using the propaganda techniques of Goebbels to scare the crap out of everybody with such movies and prepare the way?
It’s no wonder American minds are so weak and lacking character today, life is a movie and the movie predicts life as it will be, and the softened minds…prattle believing in ideals long gone, while another liar takes the stage and says “Me, me, up on the predastal!” [sic] And it’s all just entertainment and 4000 yankee suckers die for the lie while a million more innocents are its nameless victims, and the coffers of economies drain away to appease the war god.
For shame, America locks its citizens up inside its own borders, the land of the fee, from sea to toxic sea, with fields full of fuel for burning and none for food. But none see, for life is just a movie.
The mythology has done its work, smothered every voice, shattered every dream, making once free people love the nightmare of their decay, the smell of their corruption rotting on their bones, is sweet like the sugar they eat, that sends them to the medical center, where they can be turned away Sicko, psycho, lovers of debt, death and decay. There’s only one way…left, not right, but not the left of politricks, nor the right of crossed sticks. These are not of the people. Not by the people. Not for the people. That is just an illusion. Need some priorities.
Create peace. End war. Fix planet.
Priorities for survival of the race. Priorities for the survival of all life.
Create peace. End war. Fix planet.
CIA developed UAVs used on their own people, spells a time of war between the government and the ’scum’ that pays them.
First of all, these things are regularly going to malfunction in mid-flight, probably over freeways because that’s where the high-speed chase action is. When a plane engine fails, the pilot aims for an open field or a pond. When these things have a Microsoft Windows moment, they will drop like the rocks they are and hit windshields of moving cars.
Shooting the trespassers creates new problems. If you send bullets up, do you know where they’ll come down?
Second, they’re a new invasion of traditional privacy. 100 years ago strangers could not look in your back yard or into your bedroom window from the sky. Your three or four neighbors might be able to look, but they usually would be polite enough not to. A (man’s) home is (his) castle, but not one inch of the airspace above it.
Third, when do they load the HARM missiles on these things? Watch, somebody will try arming the domestic predators, or will try crashing them kamikaze-style into a target. We find in free-fire nations that the level of actual justice approaches zero when justice gets automated. It doesn’t help that the American judges don’t talk to anyone before executions are ordered, much less do they speak the language
i dont believe it can go to 10000 ft. or fly at fifty knots.
Big Brother looks like R2D2.
Cool..I am not the only one on the watch list..AWESOME!
I wonder if you could do a ..”back door” check on your own “Status” by trying to..well..FLY somewhere? Is it that simple? ..”Hup! will you look at this..they aren’t going to let me on the plane..Gulp! guess I’d better stop…speaking my mind…all that free speach is going to keep me from taking my vacation..damn..guess I’ll give that up..disney land is more important…”
Live free or die…period..
hey THANKS to the Dude who posted the Link to the Remote Control Helicopter site…WOW!…COUNTER MEASURES HERE I COME! I realized as I was looking at those things..and they DO have the CAMERA..45 bucks and “spy on anything” anyway it popped into my mind that maybe what needs to happen NOW! and i am gonna go to work on this and you should too..anyway..why don’t we try to get some “Media” attention focused on “local citizen spies on police with his own ’spy in the sky’..” maybe that would kind of…’DEMONSTRATE’ the reality..that is this is where they want to go…everyone for themselves…the new “COLD WAR” aka a COLD CIVIL WAR…heating up…the citizens SPYING on the SPIES…I LIKE IT! i am gonna get one of these and go to work recording the movements of the CORPORATE FASCIST THEOCRACY…my new HOBBY…counter measures…and IF they try to ARGUE that I CANNOT do what I am doing…then they SET THEMSELVES up for the same arguements…”oh I can’t…but YOU can?…so the police are what? a protected calss of citizen?…” of course they are..but anyway…rambling on..
To those of you out there who may be actually “Data mining” our speach..well..FASCISTS ALWAY’S ATTACK RUSSIA IN THE WINTER..! and that is the end of them..for awhile..until the NEXT batch of ..idiots with issues comes along and decides to “SAVE US FROM OURSELVES”
It’s too bad that there are so MANY people out there who think that somehow FREEDOM is…well..”FREE”..and to use the much used little understood phrase…”FREEDOM ISN’T FREE” and that does NOT mean you have to join the army and keep some people rich and powerful…although fighting FOR your country..as in WWII is worthy and necessary…but what itreally means is this:
IN A FREE SOCIETY, BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN, BECASUE PEOPLE ARE FREE TO CAUSE SOME DAMAGE…PERIOD..PEOPLE HAVE LOST SIGHT OF THIS FACT, THINKING IN SOME BIZARRE WAY, THAT TO BE FREE IS TO BE..”PROTECTED FROM ALL HARM” AND BY DEFINITION..THAT IS NOT FREEDOM..THAT IS FASCISM…YOU CAN NEVER BE COMPLETELY “SAFE” IN A FREE COUNTRY..THE SIMPLE FLOW OF INFORMATION ALONE PROVIDES FOR MANY DANGERS..SO TO THOSE WHO MAY BE THINKING THAT WE HERE ARE ALL CRAZY…GUESS WHAT? WE KNOW THE PRICE OF FREEDOM…AND IT IS THIS:
LIFE! YOU CANNOT BE FREE WITHOUT DANGER! TO BE FREE IS TO BE IN DANGER…FREEDOM IS A RESPONSABILITY..NOT A “GIVEN”..NOT A “PRODUCT”…BUT A DIRE TASK WITH PITFALLS AND HARDSHIPS..AND THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE THE NATION BELIEVE THAT TO BE FREE IS TO BE “SAFE” AND THAT IS…NEVER GOING TO BE POSSIBLE…YOU ARE NEVER “SAFE”…IN A FREE COUNTRY…FREE PEOPLE “KNOW” TOO MUCH…AND SOME TIMES THEY GO NUTS..AND PEOPLE GET HURT…SO? SO WHAT! THAT IS, AGAIN, THE PRICE OF FREEDOM..
IT IS AS SIMPLE AS THIS:
FIRST AND FOREMOST, THE CONSTITUTION
Thank you and good night..
tobiasaurusrex wrote a caution about the penalties for shooting these down…..
Killing these things… and surveillance cameras is NOT recreation or sport it is an act of rebellion in the honorable American tradition. The tree of liberty must from time to time be nourished with the blood of patriots and tyrants. As I recollect, the penalty for rebellion or taking up arms against King George was death…. did that deter our founding fathers from it? At what point do you propose drawing the line? The liberties these men won for us are being eroded a little piece at a time by measures such as these. I for one do not find the idea of allowing America to be turned into a police state acceptable. As we have seen again and again, standing up to authority is always regarded as a crime, and always carries penalties. I as a Montana resident find our governor’s defiance of the so called “real ID act” something to be proud of…… and the fact that California and 3 or 4 other states at least are joining in. On of the later phases of this legislation is to include RFID chips in your driver’s license… just like the passports…. which means that you will be ID scannable with your driver’s license in your pocket… and without even being aware of being scanned…… walking through a doorway…… past a lamp post with a scanner…… on a bus…… virtually anywhere they can conceal a scanning device.
We must resist this sort of thing……. both politically and with direct destructive action if it is ever to be stopped or reversed. I well remember a group of men who in the 60’s went on night time forays with chainsaws and felled billboards….. one or two billboards dropped every few nights got the nation’s attention, and legislation was passed that greatly reduced the roadside clutter. Prior to that, the outskirts of major cities were a forest of billboards… and absolute eyesore and nuisance. War protesters, draft dodgers, and draft card burners often went to jail…… but they forced Nixon to withdraw from Vietnam…..
Direct action carries penalties…… but it also yields results if widespread enough.
Howard