As to those of you poo-pooing this and saying “how is this any different than a helicopter,” in five to ten years when unmanned drones are flying all over your neighborhood surveilling and storing info at random, you can think back to mocking us privacy hysterics. I’m sure very similar arguments were made in years past about police needing armored vehicles and .50 cals and every locale needing a SWAT team armed to the teeth. But hey, it’s much more fashionable to be too cool for school and just say “no big deal, shut up hippie.”
And, as predicted, the domestic escalation continues:
The FBI uses drones for domestic surveillance purposes, the head of the agency told Congress early Wednesday.
Robert Mueller, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confirmed to lawmakers that the FBI owns several unmanned aerial vehicles, but has not adopted any strict policies or guidelines yet to govern the use of the controversial aircraft.
“Does the FBI use drones for surveillance on US soil?” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Mr Mueller during an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“Yes,” Mueller responded bluntly, adding that the FBI’s operation of drones is “very seldom.”
That’s the same FBI who have managed hundreds of justified shootings without so much as one mistake in judgment. Oh, and for bonus yucks, Mueller actually said this under oath:
When Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) asked Mueller later in the morning if he’d consider being more open about the FBI’s surveillance methods, the director expressed reluctance to be more transparent. Mueller said the FBI has and will continue to weigh the possibility of publishing more information about its spy habits, but warned that doing so would be to the advantage of America’s enemies.
“There is a price to be paid for that transparency,” Mueller said. “I certainly think it would be educating our adversaries as to what our capabilities are.”
But hey, if you haven’t done anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about, amirite?
pokeyblow
Because Obama is president, it is vile behavior to even have slight misgivings about any of this.
Linnaeus
Shut up, hippie.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
Do you even read the comments on this site?
Cassidy
I don’t like or agree with his feelings on transparency, but this is an accurate statement.
Yatsuno
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): It is already a well-known fact that JC does not read his own blog.
None of this is surprising. They all want the latest toys and to not talk about their usage.
rea
Well, how the heck is this any different from flying a helicopter?
Emma
I have a real question here: Are you trying to drive all the moderates away? Because I am getting totally fed up with the constant baiting.
To answer your idiot question: yes, there are concerns. Big ones. The militarization of American law enforcement is a big, gigantic problem.
Chyron HR
But what does Rand “If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and $50 in cash, I don’t care if drone kills them” Paul think?
Cassidy
If it’s been known that the BP has been using drones for a while now to patrol the border, how is this shocking?
Suffern ACE
Well geez. As long as there aren’t any guidelines, why bother to explain what you use them for.
Linnaeus
The FBI would never engage in domestic spying.*
*Not saying that’s what’s going on here, just that there’s a proven history we need to be aware of.
c u n d gulag
Once that first genii is let out of the bottle, then it’s a hell of a lot easier for the other genii’s stored in there to get out – while you’re worried about the first and the last one that just got out. And every one in between.
I am VERY concerned.
And I blame our Congress(es).
They didn’t exactly stand up for citizens and our rights right after The Russian Revolution, during WWII and The Cold War – except for The Church Commission in the mid-late 70’s – then throughout our still ongoing “War on Drugs,” and then, finally, the moronic “Patriot Act.” And it’s not like Hoover had his hands clean, during Vietnam.
Hell, the first genii was likely Lincoln’s bureaucrats reading people’s mail and telegrams.
Maybe even before.
I want these genii’s back in the bottle as much as anyone.
We know the why, and where.
But who?
And how?
And when?
I’m open to suggestions.
bill d
My neighbor kid has a drone that he disguises as some sort of model/toy, I bet he is NSA the little punk bastard.
Paul in KY
I wish Sen. Franken had asked him about the ‘never make a mistake killing someone’ situation they have going on. Would at least like Mr. Mueller to concede that the string will unfortunately end some time.
John Cole
@Emma: Baiting you? I predicted exactly what would happen with drones, all the so called moderates told me to wank off that this was no big deal, now it is happening exactly as I predicted.
I’m not baiting anyone. I’m pushing your nose into the pile of shit you left on the floor.
Ramiah Ariya
It is better than having boots on the ground.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
And yet, I see no difference in this versus a helicopter. Once again, it’s not the tool.
If someone scratches my car, a defense of “Oh, I used a screwdriver, so it wasn’t technically ‘keying'” won’t do them a bit of good.
Unnecessarily surveillance bad. How it’s done, doesn’t matter.
ruemara
I can agree with your points and still think your indulgent hyperbole about hippie punching is bullshit. Come back when your argument isn’t “I want to argue with people about bullshittery so your mama”.
MikeJ
Meuller said they sometimes use drones, not that they’re routinely looking in everyone’s backyard. They also use helicopters sometimes, and as far as we know they don’t use those to routinely look in backyards.
It’s a pity they didn’t have a drone with IR cameras up over Watertown, MA.
burnspbesq
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
Rhetorical question, yes?
Ramiah Ariya
Who uses helicopters for surveillance?
MomSense
I have actually seen a drone in person–flew by just ahead of me. I was driving on 295 North leaving Portland, ME after seeing the first lady speak at a fundraiser. Having grown up and lived for years in Kennebunkport, I will say that drones are far preferable to the fighter jets that used to circle over constantly while W was in town. On several occasions some private pilot would violate the airspace over the Bush compound and those jets would scramble. Scrambling involved rapid descent from 30,000 feet and screaming over there. It caused the house to shake, windows to rattle, dogs to bark, babies to cry, and cats to freak the fuck out with puffed up tails, circle running, and strange growling sounds.
Also, too drone surveillance is more eebil than other surveillance just because it is done by a drone??
Alex S.
Well, for one, this has already been known. And also, too, drones are basically just remote-controlled model planes with a camera. They do not shoot lasers out of the sky, not always. Also, I wonder what happens if someone shoots an FBI drone…
MikeJ
@Ramiah Ariya:
Ever see Goodfellas?
Lawrence
As long as you can get votes by yelling “The liberals are soft on crime/terrorism/those people!” this will keep escalating. We live in a nation infested buy assholes. And they vote for their stupid fears.
Emma
@John Cole: Well, I suppose you can have your fun. After all, it’s sooooo much more entertaining to jump around pointing and yelping “I was right! I was right!” than to actually have a discussion. Purity uber alles.
You learned the far left lessons as you unlearned the far right ones.
Cassidy
@Paul in KY:
Not what was said, but I’m tired of arguing about it.
Ben Cisco
@John Cole: So much for him not reading his own blog…
weaselone
@John Cole:
These two things are not the same.
The FBI “seldom” using drones for surveillance on US soil
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@John Cole:
Do you have any evidence this was done contra law? or without warrants?
Then STFU with your ‘I predicted this’ bullshit.
burnspbesq
@John Cole:
You voted for the same people we did, so get the fcuk off that high horse, Jack. You’re every bit as complicit in this as anyone else.
Hunter Gathers
As long as said drones are not being piloted by Buster Bluth, this isn’t a problem.
Botsplainer, fka Todd
@burnspbesq:
There needs to be an “all comers” BJ meetup. It could be the awesomest cocktail party ever. Lots of trash talking, the occasional fist, PsiFighter drunkenly typing while laying in a puddle of his own vomit, Cole manning the grill with no pants…
MomSense
@John Cole:
Use of drones for domestic surveillance as part of protection details did not begin recently.
Paul in KY
@Alex S.: I would say the drones they use are the same the military uses (or that they have some of those drones).
japa21
I have no problem with this. Many police departments also use drones. They are not armed and are used in very specific situations. If you have good reason to believe a suspect is in a specific area, a drone is probably more effective than a helicopter or putting someone into a patrol situation.
If we reject everything because it might be subject to abuse, then we should disarm the police and all law enforcement agencies, get rid of all technology that allows for wiretapping, get rid of computers and all become Luddites.
Redshirt
We have to fight them here or we’ll fight them over there.
Ted & Hellen
If Cassidy is piloting the drones then we have nothing to worry about.
Paul in KY
@burnspbesq: Saw Delta Rae at Bonnaroo. What a band!
burnspbesq
@Botsplainer, fka Todd:
I’ll fly in for that. Worth it just to see Cassidy and aimai sneak behind the toolshed to make out.
MomSense
@Botsplainer, fka Todd:
If you ever do have such an event, I volunteer to be the pet sitter.
max
@Emma: After all, it’s sooooo much more entertaining to jump around pointing and yelping “I was right! I was right!”.
Exactly. On account of not being ‘moderate’ some people should never be listened to. If said people turn out to be right, those people should never be listened to because they weren’t the right kind of right, which takes the mode of quietly expressing ones concerns behind closed doors and then shutting up and not saying anything when those (correct!) concerns are totally ignored.
A tried and true strategy familiar to victims of incest & abuse. It’s traditional!
max
[‘I can’t wait for the kool kids to all get tattoos on their foreheads that say, ‘OBEY’ in giant letters.’]
Cassidy
@Paul in KY: They still don’t go “pew, pew”. ;)
In all seriousness, they probably come in several configurations just like planes and helicopters. It’s easier to sell that way. I’ve never seen a LE helicopter with weapon mounts, but that’s not to say they couldn’t be installed. I’d assume the same for drones.
Also, there are several kinds of drones. The Predator isn’t the only one. Some are purely reconnassaince.
MikeJ
@Paul in KY: They’re the same aircraft sure, but Hellfire missiles aren’t very useful in police work.
Paul in KY
@Cassidy: I know the ‘streak’ has only been going on for a few years, but I’m sure I read that ‘every shooting was justified’.
Ash Can
So what if we didn’t have a domestic surveillance program? What then?
Cassidy
@Botsplainer, fka Todd: I’m in.
RareSanity
@rea:
I’m hoping that my snark-o-meter has been calibrated correctly, and you are legitimately asking this question…not just trolling Cole.
The difference is that when a helicopter is flying overhead, you know it. They fly at low altitudes and make quite the racket.
Unmanned drones fly at a much higher altitude, and are not only quieter, but are smaller, so it’s not like they have to be at SR-71 or U-2 altitudes for you to not be able to see them with the naked eye.
If my snark-o-meter is mis-calibrated and you were just trolling, please disregard all previous statements.
Paul in KY
@Cassidy: Agreed. They do have very small ones that only do photo recon.
MomSense
@Paul in KY:
The one that I saw was a military drone. I had heard about them being used when I still lived in SummerBushPort but I had never seen one before.
schrodinger's cat
@Botsplainer, fka Todd: Is this to be held at Casa Tunch? and is the price of entry a pound of tuna?
MikeJ
@Cassidy:
The predator was strictly unarmed until after the attempted missile strike on bin Laden in the 90s. It was a Predator that pinpointed his location and a ship offshore fired the missile. In the 45 minute flight time of the missile, bin Laden left the meeting. Soon after that, Clinton ordered the Predator be armed. Had it been armed beforehand, bin Laden would have been killed years before 9/11.
Ted & Hellen
@Emma:
Very simple. Stop reading here.
Why are the most virulent Obots also the ones with the most delicate fee fees?
Cassidy
@Paul in KY: Like I said, that topic is one I don’t want to argue anymore. Pooh said it best at the end of the thread.
Ted & Hellen
@Ted & Hellen:
P.S. The fact that you think of yourself as a “moderate” is hysterical.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Ted & Hellen: Fuck off troll.
schrodinger's cat
@MomSense: Do you still live in Maine. I miss it, especially in the summer.
Ted & Hellen
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
No. YOU fuck off, troll.
Cassidy
@MikeJ: I dind’t know that. I just assumed they were always made to be armed.
Ted & Hellen
@ruemara:
Again with the fee fees. You should probably not come here anymore. It’s too much for your nerves, now that the worm is turning.
jamick6000
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): i usually agree with you, but you’re wrong on this. drones are way way way cheaper and easier to use than helicopters. If you make surveillance much cheaper, you’re going to get more surveillance, all else equal.
Tokyokie
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Well part of it is the tool. A drone will fly at a higher altitude and surveil a greater area than a helicopter can, and it uses far less fuel, so it can be based further away and stay up in the air longer. A helicopter requires a highly trained pilot and probably a second crew member operating the surveillance equipment, and helicopters require a lot of maintenance to remain airworthy, so each one would need to be accompanied by a ground crew to keep it flying. A drone just needs one ground controller who can be stationed just about anywhere, and the things don’t require a lot of maintenance, so a handful of mechanics can keep a bunch of them flying.
In short, drones are far more efficient at surveillance than are helicopters. And the level of efficiency at which the security state operates strikes me as being at the heart of critics’ concerns. It used to be that a wiretap required having somebody assigned to listening in on the line 24 hours a day, and because of such inherent inefficiencies, limited resources would rein in the extent of the security state’s capabilities. Supercomputers pulling in data about electronic communications and drones providing an extensive real-time video record of people’s actions increase the likelihood of just about everybody in the country being swept up the the security net. And a lot of folks, myself included, are very uncomfortable with that.
catclub
@Linnaeus: It is the FBI that is licensed to do domestic spying, in contrast to the CIA. Similarly the NSA can only listen to foreigners ( or at least that was the old rule),
but it swaps information with the UK, who can listen to our domestic communications, and then swaps info on targets in side the UK for the UK listening agency. I noted there were no questions to the NSA reps on Capitol Hill along these lines.
Cassidy
@burnspbesq: Aimai seems like a very nice lady and it’s unfortunate we can’t talk to one another without her being condescending or me being an asshole. I don’t think the rest of that is in the stars, though.
Ash Can
@RareSanity: As someone who has been kept awake and woken up by surveillance helicopters, both police and news/traffic, I for one would vastly prefer the use of a drone for searching for criminals and monitoring traffic tie-ups..
Ted & Hellen
@burnspbesq:
Oh dear. Bots and Botsplainers in an intramural slap fight.
Loving it.
Hoodie
BFD. DEA and other feds have been using remotely piloted blimps with radar and FLIR in drug interdiction for decades. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Coast Guard uses drones to monitor domestic maritime activities. Christ, I hope they do. Drones mostly allow you to see stuff that is happening outside, you know, in public. They can be fitted with IR sensors to detect stuff like grow houses, but helicopters have also been used for that and there are already protocols in place. Probably not happening all that much right now, anyways, otherwise you’d have a bunch of sightings, and they’re certainly not carrying Hellfire missiles.
pokeyblow
@Ted & Hellen: They sure are.
pokeyblow
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): Sebastian Munster!
Linnaeus
@MomSense:
No, it isn’t, but I think there are some legitimate concerns. A couple off of the top of my head:
1. Drones extend the technical capabilities of law enforcement to conduct surveillance. There’s a lot you can do with a helicopter, sure, but they’re big, bulky and loud (relatively speaking). If a drone can go somewhere a helicopter can’t, this heightens the potential for it to be used in situations where it really shouldn’t.
2. Given that drones are relatively new, existing rules and laws need to be updated to take them into account. Otherwise, law enforcement will exploit the gray area that drones are in and eventually make their expanded use a fait accompli.
Ted & Hellen
@pokeyblow:
DON”T let them see you addressing me. You’ll be killed!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@jamick6000:
@Tokyokie:
Clarification: I’m not arguing that drones are easier or not to be used. I’m arguing that the laws are what we need to be looking at. Were surveillance laws were OK as long as they couldn’t actually be used? To use another tool analogy, I wouldn’t want to be using a jigsaw to cut the wood to build a house, but if I’m not supposed to be building the house in the first place, does it matter what tool I used?
Botsplainer, fka Todd
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes. Since Cole hates people, we just inform him of the event two hours ahead of time so he can neither refuse, nor run. That gives him enough time to pick his underwear up from off the kitchen counter and to run to the grocery for meat and charcoal. Once liquored up, he’ll actually have fun, although he’ll be grumpy as people arrive at first.
Also, the organizers have to show up about two hours after it starts, so he’ll have an opportunity to get shithammered with the nice people first.
catclub
@Cassidy: But as Dwayne Dibbley says in Red Dwarf, “You never know.”
Botsplainer, fka Todd
@Cassidy:
Nah, this is clearly kismet.
Joel
I really don’t have an issue with the police surveillance drones. If it helps them do their job in a safe and effective manner, I don’t see why I should oppose it. These sorts of things could actually save lives, yaknow. I find surveillance drones far more preferable to the police, or for that matter, civilians using heavy armament. Not that this is a real dichotomy, because we all know that we’re moving in both directions.
The FBI wantonly murdering people is far more concerning. Just my thoughts, is all.
Linnaeus
@catclub:
Oh, I know that the FBI is a domestic agency. The point I was trying to make by referencing COINTELPRO was that we have a known history of the FBI abusing its powers, so we need to be careful about taking what they say at face value.
thoughtcrime
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have drones with frickin’ laser beams attached to their domes! Now evidently my panoptic colleague informs me that that cannot be done. Ah, would you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/alleged-ny-kkk-member-accused-of-creating-truck?ref=fpb
Liberty60
@Tokyokie:
I think you have exactly touched on why I am so uneasy about this.
No, drones are not inherently different than helicopters, or even a guy with binoculars on a hilltop.
But it is the ever-easier way of collecting ever-more information, and the simultaneously ever-mire invisible methods that make it yet another turn of the rachet.
We are, in fact, losing control over what information about us is gathered, by whom, and what happens to it.
The 4th Amendment was about people being “secure” in their papers against “unreasonable”searches.
Its the “secure” and “reasonable” parts that are being eroded- we don’t really have any secure way of knowing what is private and what is public because we don’t understand the limits and possibilities of the new technology. How many people are really aware of the fact that your laptop or cell phone can be searched, and where and when and under what circumstances?
Hal
@RareSanity:
No snark on my park, but why do I need to know a drone, or helicopter, for that matter is flying overhead? Hell, I would be far more concerned with all the cameras everywhere nowadays, whether they are street cameras, or businesses that have them setup for surveillance in and out of their stores, we are being recorded non-stop.
So why should I care if a little flying machine is overhead doing the same?
EDIT: I assume when I’m out in public I’m being recorded in some way, known or unknown. I expect privacy in my house, too some degree in my back yard, but I don’t expect it walking down the street.
lojasmo
Is there an expectation of privacy when walking around in broad daylight (or even in the dark)
I fail to see how this is worse than a traffic camera.
“Because Obama is president, it is vile behavior to even have slight misgivings about any of this.”
Are you a parrot who learned to type?
WJS
We are arriving at a moment where no one who steps outside should expect anything remotely resembling a right to privacy anymore. Outside would extend to anything via computer, through your cable provider, anything via telecommunications, and anything where there are surveillance cameras. No matter who you voted for, you now own the reality of modern life. Privacy is gone.
This didn’t start with 9/11. This started when cops got tired of doing actual police work, or thereabouts.
Mnemosyne
@Ramiah Ariya:
Come visit Los Angeles sometime. At the John Williams concert I went to at the Hollywood Bowl in 2011, Williams actually had to stop the orchestra until the LAPD helicopter hovering over the Bowl moved far enough away that the audience could hear the music again.
thoughtcrime
Obviously the drones are to keep track of these dangerous domestic terrorists:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42158_Tea_Party_Rally_in_DC_-_a_Total_Flop_but_Still_Plenty_of_Confederate_and_Nazi_Imagery
Cassidy
@Liberty60: We lost control when we first signed up for the interents back in the day.
MikeJ
@WJS:
Arriving at? You never had it. Never. Cops have *always* been allowed to follow people in public.
When you are in public, what you do isn’t private.
Botsplainer, fka Todd
@WJS:
Clearly, good policing is 38 specials in Sam Browne belts, manila folders, sweating confessions out of the nearest colored guy, angry calls on rotary phones and reliance on oh-so-accurate eyewitness identification.
Anything else would be sweeping tyranny.
Hal
@Mnemosyne:
He should have just gone into the imperial attack theme.
Mnemosyne
How did 80 fatal shootings and 70 injuries turn into “hundreds”? I mean, I guess 150 total is technically “in the hundreds” since it’s more than 100, but jeez, hyperbole much?
rea
@RareSanity: I was not trolling. With my criminal defense lawyer hat on, I’ve worked a case in which helicopter surveillance was used to follow customers home from a store that sold grow-lights. That’s perfctly legal under current law. Ariel surveillance is only legally problematic if it’s used to look into an area that would not be in plain view to members of the public being somewhere they had alegal right to be. With airplanes and helicopters, that means they can’t watch you from below the FAA minimum height at which aircraft (not engaged in surveillance) can legally fly over your property. Use of technical means to observe what cannot be seen with the naked eye is also problematic.
Your suggestion about low-flying helicopters has the law somewhat backwards–the noisy, low-flying helicopter is more of an invasion of your privacy than the high-flying drone, precisely because it is noisy and low-flying..
Mnemosyne
@WJS:
Talk to the women who have cameras stuck up their skirts when they’re minding their own business in public and have those videos posted online without their consent. Most courts have told them that they have no inherent right to privacy in public, so if they don’t like it, they should stay home.
WJS
@MikeJ: Cops in the modern sense or beat cops who were trying to maintain public order?
I think we should differentiate between people who investigate and solve crimes and police officers who roam about the place, whacking people with billyclubs and shooting them in the back.
When someone is investigated for a crime, their life is opened up like a suitcase and, with a simple warrant, everything can be dumped out and investigated. Are you innocent or guilty? Doesn’t matter. You were a suspect.
Kinda hard to hand you back your privacy after something like that. In the 1960s, someone got the crazy idea to start limiting the power of the police to harass people in public. That went out the window when hippie punching got to be too fun.
Mandalay
@Emma:
Have you thought about finding another web site that is more in line with your tastes?
WJS
@Mnemosyne: That’s an incredibly good point. Privacy should extend to your damned underwear, at least.
taylormattd
@rea: it is literally no different.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Liberty60: Have we really lost as much control as you state? Consider how much information each one of us generates. The Founding Fathers generated correspondence, a Declaration of Independence, two Constitutions, and a few books. I generate that much information probably every six months if not sooner.
Now, also, how easy is it for them to get to? My phone is encrypted, so in order to actually listen to it, they have to go to the phone company. If I were communicating via letter, the government would have to go to the post office.
A 1% leak from a water hose is very different than a 0.1% leak from the Hoover Dam.
Patricia Kayden
“There is a price to be paid for that transparency,” Mueller said. “I certainly think it would be educating our adversaries as to what our capabilities are.”
How is that a controversial statement? Doesn’t it make sense that if you are too transparent, there is a strong possibility that you’ll reveal information to terrorists?
How about repeal the Patriot Act and start over so that the government doesn’t have the power to conduct surveillance on US citizens without any meaningful oversight? Unfortunately too many Dems and Repubs are okay with the status quo. At least for now.
pokeyblow
@lojasmo: No. Are you a violent psychopath who endangers everyone in his vicinity, including — perhaps especially — children?
schrodinger's cat
OT:
It happened sooner than I thought it would, MoU’s competition has arrived, from Bangalore.
thoughtcrime
Why, bless her heart!
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/19/paula_deen_i_want_black_people_to_play_slaves_at_a_wedding/
Linnaeus
@Mnemosyne:
Bingo. It’s fine to point out that when you go out in public, you are subject to being observed just by doing so, but this is a good example of the limits of that principle.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
YES! Summer and fall here are beautiful! Today is one of those perfect days-blue sky, wispy clouds, and warm with a slight breeze. We certainly paid for it this winter, though!
Emma
@Mandalay: Have you thought of growing a real brain and thinking with it rather than defaulting to OHMYGAWDTHEGOVERNMENTISCOMINGTOGETME?
Mandalay
Rep. Nadler gave Mueller the floor in Congress the day, asking him whether Snowden had harmed national security. Of course Mueller said that he had, but he was unable to name any specific way in which national security had been harmed.
And the Guardian (!) published an article by John Bolton who also insisted that Snowden had endangered national security. As with Mueller, the column had insisted that national security had been harmed, but he was unable to provide any specific information.
The real problem for the Assanges and Mannings and Snowdens is not the nature of their alleged crimes, nor that they have harmed national security; it is that they have exposed the powerful as incompetent liars. And for that they pay a heavy price.
taylormattd
John, the post you are proudly blockquoting is an embarrassment. It reads like it was written in allcaps by a half-wit Ron Paul supporter. It is contentless, inaccurate, and hysterical.
You are making fun of people asking “what’s the difference between this and helicopter surveillance”, yet you *still* haven’t answered the question.
Perhaps that’s because saying, “Well, they are cheaper” isn’t as exciting as screaming the left-wing equivalent of THEY ARE COMING FOR MA GUNS!!!!
pokeyblow
@Emma: Let me guess wildly: moderates are those people who agree with you all the time and also go out of their way to compliment you and say how delightful you are.
Makes me a radical.
Yatsuno
@Patricia Kayden: You want Congress to do WORK??? What kind of socialist hippie are you anyway?
RareSanity
@Hal:
You just hit the nail on the head, right there.
If you’re in your backyard sunbathing nude, you’ll know if a helicopter is approaching, that you may (or may not) want to consider covering up your important bits.
In the case of a drone, you’ll never know.
I like to have discussions about these types of things, outside of the box of “crime” and “law enforcement”…those two categories evoke strong emotions that are easily manipulated. My position is that if I’m doing something completely lawful, in my own fenced backyard, I have an expectation of privacy. I should not be subject to surveillance of any kind…be that a nosey neighbor, or the FBI, NSA, or any other alphabet agency.
@Tokyokie really summed up everything about this that makes me uneasy. Because of technology, government agencies have gone from investigations, collecting evidence, and focusing in potential criminal suspects…to “just record every damn thing, all the time, and we’ll sort through all of it if the need arises.”
In my humble opinion, technology is making law enforcement (and spy) agencies lazy and less dependent on traditional forms of investigations, evidence (and intelligence) gathering. I have no problem with new technologies augmenting the traditional practices, it’s when they begin to replace the traditional practices, that I get mad.
cckids
@MikeJ: Didn’t the Repub Congress under Clinton resist the first tries at arming Predators? Because of Freedum, or whatever? (Mostly because it was Clinton’s idea)
feral1
OMIGOD!11!!! The police use horses, bicycles, cars, trucks, motorcycles, airplanes, helicopters, binoculars, telescopes, tape recorders, telephoto lenses, video cameras for SURVEILLANCE!11!11!!
The issue isn’t the tools they use. The issue is the laws that govern surveillance and the oversight that is in place.
Chet
@RareSanity:
If you’re doing something, and then you suddenly stop doing it because you hear a helicopter pass overhead, then you are abso-fucking-lutely someone I want there to be drone surveillance of.
Yeah, yeah, “if you haven’t done anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about,” except all the examples anyone ever gives of people “not doing anything wrong” that get swept up into police investigations are examples where, in fact, there was substantial evidence that they were doing something wrong. Turned out the evidence was wrong, somehow, but I’d like the police to investigate when there’s evidence of wrong-doing. That’s the system working as intended.
Catsy
@Liberty60:
Sorry, but that genie is not going back into the bottle. Short of a technological apocalypse, it never will again.
Every passing year as technology advances further and further we will continue to lose that control. True privacy as once existed in the world is a thing of the past, and unless you abandon most modern communications technology and don’t leave your home, that isn’t going to change.
What we think of as “privacy” is nothing more than the illusion of privacy. That illusion persists as long as the degree to which our lives are exposed–to anyone with the technology and know-how–does not impact us negatively in some way. But no one should fool themselves into thinking it is anything other than an illusion.
To be clear, I’m not happy about this. But it is what it is. We cannot stop the surveillance that is taking place and will continue to, and that becomes more true with every new advance in the relevant technologies. All we can do is insist on as much transparency as we can enforce.
I strongly recommend that anyone who cares about this subject read The Transparent Society, by David Brin.
pokeyblow
@feral1: Sounds like “control guns? Why not control hammers, they kill people too!”
Mandalay
@Patricia Kayden:
Because it may not be true. What specific information has Snowden revealed that you think has harmed national security?
Keith G
I am looking forward to that moment 580 days from now when domestic surveillance and drone policy become a concern for many of the now-unconcerned.
RareSanity
@rea:
I respectfully disagree with your statement counselor.
Helicopters may be a larger disturbance of the peace, but because I know that they’re there, if I’m doing something that I would like to remain private, I know I should probably stop, or do it somewhere the helicopter cannot go.
Such is not the case with unmanned drones.
Chet
@Tokyokie:
Then they’re fighting an inherently losing battle, because technology will always make things more efficient over time. If civil libertarians would prefer that police not engage in blanket airborne surveillance, then they need to articulate the law that will prevent police from doing whatever they object to – not simply rely on it being unfeasible for the police to engage in such surveillance, because eventually it becomes feasible.
So, what’s the proposed legal line here? “Don’t use drones” is like the “assault weapons ban”, they’ll just re-define what is and isn’t a drone (or “assault weapon.”)
schrodinger's cat
@thoughtcrime: Never did like her on-screen personality or her food. Too rich for my taste.
Emma
@pokeyblow: No. Moderates are people who are certainly concerned about the issues (please note the second paragraph of my first post) but who don’t run around with their hair on fire when someone shouts “GOVERNMENT BAD, BAD, BAD!!!!”
It isn’t giving them a pass when they go wrong. It is not allowing something because “my guy is in there.” It’s simply thinking about the issue and talking to other people like they’re actually honestly trying to exchange information until they prove themselves to be, not just ignorant, but actively malevolent.
(EDIT) As I have pointed out ad nauseam in previous discussions, we have a problem. It’s a society-wide problem. We have no definition of privacy as it applies to new technologies, primarily, but not only, online. We need to work on it and we need to rewrite the laws in line with that definition.
(EDIT AGAIN) And notice I treated you like a real person without the snark that you tried so unsuccessfully to use. Real insults have a rhythm. Work on it)
RareSanity
@Chet:
So if my wife and I are skinny-dipping in our backyard pool, we hear a police helicopter approaching, so we scramble to get into the house…that should immediately flag us for drone surveillance?
Sounds pretty silly once you start framing the discussion outside of it all being about “terrorists” doesn’t it?
Mandalay
@Hal:
Europe differs from the USA on this. In Europe there is a “right of anonymity” that does not exist here AFAIK. I mean anonymity when you are walking down the street, but not when you are on the Internet. For example:
feral1
@pokeyblow: Bullshit. I’m specifically saying that laws matter. Laws that regulate gun ownership and use matter. Laws that regulate state surveillance matter. Hysteria about remote control helicopter/planes is counter productive.
pokeyblow
@Emma: Thanks for the thoughtful reply to my rude comment.
How exactly, then, is John Cole driving the moderates away? My experience with this blog has been a series of unpleasant encounters with desperately defensive, thin-skinned people baited and hair-trigger ready to unleash hateful spew at people who suggest not-unreasonable ideas they disagree with.
Who is doing the “driving away” of “moderates?”
bill d
Note to self – Buy a hat.
MomSense
@RareSanity:
Ok, but they are very loud. They used to patrol the woods behind my house looking for marijuana is what I was told at the time. They are intrusive. Yes, you do know they are there but it is not a good thing. And they are a constant for many people whose neighborhoods are constantly patrolled.
I don’t understand why we focus on the instruments of surveillance and not on the policies themselves.
pokeyblow
@feral1: Prism et al. aren’t problematic because horses are also used to gather intelligence?
Well, that’s a different approach to the question.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Wonder how long it will take law enforcement and the FBI to start misusing drones the same way that they’ve occasionally misused every other investigative tool over the years.
MikeJ
@Keith G: I’m concerned about domestic surveillance now, but it’s congress that needs to do something about it. When Bush spied on people it was against the law, so congress changed the law. Now Obama is obeying a bad law. I’m not surprised by it, it’s not the least bit shocking.
piratedan
@Mandalay: what a load of horseshit…
Manning revealed personal information including the names and addresses of servicemen out in public
Snowden is allegedly sharing NSA capabilities and programs with Russia and the PRC based on his own statements to the press…
maybe you don’t mind burning the identities of folks to government entities that are our rivals or for terrorist groups to pick up out on the web, but I do….
MikeJ
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Should we take away the FBI’s cars? I’m sure they’ve been misused at some point in the past.
Arclite
This is the problem with the FBI:
Why on earth does it take a swat team to capture a mild mannered computer hacker? And 12 guys to arrest one dude? WTF? Jeffrey Dahmer? Yes. A guy who hacked some raper’s twitter account? No.
Chyron HR
@Keith G:
So do you actually think Obama is leaving office in 2015, or are you just really bad at math?
Emma
@pokeyblow: Really? My experience has been exactly what you got, but in reverse. For example I no longer read T&H and no longer will respond to him/her because he makes it so unpleasantly impossible to have a discussion. Often, it seems, the reaction from the most left of us is an automatic “if you’re not with me you’re a government stooge” or “an obamabot” or whatever the insult du jour is.
The whole Snowden thing has been a lesson to me. A damn hard one.
pokeyblow
@MikeJ: Control guns? People drown in bathtubs! Should we control those too?
MomSense
@Linnaeus:
I agree that we do need to make sure our laws and policies reflect the new capabilities that unmanned aircraft may have.
I will say that the drone I saw would not have been able to go in places a helicopter couldn’t go. If anything it was larger than the traffic or police helicopters I have seen.
Keith G
@pokeyblow:
No one. It was a fever dream. Full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.
h/t: The Bard
Edit
@pokeyblow: Alcohol is one of our greatest dangers. We need to survey it’s use. Think Sudafed. Every time we buy, anywhere we buy, we swipe our ID so that our dangerous behavior is tracked and proper intervention may be initiated as needed.
Chet
@WJS:
Well, yes. With a warrant. Because the Fourth Amendment doesn’t guarantee you infinite, unbreachable security in your person and effects; it only guarantees you that your person and effects can’t be searched unreasonably, because there actually is an overriding public interest in the police being able to learn what they need to learn to solve crimes and catch criminals.
pokeyblow
@Emma: Yes, really.
Really really.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Mandalay: Isn’t that the choice we make all the time: Do I want convenience or privacy? If Switzerland decides privacy is more important, they can do without street maps.
@Keith G: You’re assuming a number of us were screaming about surveillance during the Bush years and suddenly stopped in January, 2009.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@MikeJ:
Yeah, right. Their weapons too. Ass. Past history suggests that drones will eventually be misused, period. Whether or not the law will change to prevent further misuse remains to be seen.
Emma
@Arclite: Here’s the real problem we’re not talking about. The militarization of American law enforcement, from local sheriff’s departments to the FBI is terrifying. The use of “enemy combatants” techniques may make for great TV but does damn little from the point of view of actual crime fighting.
pokeyblow
@Keith G: I could be bound up in a nutshell,
but I’d fear ending up like many of the regulars here.
EconWatcher
In the mid-90s there was actually a reasonably effective coalition of the left and right on these issues. After the Oklahoma City bombing, all kinds of crazy anti-terrorism bills were being proposed, but the worst of them were beaten back by an alliance including the ACLU, the NRA, Gun Owners of America, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and other unlikely bedfellows. The paranoid “black helicopter” crew on the right were actually useful, because they deluged their congressmen’s phone banks.
This coalition collapsed after 9-11, and the rightwing groups have shown no interest in joining forces again with hippies. So we get what we get.
Spaghetti Lee
Our right to privacy was destroyed the day the first caveman used a monkey to spy on the second caveman. Computer guided-drones for domestic attacks are really no different, when you think about it.
Emma
@pokeyblow: I suppose we all feel the blows to our own body and manage to ignore the ones we inflict.
Steeplejack
@Chet:
Nude sunbathing in your backyard, as mentioned above.
rea
Talk to the women who have cameras stuck up their skirts when they’re minding their own business in public and have those videos posted online without their consent. Most courts have told them that they have no inherent right to privacy in public, so if they don’t like it, they should stay home.
Whatever judge said that, doesn’t understand the law of privacy very well. Of course, what’s under your skirt or pants is not “in public”.
feral1
@pokeyblow: Binoculars allow the STATE to SECRETLY gather DATA without DETECTION!11!!!!
pokeyblow
@Spaghetti Lee: That’s so right. Monkey, horse, drone… tomato, tomahto.
MattR
@Arclite:
The search warrant was based on the accusation that he hacked the Steubenville football team’s fan page. The only reason that distinction matters is that someone else has publicly claimed responsibility for that hack.
KmCO
@Emma: Then how about finding websites more in line with your tastes, as Mandaley helpfully suggested, where the site purveyors have apparently been blessed with “real brains?”
FlipYrWhig
I hear sometimes law enforcement agents get into motorized vehicles. Then they just ride around looking out the window! And they have some sort of talking box they use so they can pass messages to one another!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Steeplejack: I’ve never been in a helicopter, and I don’t spend a lot time naked in the backyard, but I’m guessing helicopters fly a lot lower and slower in your neighborhoods than they do mine
Higgs Boson's Mate
@FlipYrWhig:
How would you feel about Sheriff Joe Arpaio being equipped with a brace of drones?
MikeJ
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: The cars have already been misused. Crooked FBI people have sold drugs, hired prostitutes, worked with people they were supposed to investigate, all in cars. Those people were fired and prosecuted when caught. But cars are a useful tool or the FBI, so nobody ever said we should get rid of their cars.
RareSanity
@MomSense:
I think you misunderstand my position.
I have no problem with drones being used instead of helicopters, I’m not lobbying for extended helicopter use. I, like you, have a problem with the policies of their use…especially by federal agencies, outside of a specific criminal investigation.
If criminal investigation has lead a law enforcement agency, to conduct surveillance on a specific geographic area, suspected of being used to illegally grown marijuana, by all means use the drone to conduct that surveillance. The data being gathered is limited to a specific area, for a specific type of evidence, for a specific purpose…the possible prosecution of those responsible. If it turns out that they were wrong, I would expect that whatever data gathered, would then be destroyed, as it did not match the parameters for which it is gathered.
I do have a problem with a government agency using an unseen, unheard drone…flying it wherever it damn well pleases, collecting whatever information it damn well pleases, and keeping that information in a database, for as long as it damn well pleases.
I think you and I pretty much share the same objections.
Emma
@KmCO: And another one proves my point. Get this. Not you, not T&H, not Pokeyblow, not Mandalay, has the right to make me leave. John Cole can. Get him to ban me.
After all, there are still interesting people with brains hanging about.
Shortstop
@burnspbesq: True. I want to congratulate Burns on having gotten this one right and made me laugh to boot. I want to, I will, I do…but part of the reason I’m laughing is that Burns has voted for Republicans more recently than Cole has.
Keith G
@Chyron HR: So sorry. None of the above. My multi-tasking skills go to shit in the late PM. I should have typed 1311.
Chet
@RareSanity:
I don’t get it. I guess you and your wife are simultaneously extremely shy but enthusiastic nudists, but you only own your property – not an infinite tunnel of space extending above it. That’s public airspace, I may rightfully pass myself through it or any vehicle of any design that the FAA allows me to, and if I look down with my eyes or with my camera and see you, I have every right to do so, just as if I were standing on the street. If you want to conceal acts that occur on your property, do them inside with the shades drawn. You implicitly accept this, because you fenced off your backyard such that it can’t be seen from the public streets and alleys; if you want your backyard to be unseen from the public air as well, build a roof, stupid.
Chet
@Steeplejack: If you’re “nude sunbathing” and I can see you from a public place, that’s your problem, not mine. Build a fence or a roof.
pokeyblow
@Emma: I admitted being rude in my first comment to you, but it’s a real stretch to suggest I’ve done or said anything consistent with trying to make you leave.
Please don’t mischaracterize like that.
Keith G
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): I did not use blanket/absolute terms.
Keith G
How did that double?
KmCO
@Emma: Fair enough. Note that my previous comment to you was, shall we say, snarky. I just get fed up with the lack of nuance I’m seeing in these discussions. If you (rightly, in my view) criticize certain aspects of our surveillance state, and–god forbid–question Obama’s role in upholding it, you’re a firebagger. Full stop. Nuance be damned. Or, if you point out that the surveillance state really gained momentum under George Dubya, you’re an Obot. I won’t name any names*, because I think we all know well enough by now who some of the worst offenders in this degradation of debate are, but it’s tiresome to see people who apparently believe very strongly in their analytical skills refuse to allow nuance into this discussion.
*Of course I won’t withhold Ted & Hellen’s nom de plume, because that’s a wasted courtesy.
Chet
@RareSanity:
It can only fly where it is legally allowed to go, which is anywhere in the public airspace that the FAA permits. If you’re engaged in activities that can be seen from places the public is allowed to go – like the airspace over your property – then you’re the one with the problem. Cover up. Build a fence, or a roof. You’re the one responsible for preventing observation of activities on your property from vantage points in the public space.
KmCO
@Emma: Also, playing the victim card is not becoming. Suggesting that you look elsewhere for discussion that you apparently find more palatable is not equivalent to advocating that you be banned, and you know it.
Chyron HR
@Keith G:
I understand. If you had taken time to reflect, you might have noticed that January 2017 couldn’t possibly be less than two years from June 2013. But no, the risk of letting the “bots” go unharangued for even a few more seconds was too great, so you made a tough call and you stick with it. I respect that.
Emma
@KmCO: We agree on that one. I am going to sing my old song one more time:
1. We need to determine what we mean by privacy in our linked technological age and we need to rewrite the laws to make it happen.
2. INCLUDING and SPECIALLY increasing the transparency of the process.
3. And we need a Congress that does it’s job.
Oh lord. I think we are screwed.
(EDIT) Oops. I spoke too soon. You attacked again. Sheesh.
FlipYrWhig
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I wouldn’t like it and would hope his use of them was being restrained by judges. I wouldn’t like it if Joe Arpaio had two tin cans on a string, either, because he’s corrupt and abusive. That’s why the issue is preventing corruption and abuse. A drone fleet that just recorded everything it saw would be worrisome. A drone fleet used to collect information in a targeted way after having been approved by a judge… That I’m not worried about.
joes527
@Chet:
You seem to be unclear on the concept of “sunbathing.”
RareSanity
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Using lenses for optical magnification, how does it work?
Emma
@pokeyblow: No, and I’m sorry. I am tired and in pain and I think it’s time to get off the discussion because my temper is getting shorter. See you all tomorrow.
Soonergrunt
@Mandalay: In Europe they have the governments protecting them from “surveillance” and tracking and exploitation from commercial enterprises. Tracking and surveillance by government agencies–you can’t walk down a street in most European cities without being under constant surveillance for several blocks.
Sammiches
@Emma:
If this blog were run for-profit, you might have a point. But I don’t think anyone really gives a shit if you are reading it or not.
A lot of people who write want to write because they need to express themselves. Not to entertain you.
I am not trying to be an asshole (though you are free to interpret my comment as such, if you want).
I am just telling you a reality. Go away if you don’t like the front-pagers. Or not. But why question what the guy’s motives are for making a post? Why isn’t “because the writer felt like it” enough for you?
Fer fuck’s sake, some of you act like anything contrary to your idea of what is correct to post on a blog and what is not is a personal slight.
Grow the fuck up. Or go enroll in the nearest university and take some 300-level seminars where you can wank on and on about how awesome your thoughts and feelings are on a given topic. At least someone may hand you a degree when it’s all done.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@RareSanity: Those are some weird, desperate and lonely FBI agents haunting your imagination.
Spaghetti Lee
@Emma:
Same here, but with the opinions reversed. I’m not surprised that some people have different opinions on what constitutes a reasonable expectation of privacy and the balance between privacy and security. But in every thread on this topic, what it’s come back to for me is that people like Cassidy, Hal, and you are openly sneering at people who have issues with this. Denying that we have any right to privacy. Mocking anyone who thinks differently. No, it’s not about my “fee-fees”, to use the overused insult, it’s that you can’t have a reasonable debate with people who are only interested in shouting down and bullying everyone else. Honestly, and maybe it’s just me, but from the pro-NSA pro-surveillance people I sometimes get a sense that they gave up on idealism when it came to these issues, and take the fact that other people haven’t as a personal insult, an affront to their own choices. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s what I hear behind every sneering attack on ‘hippies’ or emoprogs or Greenwald-lovers or Paultards or whatever the “insult of the day” is, to use your words.
RareSanity
@Chet:
Very nice misdirection…you went from arguing that if someone is doing something, and then they stop because a police helicopter flies overhead, “then you are abso-fucking-lutely someone I want there to be drone surveillance of”, to an argument of what is, or is not “private”
My comment was in response to your first argument, not the second one you created out of thin air.
Shortstop
As usual, glibertarians have a cure for what ails us and you dumb libbies just can’t see it. Using cutting-edge technology first unveiled in Atlas Shrugged, you simply use sound waves to create a mirage-y “roof” over your backyards, and you can nude sunbathe till the cows come home without being observed from above. That Ayn!
KmCO
@Emma: You read that as an attack. I did not intend it that wy. I intended it as a mild rebuke to your claim of us wanting to ban you. C’mon, that was a little childish. Otherwise, I’m willing to call a truce on our original flare-up.
Keith G
@Chyron HR: You are certainly free to fabricate an interpretation of events that you were not intimate with. This is, after all, the inter webs.
RareSanity
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Not really. My wife is pretty hot, if I do say so myself.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@FlipYrWhig:
Anyone can correct me if I’m wrong. I don’t believe that judicial approval is required for aerial surveillance. They can use a helicopter, a drone or a moored aerostat whether the surveillance is targeted or not. At the moment the cost of operating a copter precludes their use for trawling. With the other devices, not so much.
Suffern ACE
I guess the issue I have with this is that the FBI is not the NSA. It is not an intelligence agency. What bothers me is that we don’t even get an answer that we’d get out of even the most inscrutable police force.
Pretend it isn’t drones, but police cruisers we’re concerned with. Yeah, those are survellance vehicles, and they transport suspects to jail and they chase down speeding cars and they allow law officers to cover greater distances. But they aren’t allowed to use them to run over jaywalkers. But the FBI treats its drones like they are super secret. It’s not like folks are demanding that the police publish a schedule of where they’ll be in their cruisers. They just want to know what the drones are used for.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Spaghetti Lee: I’m skeptical about the NSA, the FISA courts, PRISM, James Clapper, Keith Alexander, Dianne Feinstein, the war on drugs, the general disinterest of most members of Congress to engage on these issues (also, too, and even more so, on the use of military power by the Executive) and whole lot of other stuff. I just don’t understand why drones strike such a nerve. Helicopters, planes, all sorts of technology only vaguely aware of… what is it about drones that makes them so much more frightening then the rest of it? I feel like I’m in greater danger from a DEA strike force getting the wrong address on a warrant than from a drone.
Hal
@Keith G:
Oh cmon. You could just as easily say many of the now concerned won’t give a crap, especially if the new President is back to the white male status quo, or Hillary dead enders, or conservative repubs who never cared before Jan of 2009.
Yes folks, there are Obots who defend Obama no matter what, and likewise, there are people whose hair is on fire over every fucking thing the guy does as well, no matter how many times it’s been done before.
Just because I’m not bothered by specific things Obama does, doesn’t mean I’m giving him reach arounds when Michelle is out of the White house. I didn’t freak out at everything Bush did either, and I hated the Bush Presidency.
One of the things I’ve always liked about this blog is the variation on ideas and disagreements here which minus a few, are pretty reasonably discussed. But every few months we end up back to the obot vs firebagger style arguments, and I guess that’s where we are again.
I’m not happy with everything Obama is doing or has done, but I am damn thrilled he is a asshole every once in awhile. The sooner America gets over the illusion that a non-white, or non-male President should be a miracle worker sent from another planet, the better off we’ll all be.
Thlayli
@KmCO:
Is that really what you want, Cole? Do you want to turn this site into an emoprog Glennbot firebagger echo chamber?
That’ll be fun — T&H and Mandalay and El Tiburon sitting around commiserating with each other about that awful corporatist preznit and his evil nasty intelligence setup. And DRONEZZZZZ.
Omnes Omnibus
@feral1: Bingo. The specifics of the tool used are not as important as the policy being carried out. Intrusive surveillance is intrusive whether done by wiretap, drone, or sneaky guy.
j
“Does the FBI use drones for surveillance on US soil?
Um, no. I think they are used in the air.
Steeplejack
@Chet:
Nice redirect. All I did was give you an example of something that one might interrupt doing if a helicopter is overhead but that doesn’t mean you <abso-fucking-lutely need to know about it.
And a helicopter or a drone is a “public place” now?
feral1
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s what I’m saying.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Suffern ACE: A better comparison would be: Could the cops turn their cameras on all the time, and then scan that film for something that should be investigated, or could they turn it on just when they thought they needed to, or would they have to have a warrant in cases where they are actively investigating something?
Higgs Boson's Mate
@j:
What? You’ve never heard of the Subsurface Non-autonomous Excavating Acquisition vehicle model K (SNEAK)?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Steeplejack: What Chet’s trying to point out is that the airspace above your house is considered to be public. Because of current law, there is no expectation of privacy from something above your house. Actors understand this very well.
FlipYrWhig
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I’d be more than happy to tighten that up, then. But there’s surveillance, and then there’s surveillance: it can be targeted, or it can be total. I don’t think it should be just indiscriminate trawling, especially not from the sky; if they’re looking for patches of weed or meth labs or Eric Rudolph or Tsarnaev in a boat, then IMHO (and IANAL) I’d like to see someone give it the official sign-off. (That way they can’t say they were looking for Eric Rudolph and saw a still in the woods or something.) But there’s clearly a gulf between what the FBI is admitting to and what John is worried about and thinks he was prescient about.
kc
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
Do you even read the comments on this site?
Yeah, Cole, ’cause if you had, you would totally know that the FBI hasn’t killed enough people.
RareSanity
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think several people have touched on it, but at least for me, the reason they strike a nerve is because of their tremendous efficiency, inherent stealth, and low cost of maintenance and operation.
It used to require a large amount of energy and resources to collect aerial surveillance. So law enforcement officers had to present a pretty good case to their superiors, to get an authorization to do it. With drones, it’s now becoming cheaper to just surveil and catalog everything.
The fact that agents would have to “prove” their case to get approved, and because of the cost, that approval would be inherently limited in scope, was an unwritten speed bump to abuse.
When I really think about it, it’s not about the actual drone. It’s that the capability of drones, has started to expose how unchecked the governments ability, to lawfully spy on its’ citizens is.
It’s not about the drones themselves, it’s what the drones reveal about these different agencies operate.
KmCO
@Thlayli: Because there’s not an ounce of daylight between what Cole wrote and what the likes of T&H and Tiburon have to say?
Linnaeus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Agreed, but not all methods are equally effective in all contexts. There are things a drone can do that you can’t do (or, at least not without additional difficulty) with a wiretap or a sneaky guy. Technology is increasingly transcending the barriers that impeded older forms of surveillance, but are being used in a legal regime that did not anticipate that technology. In that sense, the tool does matter, and policy changes need to reflect the new tools.
Hoodie
@Chet: The other thing is that, if the FAA allows drone flights, they’ll allow them for private parties as well. You might want to buy that roof. At least the FBI guys can be administratively punished for looking at your bare ass.
kc
@Emma:
Almost as much as fun as typing “DRONEZZZZ!” every time the topic of surveillance or government assassinations comes up, eh?
joes527
@RareSanity: pics or stfu
dollared
The beauty of BJ: a thousand people claiming to be liberals, deeply offended when you suggest that they should embrace liberal policies on 1) the surveillance state; 2) health care; 3) foreign policy; 3) corporate taxation.
Of course, they will state strong opinions on gun control and civil rights. So long as no one in Firedoglake expresses the same opinion, in which case those opinions must be withdrawn and repudiated.
Omnes Omnibus
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): The issue with Chet’s position is that hiding from the helicopter is not evidence of wrongdoing. It is evidence of hiding from the helicopter.
FlipYrWhig
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Exactly. To me that’s the question that needs hashing out. Personally, I don’t think I’ve felt like cops on patrol are inherently violating my privacy. Of course they CAN be undertaking deliberate harassment, as with NY’s stop and frisk. Then again, how about when cops set up a zone to stop people and check them for DUI? Is that a breach of privacy? It gets tangled up pretty quickly.
Chet
@RareSanity: Yes, and again, if you’re doing something and the sound of a police helicopter makes you stop doing it, I abso-fucking-lutely want you to be under drone surveillance.
Because you’re guilty? I don’t know that – but the fact that you want to hide it from the police is suspicious as hell, man. If it turns out you’re just letting your junk hang out in the breeze, fine, whatever, but there’s not some Constitutional right to hang your balls out in the sun such that you have a claim on what I do in a public airspace. But maybe that’s a little too nuanced for you.
RareSanity
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I agree that is what he’s saying now…what he started off saying, and what Steeplejack and I called him on, was that if anyone is doing something, and they stop because a helicopter is flying overhead, that is all the justification needed for them to be immediately subject to constant surveillance.
We were merely giving him examples about an activity someone might be doing, that they may stop, if a helicopter was flying overhead.
That’s when he changed his argument to “public airspace”.
Mandalay
@piratedan:
Again, what specifically is Snowden divulging that harms national security? Like Mueller and Bolton, you cannot come up with anything.
FlipYrWhig
@RareSanity: that ability to spy is supposed to be checked by judges and laws. So, in other words, it’s not about drones per se, it’s about a perception that judges and policymakers are too lax and lenient.
pokeyblow
@dollared: Also war-crimes prosecution. Mentioning that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and others were given get-out-of-jail-free cards — by someone — will make those liberals very upset.
pokeyblow
@Mandalay: I can tell you some things which are allegedly happening which will make your hair stand on end.
You’ll think it can’t be.. it’s impossible… but the horrors I can describe are, indeed, allegedly happening.
Mandalay
@Emma:
Always the victim, bravely fighting against everyone who is out to get you. The way you embrace your victimhood is so republicanish.
If you don’t want people to suggest that you find another web site then STFU whining about this one.
Cassidy
@KmCO: you’ve gotten so brave! Usually you just show up to a dead thread and hurl insults.
RareSanity
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s what I was trying to say, you said it a lot more clearly.
j
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Im have heard of snark, though.
This issue was brought up about 2 years ago when some corporate farm company got all PO’d because a remote controlled toy plane with a camera phone attached caught them dumping crap into a river and polluting everything downstream.
It happened again not too long ago and Greenwald was all DRONEZ! about it even though people told him it was just toy planes checking agriculture runoff, which save money and manpower. Yet he continued with his DRONEZ!! mantra.
It could come in handy for some uses, such as that state official who was flying his state plane in Alaska and discovered Palin’s 2 illegal houses that she built hidden in the woods, and that she never paid taxes on.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433×170455
MomSense
@c u n d gulag:
And the Church Commission recommendations led to FISA which was considered an improvement at the time.
daverave
OK, here’s the difference between copters and drones:
When I’m out nude in my backyard, I always give the double-barreled bird finger to any copters that fly overhead. Were it to be a drone, chances are I’d never know it and would miss my opportunity for my FSM-given, American right to express my displeasure with their behavior.
Omnes Omnibus
@Linnaeus: I agree with that. I come down on the anti-surveillance side for the most part in these fights.
LAC
@ruemara: I know – getting increasingly tiresome and predictable… mistermix does the J. Edgar Hoover conspiracy dance, Cole slides in with “fuck you, hippy punchers” shimmey – what’s next? Anne Laurie with her “baby jesus Snowden” shake? And then followed by the rest of the emoprogs on stage wailing and rending garments?
Exhausting…
pokeyblow
@LAC: So why read this blog?
I didn’t tell Emma she should go away, but you… you should.
raven
@RareSanity: How ya doin??
LAC
@Ted & Hellen: worm turning – you in that dog’s ass again?
KmCO
@Cassidy: Um, Cassidy, you took what I wrote in a previous thread (and I’m assuming it’s the one earlier today about incompetent law enforcement) as insults? What was it you were saying about your feelings being incapable of getting hurt again? If you want to be insulted, I know how, but I usually like to do better than that.
pokeyblow
@raven: The emptiness, the tedium.
A life too short become a life too long.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Omnes Omnibus:
@RareSanity:
To get back to the originals statement, which it seems Chet has gone back to as well: If someone was sitting on a park bench doing something, and they hastily stopped (being vague cause I want to run the entire gamut), would the police be authorized to ask the person what they were doing?
LAC
@pokeyblow: Because I can and sometimes it reads well. Except when you come back to do your red bull and vodka posting.
Chet
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): In every jurisdiction I’m aware of, the cops have a right to inquire as to your activities and arrest you when you turn around and run.
There’s just not this right not to have the police investigate suspicious stuff that people think there is.
feral1
@Linnaeus:
Right. But that common sense perspective isn’t as emotionally gratifying as DRONEZZZ111.
pokeyblow
@LAC: That thing about dog sex you just posted… that added a lot.
I guess it legitimizes you complaining about the content of this blog, the fact that you’re putting such provocative, insightful stuff into the forum.
burnspbesq
@Hoodie:
FWIW, a relative just took command of a brand-new, state-of-the-art Coast Guard cutter, and he’s got a helo but no drones.
Mandalay
@Arclite:
Of course it doesn’t take 12 guys to overpower and arrest the guy. But the real message they want to send is this: if you fuck with the authorities then we will send massive and overwhelming force, so don’t even think about fucking with us. THAT is why they send 12 guys.
It’s the same reason the cops leave their lights on mega-flash even after they pull someone over (in Florida at least). There is no safety need. It’s to remind everyone driving past: you fuck with the law and this will happen to you. It is to intimidate.
I think lots of security officials must jerk off when they watch COPS.
joes527
@j:
Yeah, about that …. They fixed that problem by making it illegal for citizens to use DRONEZZZ.
Nerull
I hate to be the one to point this out, but helicopters are not required to fly at low altitudes, nor are they all that loud when they don’t. Police helecopters have the same high power camera systems the drone would have.
You notice helicopters when they’re hovering 200ft over your house, but most you never notice at all.
LAC
@pokeyblow: As thoughtful as your “duuhhhhh, du pwesident obami is bad and you bots are meanies for drooooonz” You are so one note, you just call yourself “P”.
Steeplejack
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
@Chet:
You might want to read up on some of the (new) law surrounding “constructive invasion of privacy.” In a nutshell, constructive invasion of privacy occurs when someone uses technology to capture images or sounds that would not have been otherwise accessible to them without physical trespassing.
California and (I think) Hawaii have created these laws mainly as anti-paparazzi measures, but they have interesting implications for privacy policy in general going forward.
(Emphasis mine.)
IANAL, but I certainly expect to see a case where it is argued that aerial surveillance violates a person’s “constructive” right to privacy.
srv
You people do know that Greenwald used to be Civil?
John is heading down that death spiral from Conservative to liberal, to Civil Libertarian. Only a matter of time before the civil part is dropped.
Where Will You Go Then? The only poster on your side will be DougJ and he’ll be trolling you anyway.
eemom
Saw post. Saw number of comments. All is right with the world.
Nerull
I can assure you that there is a safety need.
SatanicPanic
Jeez, all-surveillance state bickering all the time. Boring.
Mandalay
@Steeplejack: IANAL, but I certainly expect to see a case where it is argued that aerial surveillance violates a person’s “constructive” right to privacy.
IANAL either, but it certainly seems like Apple and Google are interested in what is going on in your back yard. Those of with very fat penises beware….
joes527
@SatanicPanic: I’m with you. It is time folks learned to stop worrying and love the drone.
burnspbesq
Here’s a thought: what happens if we legislatively clamp down on the judicially-created “plain view” exception to the warrant requirement?
Mandalay
@Nerull: @Nerull:
Bullshit. They even do it in deserted parking lots with nobody else around except the car they’ve pulled over. They’re not doing it for safety.
Chris
@Nerull:
I have eyes that’re somewhat more photosensitive than average, so maybe it’s just me, but do these things never cause accidents? I find them blinding every time I see them go by at night.
Villago Delenda Est
Um…this works in a couple of ways.
For one thing, knowing clearly what the capabilities are can act as a deterrent. Might very well prevent exactly what you’re worried about happening. As in “OK, we can’t do this, because the FBI will find out about it and kick our asses”. Of course, some of your adversaries will then take steps to avoid your capabilities (as Al-Qaeda did), by for example not using convenient cell phones or land lines but relying on couriers to communicate. This has the advantage of slowing down the operational pace of whatever your adversaries are doing.
The thing about transparency is that it means that the watchers are…being watched…and that bothers guys like Mueller. David Brin talks about this a lot, how if those in charge of a surveillance state are subject to surveillance themselves, there’s a check on their power. Mueller obviously doesn’t like a check on his power. Too fucking bad.
replicnt6
@Chris:
Yeah, I’ve been in situations where I couldn’t see what was in front of me because of the flashing lights. A modest amount of red flashing lights is appropriate. But they go with Red, Blue, White strobe lights sometimes. Really doesn’t seem to have much of a safety justification.
Not sure I accept the “Pour encourager les autres” explanation though. I think they just like bright flashing lights. It a Christmas tree every day!
Villago Delenda Est
@replicnt6:
I think it has something to do with showing us all how big that snake between their legs is, too.
Mandalay
@Villago Delenda Est: Everything you said there.
And I’ve just learned a new word from reading about David Brin: “sousveillance”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): My short answer: Yes, the cop can ask and, when told to piss off, the cop should so.
Steeplejack
@Villago Delenda Est:
True that. It’s the Strangelove paradox: “The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost . . . if you keep it a secret!”
taylormattd
@dollared: Turns out Paultard conspiracy theories about drones are not “liberal policy positions”
taylormattd
@srv: HAHAHAHAHAHA.
Greenwald used to be “civil”. That may be the stupidest thing even written on the internet.
Was this before or after he agreed that ABL would cheer Obama on if he raped a nun on live TV?
Ted & Hellen
@LAC:
Go the fuck away then, tired little very serious person.
Ted & Hellen
@taylormattd:
It’s uncontroversial to say that she totally would.
julie
Am I the only one who finds it amusing that the black helicopter crowd will finally have visible aircraft to legitimately stoke their paranoia?
Remember, it’s not just the Feds who want to use drones, local communities are lining up to purchase them.
Weaselone
It’s probably more likely that within 10 years corporations will be using drones to image your backyard and peek in through your windows and the government will be required to get a warrant to conduct those same activities. Meanwhile a sizable and growing segment of the population will be live broadcasting and archiving every moment of their life on the internet. Within 15 years you’ll have to worry about the pedophile down the street spying on the neighborhood children with a steeply discounted drone purchased on Amazon with imaging capabilities beyond those the government is using today. Within twenty years, liberals will fail to get a bill banning private ownership oof armed drones through Congress. If armed drones are criminalized, only criminals will have armed drones.
xian
are people really not understanding the context of “civil” above?
Eric U.
I don’t like drones that are weaponized, but I doubt the FBI routinely flies such a thing. The predator was originally sold unarmed, dunno when they started arming them. A contractor crew working for the border patrol crashed a predator in the early days of their use. Drones are awesome at search and rescue, hopefully the FBI has occasion to use theirs for that.
Jay B.
@FlipYrWhig:
There’s someone who’s never been black in their life.
@dollared: You are completely right. I come here, ever more rarely, just to see how people rationalize the same things they used to hate. It’s depressing. Here’s a tip — just because “it’s legal”, doesn’t mean they have to do it. And that’s not really a defense for the new trailblazing form of total hypocrisy you guys engage in every day.
And props to Cole for trolling the people who read him every day. It’s funny, almost all the front pagers do.
Redshirt
It’s trolls all the way down.
p
in a decade or so we won’t be able to tell the difference between tiny drones that will be used to pollinate crops because there are no more bees from the ones being used to spy on us (ala “minority report”) or whether they’re doing both.
in the future, drones may be things we’re batting off like a swarm of gnats.
.
Chet
@Jay B.:
But they want to do it. Police want to have this capability because they want to use it, for reasons that they (most likely correctly) view are in the public good and (perhaps incorrectly) outweigh the interests of a small number of shy exhibitionists. Maybe they’re wrong. But they don’t think they are, so if you want them to stop, you need to legislatively stop them – not just assume that the technology we have today will never get any better, and therefore we can rely on technical unfeasibility as a proxy for legal protection of your civil rights.
A surveillance-free society needs a stronger protection than just “oh, it’s too hard.” Because soon it isn’t.
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne: Hyperbole is the mother’s milk of blogs.
Paul in KY
@Chet: Getting to where a guy can’t whack off in the back yard anymore. Sheesh…
Paul in KY
@Emma: I never read T & H.
Paul in KY
@Chet: Will state that when this current concept of ‘no expectation of privacy outside your own home’ was codified, only birds & nutty balloonists could actually get up in the sky.
Understand people could climb tall trees & cliffs, etc. etc.
Paul in KY
@Nerull: People might notice, but act like they don’t.
Ever thought of that?
Ted & Hellen
@Paul in KY:
I wear your terror at my written words as badge of great honor.
Paul in KY
@Ted & Hellen: I should have noted that I will read you when you directr a post at me.
Generally, I see nothing from you but putdowns. Not very good putdowns either. I only have so much time to read here & you generally waste my time. You are not alone, however. There are several more that I treat in the same manner.
lethargytartare
@burnspbesq:
he’s more complicit. When many of us were expressing shades of misgivings about the national response to terrorism, he was wearing a cheerleader’s outfit and calling us traitors.
Now he’s doing the exact same thing, he just thinks he’s on the other side of the free speech zone fence.