Drone may be coming to Miami-Dade

Source: WSVN.com

DORAL, Fla. (WSVN) -- A new piece of technology may soon be coming to South Florida, but is already raising concerns from residents.

The Miami-Dade Police Department recently finalized a deal to buy a drone, which is an unmanned plane equipped with cameras. Drones have been used for years in Iraq and Afghanistan in the war against terror.

Many residents are concerned that the new technology will violate their privacy



ACLU approves. I guess soon every major market will have drones over head if they don't already.

Read more: http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/21003198189967/

God, that's a shame.

Between that and Citizens United, the ACLU is off my giving list.

Fuck!

... if you worked for Dick Jones. DICK, JONES!

That's too big and clunky.

Perhaps little spider-like drones equipped with infrared and retina scanners.

Honeywell applied for clearance via FAA to fly the drones in urban areas. This has never been allowed before.

sometimes I think I went to sleep and woke up in Bizarro World.

"Technology: there's no reason not to embrace technology if it makes the streets safer, if it helps the police. The concern is, though, that every new technology also has within it the capacity to threaten people's privacy," he said.



This is a general statement about technology used by police for purposes of public safety. It says, basically, "public safety good, invasion of privacy, bad."

What in that is evil?

Does Washington know?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/emergingtech/drones-over-los-angeles/267

Drones over Los Angeles

By Roland Piquepaille | June 17, 2006, 9:39am PDT
Summary

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has started last week to test unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These small drones, which look like toys, weigh about 5 pounds and are equipped with a GPS device and a camera. They can fly at speeds up to 30 miles per hour for 70 minutes and cost less than 30,000 dollars.


The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has started last week to test unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). These small drones, which look like toys, weigh about 5 pounds and are equipped with a GPS device and a camera. They’ll complement the helicopters of the department where it’s too dangerous to go. These drones can fly at speeds up to 30 miles (48 kilometers) per hour for 70 minutes and cost between 25,000 and 30,000 dollars. They could even replace conventional surveillance aircrafts within ten years — and check from the sky what’s happening in your garden.

Sometimes spellcheck just isn't enough.:evilgrin:

The city of Anaheim, CA has had low flying helicopters for many years that shine multi-million candlepower searchlights down on the backyards of homes at night in the cities' residential neighborhoods. My late parents were RepubliNazis who thought it was truly a wonderful thing. They just loved living in Stalag 66. The, uh peace officers there don't even need "probable cause" to buzz your neighborhood after dark. They just do it for fun, or else in search of late night "skinny dippers" who are relaxing at home in their back yard swimming pools.

They can not operate out the the line of sight of the operator due to see and avoid requirements

Congrats.

Ever since they refused that dying womans (same-sex) partner from seeing her on her deathbed, saying in effect 'you're in Florida now & we don't cotton to your 'lifestyle'; they've been on my no-fly (or drive, or train) list.

I wouldn't spend a dime there.
And I won't buy anything from there, eBay included.

That is an organization that is supposed to care about personal privacy, freedom of movement and from arbitrary search and surveillance.

I contribute to them- might have to re-think that.

I don't see the problem. Saving time and money and doing the same job as helicopters do, looking for criminals on the run, etc.

Where's the problem with the fact that these are cheaper, safer and easier to get up there in emergencies without risking lives of air bound police? They can spot traffic accidents a mile away, call the land-based cops, etc, just like manned helicopters do now.

And it might come back with some holes in it :evilgrin:

is there a big difference between patrolling city by air in a chopper vs drone.

And it the FAA that is preventing their wide spread use.

two answers above did not respond to your specific question.

I agree, there's little difference in my mind, and lots of dollars saved with increased surveillance with a drone.

As long as the drones doesn't have any missiles attached, I don't care all that much. (Oh, shit, now I've given the security-tards a new idea. Bummer.)

It is true that it would be better if the government did not feel that its citizens were the "enemy", but that's their fault, and their problem.

of the Patriot Act- if you have nothing to hide, why worry? Land of the free, home of the brave. Freedom isn't free. :sarcasm:

I'm not carrying my weight in the fear department?

I am saying that this is an invasion of privacy- privacy used to mean something in this country.

Looking INTO my house is an invasion of privacy. It all depends.

but a power gained is never ceded.

Smart rulers don't push their luck.

the problem is- there is no such thing as a smart politician anymore.

It's their fault and OUR problem.

show to monitor all of the "residents"? Remember what happened if the drone cameras showed a "resident" trying to escape or in some forbidden area? :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOEKVmfAhm4&feature






"I am not a number, I am a free man!" Patrick McGoohan’s character Number Six shouted at the panoptic eye in the sky at the beginning of every episode of the revolutionary ’60s sci-fi TV series The Prisoner.
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/01/rip-patrick-mcg/

RELEASE THE BALLOON!

The inability to see and avoid is quite literally a killer

Historically it has meant that it must be visible to the operator at all times. Also the issues of uplink loss will need to be covered. Small UAVs like T-Hawk are much more dependent on them than larger UAVs (Predator, Global Hawk). More on T-Hawk here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_RQ-16_T-Hawk It is nothing like the Predator shown on the cited article.

The article is wrong about Miami being the first as other US police agencies have been looking into this as well. None have received FAA approval to date. Given the large about of technical issues, I doubt there will be a privacy issue any time soon.

South Florida has a lot of low level aviation activity, helos, military, commercial and general aviation. The Miami PD can not afford the liability of taking out one of them with a T-Hawk

Get a Predator armed with Hellfire missiles and then we can talk. Crap, why don't we cut to the chase and send in the Apaches? Let's just militarize everything. Damn the Constitution! :sarcasm:

Given that Americans now have very little understanding of, or appreciation for, their civil liberties, is it not inevitable that these drones will be supported BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE and become commonplace?

And that the next generation of drones, the new ones that can see through walls, will be embraced without any resistance BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE?

If this happens, then why would any citizen WITH NOTHING TO HIDE object to saving taxpayers millions of dollars by allowing law enforcement to install low-cost cameras right in their house, which will dramatically reduce the need for expensive drones?

Really, the drones are just one more step in making America safe for people WHO HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE.

a violation of your civil liberties/privacy?

Little bit of state privacy intrusion here, bit more privacy intrusion there, next thing you know, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy anywhere, and hence no possibility of violating it.

Not a problem of course, IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE! Right?

you mention what happens when they can see how through walls, well clearly that is an invasion of privacy. But that isn't what's happening we're talking about your local police using a drone in place of helicopter.

The point is that the right to privacy cannot and will not survive the incremental assault on privacy that is taking place through the constant and unrelenting escalation of surveillance of the population by law enforcement agencies.

I suspect many people today could not even comprehend that, less than a generation ago, it would have been political suicide for an American politician to call for citizens to be subjected to arbitrary and intense surveillance that many people now take as quite acceptable.

If anyone even 40 or 50 years ago had said they thought it would be a good idea to have flying TV cameras hovering in the air to keep an eye on the population, they would have been seen as deranged, and hostile to the freedoms that Americans enjoyed.

Now it's the "new normal".

:eyes:

The ACLU may not be perfect--which organization run by humans is? However, it fights the good fight on our behalf 99.7% of the time.

Simon is the FLA director, not the national director, AND he never said he approved. That is only pure spin by the author of the WSVN article. I have no idea why anyone is blaming Simon for how the author of the WSVN article mischaracterized Simon's actual words.