SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
The Pentagon is experimenting with the use of radars attached to high-altitude balloons this summer, sending up to 25 balloons across six Midwestern states to conduct surveillance on vehicles over a 25-mile swath under each balloon. (Photo: Tony Webster/Flickr/cc)
'A Dystopian Surveillance State Being Built in Plain Sight': Pentagon Tests Radar-Equipped Balloons to Spy on Vehicles Across Midwest
"These programs are not about stopping violence, they're about social control."
Aug 02, 2019
Millions of Americans across the Midwest this summer are being subjected to surveillance from above as the Pentagon experiments with the use of surveillance radars attached to high-altitude balloons.
"Even in tests, they're still collecting a lot of data on Americans: who's driving to the union house, the church, the mosque, the Alzheimer's clinic. We should not go down the road of allowing this to be used in the United States."
--Jay Stanley, ACLUAs The Guardian reported Friday, the defense and aerospace contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation was authorized by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to send up to 25 balloons across six states to track vehicles.
U.S. Southern Command commissioned the project for the stated purpose of creating a "persistence surveillance system" to deter drug traffickers and perceived "homeland security threats."
Civil liberties advocates were distressed at the newly-reported project on Friday, which the Sierra Nevada Corporation obtained a license to begin on July 12 and end on September 1.
"The deployment of this kind of surveillance capability in the United States is incredibly alarming," Mana Azarmi, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Common Dreams. "Persistent government surveillance, such as that facilitated by this technology, raises many civil liberties concerns and should not be permitted in the absence of a warrant."
"Mass surveillance doesn't make us safer," the digital rights group Fight for the Future tweeted.
Programs like the Pentagon's balloon experiment "pose a grave threat to basic human rights, freedom of expression, and civil liberties," Fight for the Future Deputy Director Evan Greer told Common Dreams. "These programs are not about stopping violence, they're about social control."
The balloons are being sent from South Dakota through portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois. Their high-tech radars are able to simultaneously track many vehicles at once "on a 25-mile swath beneath the balloon," according to The Guardian.
The data the balloons' sensors will record is similar to information the military has previously gathered using planes and is sometimes referred to as "combat Tivo," according to Arthur Holland Michel of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College.
"When an event happens somewhere in the surveilled area, you can potentially rewind the tape to see exactly what occurred, and rewind even further to see who was involved and where they came from," Michel told The Guardian.
The use of wide-area surveillance by the military opens up huge possibilities for privacy violations and for the targeting of any American who may be engaged in activity that the government deems dangerous in the present or the future, the ACLU said.
"Even in tests, they're still collecting a lot of data on Americans: who's driving to the union house, the church, the mosque, the Alzheimer's clinic," Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the organization, told The Guardian. "We should not go down the road of allowing this to be used in the United States and it's disturbing to hear that these tests are being carried out, by the military no less."
The military's project is just the latest example of a massive surveillance infrastructure that the government is creating, sometimes with the help of powerful private companies, Greer told Common Dreams.
"From police partnerships with Amazon's Ring doorbells to these privately contracted spying balloons," she said, "a dystopian surveillance state is being built in plain sight, by government agencies with authoritarian dreams and corporations willing to trample our rights to turn a profit."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Millions of Americans across the Midwest this summer are being subjected to surveillance from above as the Pentagon experiments with the use of surveillance radars attached to high-altitude balloons.
"Even in tests, they're still collecting a lot of data on Americans: who's driving to the union house, the church, the mosque, the Alzheimer's clinic. We should not go down the road of allowing this to be used in the United States."
--Jay Stanley, ACLUAs The Guardian reported Friday, the defense and aerospace contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation was authorized by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to send up to 25 balloons across six states to track vehicles.
U.S. Southern Command commissioned the project for the stated purpose of creating a "persistence surveillance system" to deter drug traffickers and perceived "homeland security threats."
Civil liberties advocates were distressed at the newly-reported project on Friday, which the Sierra Nevada Corporation obtained a license to begin on July 12 and end on September 1.
"The deployment of this kind of surveillance capability in the United States is incredibly alarming," Mana Azarmi, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Common Dreams. "Persistent government surveillance, such as that facilitated by this technology, raises many civil liberties concerns and should not be permitted in the absence of a warrant."
"Mass surveillance doesn't make us safer," the digital rights group Fight for the Future tweeted.
Programs like the Pentagon's balloon experiment "pose a grave threat to basic human rights, freedom of expression, and civil liberties," Fight for the Future Deputy Director Evan Greer told Common Dreams. "These programs are not about stopping violence, they're about social control."
The balloons are being sent from South Dakota through portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois. Their high-tech radars are able to simultaneously track many vehicles at once "on a 25-mile swath beneath the balloon," according to The Guardian.
The data the balloons' sensors will record is similar to information the military has previously gathered using planes and is sometimes referred to as "combat Tivo," according to Arthur Holland Michel of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College.
"When an event happens somewhere in the surveilled area, you can potentially rewind the tape to see exactly what occurred, and rewind even further to see who was involved and where they came from," Michel told The Guardian.
The use of wide-area surveillance by the military opens up huge possibilities for privacy violations and for the targeting of any American who may be engaged in activity that the government deems dangerous in the present or the future, the ACLU said.
"Even in tests, they're still collecting a lot of data on Americans: who's driving to the union house, the church, the mosque, the Alzheimer's clinic," Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the organization, told The Guardian. "We should not go down the road of allowing this to be used in the United States and it's disturbing to hear that these tests are being carried out, by the military no less."
The military's project is just the latest example of a massive surveillance infrastructure that the government is creating, sometimes with the help of powerful private companies, Greer told Common Dreams.
"From police partnerships with Amazon's Ring doorbells to these privately contracted spying balloons," she said, "a dystopian surveillance state is being built in plain sight, by government agencies with authoritarian dreams and corporations willing to trample our rights to turn a profit."
Millions of Americans across the Midwest this summer are being subjected to surveillance from above as the Pentagon experiments with the use of surveillance radars attached to high-altitude balloons.
"Even in tests, they're still collecting a lot of data on Americans: who's driving to the union house, the church, the mosque, the Alzheimer's clinic. We should not go down the road of allowing this to be used in the United States."
--Jay Stanley, ACLUAs The Guardian reported Friday, the defense and aerospace contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation was authorized by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to send up to 25 balloons across six states to track vehicles.
U.S. Southern Command commissioned the project for the stated purpose of creating a "persistence surveillance system" to deter drug traffickers and perceived "homeland security threats."
Civil liberties advocates were distressed at the newly-reported project on Friday, which the Sierra Nevada Corporation obtained a license to begin on July 12 and end on September 1.
"The deployment of this kind of surveillance capability in the United States is incredibly alarming," Mana Azarmi, policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Common Dreams. "Persistent government surveillance, such as that facilitated by this technology, raises many civil liberties concerns and should not be permitted in the absence of a warrant."
"Mass surveillance doesn't make us safer," the digital rights group Fight for the Future tweeted.
Programs like the Pentagon's balloon experiment "pose a grave threat to basic human rights, freedom of expression, and civil liberties," Fight for the Future Deputy Director Evan Greer told Common Dreams. "These programs are not about stopping violence, they're about social control."
The balloons are being sent from South Dakota through portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois. Their high-tech radars are able to simultaneously track many vehicles at once "on a 25-mile swath beneath the balloon," according to The Guardian.
The data the balloons' sensors will record is similar to information the military has previously gathered using planes and is sometimes referred to as "combat Tivo," according to Arthur Holland Michel of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College.
"When an event happens somewhere in the surveilled area, you can potentially rewind the tape to see exactly what occurred, and rewind even further to see who was involved and where they came from," Michel told The Guardian.
The use of wide-area surveillance by the military opens up huge possibilities for privacy violations and for the targeting of any American who may be engaged in activity that the government deems dangerous in the present or the future, the ACLU said.
"Even in tests, they're still collecting a lot of data on Americans: who's driving to the union house, the church, the mosque, the Alzheimer's clinic," Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the organization, told The Guardian. "We should not go down the road of allowing this to be used in the United States and it's disturbing to hear that these tests are being carried out, by the military no less."
The military's project is just the latest example of a massive surveillance infrastructure that the government is creating, sometimes with the help of powerful private companies, Greer told Common Dreams.
"From police partnerships with Amazon's Ring doorbells to these privately contracted spying balloons," she said, "a dystopian surveillance state is being built in plain sight, by government agencies with authoritarian dreams and corporations willing to trample our rights to turn a profit."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.