As it is, you're just making up bogeymen to yell at. There is no 30,000 drone surveillance state plan that you seem to be railing against.

Apparently someone is talking about it. In fact, they are not only talking about it, they are passing legislation, signing legislation, and developing pilot programs for these things.

Since you apparently can't distinguish between ANY use of unmanned aircraft, and continuous surveillance by armed Predator drones. By that standard, it's a war crime that we have an airline industry since there's no difference between a 757 carrying people and a B-52 carpet-bombing a city.

"Since you apparently can't distinguish between ANY use of unmanned aircraft, and continuous surveillance by armed Predator drones."

What, exactly did I write that led to you that sentence?

There are real conspiracies out there but nothing like this that I know of......

speculation.

Show me ONE drone in the sky and I'll apologize.

Until then, it's like every conspiracy out there.

It's not conspiracy. It's signed legislation, which will create an immense and lucrative market.

[font color=blue]"Show me ONE drone in the sky and I'll apologize."[/font color]

Drones have already been purchased by police departments in Miami and in at least two cities in Texas. Now that this law has been passed, the FAA is predicting at least 30,000 in American skies by 2020. More lnks are below in this thread.

Miami-Dade police drones are ready for action
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2011-11-17/news/miami-dade-police-drones-are-ready-for-action/

DHS-Funded Taser Drone Launched in Texas
http://www.telepresenceoptions.com/2011/11/dhsfunded_taser_drone_launched/
November 1, 2011 | Hogan Keyser

UAV used against insurgents in Afghanistan can incapacitate suspects from above

Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Monday, October 31, 2011 -- A Department of Homeland Security-funded surveillance drone deployed against insurgents in Afghanistan that can also be used to tase suspects from above has been unveiled by the Montgomery County Sheriff's office and will be operational within a month.

"At $500,000 a pop, Montgomery county spent $250,000 to get the UAV. The rest was covered by a Department of Homeland Security grant," reports KBTX.com.

Although its initial role will be limited to surveillance, the ShadowHawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, previously used against suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and East Africa, has the ability to tase suspects from above as well as carrying 12-gauge shotguns and grenade launchers.

this is complete bullshit.

Yer "photo" of that drone is a photoshop mockup.

Tasers? Really??

12 gauge shotguns? Really?

grenade launchers, REALLY?

This whole story is FUD, nothing more.

Speculation.

Bogus posits one and all.

Mass fail.

If you want to see what the REAL future UAV's look like, check this out:

to kill Tupac Shakur....but you can't have everything...

do you have any comment on the actual legislation?

Fuckin Obama!

Or in the sand, whatever the case that causes such ignorant blindness.

Pay attention, it works better than laughing why the shit happens before your eyes and you just end up looking like a goofy mark.

Lies and spin posted on the DU

Funny how everyone wants to talk about something else.

But you can post all the lies you want slandering our president and it's okay

Are also spying on American citizens ?

Police helicopters are used for lots of things, including pursuits and observation. They are also used for traffic control and search/rescue.

Now, please tell me what the "lies" are.

Police helicopters are used for "observation" but drones are used for spying , thanks for making my point

Last edited Sat Feb 18, 2012, 04:01 AM - Edit history (1)

peaking with a digital camera through a crack in the blinds. It cannot follow you on foot without your knowledge. Tiny, remotely controlled aircraft, equipped with cameras and sophisticated sensors, offer a tremendous advantage for surveillance over the utility of a helicopter for that purpose. The two are not EVEN in the same league. A government that wanted to keep a close eye on its citizenry, would doubtless find such drones very useful, and would probably produce and utilize them in large numbers.

From my perspective, you don't have much of a point.

Now, about those 'lies'...

Hoping the POTUS doesn't support violation of privacy is not slander - it's merely a hope.

As in, I HOPE one of those fucking things tracks you and your family to see how you like it.

Cause that's bad.

So I don't see the big deal.

Or perhaps an entire squadron of micro drones for each person..

We can be safe everywhere, and they are so small we won't even have to notice!

I think they are in the bush outside my window now!

Are we outraged yet? Is this really America?

Talking about a national ID

And the link that mentions Congress passed a bill authorizing 30,000 drones by 2020 from Tech land ....Congress would be the House and the Senate if it passed it would appear the president isn't signing the bill , which would mean he is taking a position
the article doesn't even specify it just says Congress which would lead one to believe the House and the Senate passed the bill and the president isn't signing it

but that was an interesting bit of wishful speculation.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002319846

If you polled 1000 people at random, maybe 1 would even have heard of the idea. It's not a current issue, so will not be addressed by President Obama.

Presidents, in campaign years, talk about what many are discussion, not stuff nobody's really talking about. That's how it works.

I think he does well on everything else. What upsets me the most is his support for ACTA. I absolutely hate the idea of censoring the internet or infringing on our privacy. I also am uncomfortable with 30,000 drones in American skies and the internet ID card.

I also am upset with the secrecy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. I think when talking about anything involving civil liberties then civil liberties organizations should be brought to the table.

I used to be pretty blind in my support for Obama but, ACTA woke me up to his bad civil liberties record.

Of course when it comes down to it I still want Obama to win reelection because he may have a bad record on civil liberties but, what the GOP (Greedy Old Party) is offering is totally nuts and it would push our country back to the dark ages.

tried to keep it quiet. Everybody was up in arms about SOPA and PIPA, and this was slipped through very quietly, on purpose.

There are worldwide protests against it now, although Americans remain very sheeplike and/or ignorant of the whole thing.

That is where the next fight is for internet freedom and we cannot rest until any and all threats to internet freedom are defeated.

Last edited Thu Feb 16, 2012, 07:49 PM - Edit history (1)

and you are right; TPPA is another big one that cannot be ignored.

Occupy.

Last edited Thu Feb 16, 2012, 11:46 PM - Edit history (2)

You've been a good America yes? Then nothing to hide, means nothing to worry about. Ha ha just joke about it like the rest of us! (They are watching right now) I keed on twitter! You better give me a God Bless America or two! They have to justify another bloated department that does the same thing that the NSA/CIA/FBI does, so the local boys can focus on other things (like ignoring illegal wiretaps) like working for AT&T dam those lines. Series. I keed. Love my local DHS!!!!

Love you FEMA!

Shout out to ma' personal drone...luv ya man you need details and graphix on those fins! Don't let them sell you short!

an "Occupy" graphic on mine?

on the front or back. Depending on which way you are going to run. Your choice.

ones obsolete. Not to worry, excess military hardware never ends up in the wrong hands, right?
####

Combat Drones Soon To Fly Over U.S. Airspace
---
While combat drones are not allowed in the U.S. airspace without a special certificate from the FAA, the military is in a fix over the 7,500 military drones deployed overseas, that need to be recalled home.

While the fleet of unmanned robotic aircraft keeps growing and adding to the nation’s arsenal, the Pentagon is working out procedures to enable the Federal Aviation Administration to open U.S. Airspace for military drones.
----
Steve Pennington, the Director of Ranges, Bases, and Airspace for the Air Force said that “The stuff from Afghanistan is going to come back,” and that the Department of Defense wanted to use the drones for needs of the nation and that the Department “doesn’t want a segregated environment. We want a fully integrated environment.” This can mean that military drones would be brought under the same rules as other military aircraft.
----
While the smaller drones, which are mostly as large as hobby planes may be brought under a system, the question is different for the large Global Hawks, MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers which can wreak havoc in the wrong hands.

http://www.jdjournal.com/2012/02/14/combat-drones-soon-to-fly-over-us-airspace/

#####

Okay, so there are those who approve of killing anyone our government says is a terrorist by drone attacks. Some even seem to think it's okay that innocent people are "colateral damage," and even approve or simply shrug and say, too bad that children get blown to bits or that rescuers get blown up - that's what happens in a country with occupiers waging war.

My point is that the legal and moral issue of wartime use of drones by the US hasn't been challenged and may not be until drone attacks on US soil happens. However, there's also a moral and ethical issue of non-armed drones being used as "journalists" in the US - gathering information and sending it to ??? (homeland security, fbi, cia, private businesses - who knows)?
#####

UNL to study ethical, legal issues of ‘drone journalism’
---
And news organizations, says University of Nebraska-Lincoln journalism professor Matthew Waite, will begin to inject them into areas ground-bound reporters can’t easily go to capture news footage, such as tornado-ravaged neighborhoods or above crowded squares where protesters may be gathered.

But before the first drone is launched in the name of newsgathering, a host of questions and concerns arise – from how to best use the new technology to deliver news and information efficiently to whether drones are a privacy and safety threat that would lump them, in the public’s mind, in the same camp as celebrity-chasing paparazzi.

That’s why Waite, a professor of practice at UNL’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications, says the time is right to study just how exactly the use of the unmanned aircraft may affect the practice of journalism. Last month, he founded the Drone Journalism Lab at UNL to examine the practical, ethical and legal issues involving drones and news reporting.
---
“We have a responsibility to discuss the use of this new platform, its safety, its legality,” Waite said. “We also need to lay out an ethical framework for its use. What are the right uses of civilian drones? How can journalists use them responsibly? How do you balance the public’s right to know with privacy or security?”

http://newsroom.unl.edu/blog/?p=912

on another drone base. Who would have thought non-human terminators weren't fiction, but the reality of Americas Wars?
####

450 Bases and It’s Not Over Yet
The Pentagon’s Afghan Basing Plans for Prisons, Drones, and Black Ops
By Nick Turse

In late December, the lot was just a big blank: a few burgundy metal shipping containers sitting in an expanse of crushed eggshell-colored gravel inside a razor-wire-topped fence. The American military in Afghanistan doesn’t want to talk about it, but one day soon, it will be a new hub for the American drone war in the Greater Middle East.

Next year, that empty lot will be a two-story concrete intelligence facility for America’s drone war, brightly lit and filled with powerful computers kept in climate-controlled comfort in a country where most of the population has no access to electricity. It will boast almost 7,000 square feet of offices, briefing and conference rooms, and a large “processing, exploitation, and dissemination” operations center -- and, of course, it will be built with American tax dollars.

Nor is it an anomaly. Despite all the talk of drawdowns and withdrawals, there has been a years-long building boom in Afghanistan that shows little sign of abating. In early 2010, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had nearly 400 bases in Afghanistan. Today, Lieutenant Lauren Rago of ISAF public affairs tells TomDispatch, the number tops 450.

The hush-hush, high-tech, super-secure facility at the massive air base in Kandahar is just one of many building projects the U.S. military currently has planned or underway in Afghanistan. While some U.S. bases are indeed closing up shop or being transferred to the Afghan government, and there’s talk of combat operations slowing or ending next year, as well as a withdrawal of American combat forces from Afghanistan by 2014, the U.S. military is still preparing for a much longer haul at mega-bases like Kandahar and Bagram airfields. The same is true even of some smaller camps, forward operating bases (FOBs), and combat outposts (COPs) scattered through the country’s backlands. “Bagram is going through a significant transition during the next year to two years,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Gerdes of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Bagram Office recently told Freedom Builder, a Corps of Engineers publication. “We’re transitioning... into a long-term, five-year, 10-year vision for the base.”

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175501/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_prisons%2C_drones%2C_and_black_ops_in_afghanistan/

Thank you very much. I am continually astonished at what we learn about what our own government is doing when we look beyond the typical media outlets. For a country with a free media (such as it is, for the moment) we have truly impressive information management within the sources of media that the vast majority of Americans actually use.

Again, this really should be an OP. Americans, and probably even the vast majority of politically aware DU, have no idea of these plans for Afghanistan.

Thanks again for all you contribute here.

add satellites to that and drones really wont move the needle at all.

If you live in rural areas? Maybe this makes a difference. Probably not.

Steven sez there's nothing to worry 'bout. Cool. I won't worry my pretty little head then, alright!

my guess is that drones give WAY more focussed survielance

and soon, the size of insects. They can be in bushes outside windows, and you would never know.

a drone to follow someone as they go about their business here? Some of the buildings have entrances and exists on two or more streets and avenues, some of the buildings have subway entrances inside, etc. NYC is just about completely covered with street level cameras. It doesnt take fuel to watch you with a street level camera. You dont lose street level cameras by ducking into the subway system because the moment you exit the system, you are covered by another camera. Drones would be crashing into the buildings here right and left.

I imagine Washington DC, Boston, Chicago and other big cities are similar in those regards. I've used the subways in those cities too and trying to follow someone with a drone once they use it would be impossible. Los Angeles is an exception, drones might be useful there since mass transit coverage, particularly subways are poor and infrequently used.

Drones are perfectly suited for locating an enemy on a battlefield with no or minimal buildings. The higher the population and industrial-ness of the population, the worse they are at surveillance.

Surely you are not seriously arguing that the presence of subways renders drones completely useless and unattractive to urban areas. That's the most desperate reach of an argument I've seen all day.

And I've been over in Meta.

I know you dont feel that way, but it sums up my opinion nicely.

"If you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about."

or else we might have to stop by and ask you what's on your mind

That would have sounded crazy 10 years ago.

I think failing to be upset about flying spy robots is mostly due to a failure of the imagination. People can't be thinking it through all the way as far as what it will be like to live in a world where the cops have flying robot spy insects.

What is driving this rush to use drones in the US?

Have a lot of people been calling their congressmen to demand we start using spy drones in the USA?

Or could it be just that we created a drone industry, and now that industry has a full-time crew of salesmen and lobbyists to promote the drones?

I can't figure out what the big push is to get these drones active in the US.

I would think there would be a better use of our money. Why are we getting ready to give all this money to the drone makers?

The people have not even really had a chance to vote on this issue. Not even in an election.

These things will become ubiquitous in our cities, and someone stands to make a fortune...just like with the naked scanners, although the scope here is much, much larger. Those who stand to profit from it would much rather our cities' money go toward militarizing police departments than, say, to schools or heating assistance programs. And they are the ones pouring money into our election campaigns.

Profit is the motive, as well as increased surveillance and control of Americans who are increasingly waking up to what is being done to them.

You are right about the flying insect drones. But I don't think it is a failure of imagination as much as a defensiveness born of a desire to deny the *bipartisan* corruption of our political system by corporate financial interests. If this were happening under Bush or any other Republican, you would be seeing uniform and vociferous condemnation here.

You cannot solve a problem if you refuse to acknowledge it.

The people's opinions are never sought, this is all about money, we are merely the commodities used to justify them. We appear to be enemy.

Remember when we used to joke about that when Bush was president? That we 'were all suspects' now? That is why we put Democrats in office, because we wanted to end those Constitutional violations, investigate those responsible and put them on trial.

I almost miss those days, when we thought it could all be .fixed! There is nothing worse than losing hope. And now I see some on the left just yawning at what would have had them screaming in outrage back the. The PTBs must laugh at us, we make it so easy for them.

Excuse me while I whip this out.

Is far from pro-union, in fact rather the opposite.

We each care about what is important to us, with me it's unions and civil liberties and with you apparently it's something about "whipping it out".



He signed the drone bill on Tuesday (it also makes it more difficult for airport workers to unionize):

Obama signs bill to proliferate drones in US skies, make unionization harder for airport workers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002319846

Think of it. How many police departments across the United States? And the development is going to take off now to meet specific police department needs, now that he has signed this legislation.

Texas already has a drone capable of tazing suspects from above. The article (linked way up there in the thread) stresses that it will be used "initially" only for surveillance.

This is a gold mine for someone.

Ball in your court.

Last edited Fri Feb 17, 2012, 01:34 PM - Edit history (1)

If not I don't really give a shit if he opposes the scary ones or the happy ones or whatever.

I do care about some of the laws that are being passed these days that would make a Bush blush, and would like VERY much to know which of these proposals the POTUS has opposed or embraced.

He signed the drone bill on Tuesday (it also makes it more difficult for airport workers to unionize):

Obama signs bill to proliferate drones in US skies, make unionization harder for airport workers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002319846

He signed ACTA in October without Congressional approval and only after attempting to hide it from the media, claiming that it was a "national security" secret. It took European media to break the story:

US signs ACTA - Obama admin claimed it was a "national security" secret until EU leaked it:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2058658

His administration is the force pushing for the internet ID, as all the media coverage and the direct proposal clearly show. Pilot programs will begin soon:

Federal Government moving ahead with internet ID plan
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002257531

Why Obama's National Internet ID Solution is a Really, REALLY Bad Idea
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002257541

The only one of these where we do not yet have direct evidence of his support is the NY surveillance camera plan, which is still in early stages and is backed by Homeland Security. However, given his record on all these other issues, there is absolutely no reason to believe that he is not behind this, too.

Thank you for your posts.

The patrician spirit concerning who we are as America, at it's core, is lost forever, if we don't get out the vote. everything insignificant IS the problem. Contribute first, vote next, complain, always.