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Unmanned Aerial Drones Coming Soon Above U.S.
cnet-declan writes "Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been flying over Iraq and Afghanistan, but now the Bush administration wants to use them for domestic surveillance. A top Homeland Security official told Congress today, according to this CNET News.com article, that: "We need additional technology to supplement manned aircraft surveillance and current ground assets to ensure more effective monitoring of United States territory." One county in North Carolina is already using UAVs to monitor public gatherings. But what happens when lots of relatively dumb drones have to share airspace with aircraft carrying passengers? A pilot's association is worried."
At major events in Israel, they already use unmanned blimps to monitor it from a distance. If they can keep it out of commericial airspace, it shouldn't be a problem.
Boil a frog slowly...
My new sig seems even more appropriate than usual.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
But what happens when lots of relatively dumb drones have to share airspace with aircraft carrying passengers? Hilarity ensues...
First it was the domestic wiretap issue; the administration not only didn't deny doing it, they flat-out flaunted it. Now they want to put unmanned drones in the air to watch God-knows-what. There's no longer even a pretense, a facade, even the slightest attempt to hide the surveillance society.
I thought that actions like appropriating the military for civilian law enforcement, spying on US citizens within the US, etc. were illegal. Why doesn't anyone seem to give a shit anymore?
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Every fucking time I turn around another police outfit from Bumblefuck, U.S.A. has bought itself a shiny new toy with my "homeland security" tax dollars. (Add your least favorite story about the new SWAT team in a county with three homocides a year, an armored car for a town of 50K people, etc.) And because there usually aren't any terrorists anywhere near them, these knuckledraggers end up figuring out a way to chase the usual crowd of inbred drunks around town with it.
I'd watch myself if I were you.. these people don't exactly have a sense of humor.
In fact, saying it publically in my town (via letter to the editor) will get you arrested:
http://www.wlio.com/localNews.aspx?NewsID=3246
Shouldn't be a problem for who?
Are they armed? How long until they are?
Your interpretation is incorrect. Most airspace is class E -- which is controlled airspace -- but airspace designations are primarily about visibility minimums and communications requirements, and have little bearing on flight plan or instrument flight status. Classes D, C, and B are all associated with areas in and around airports, with increasing requirements for communications (D,C, and B all require communications with the airport tower, C requires transponder, and B requires transponder and permission to enter the airspace.) So today, even the most restricted airspace (B) you can fly over without a flight plan.
So unless most airspace is declared class B, it's not really an issue. I really don't think the FAA / ATC want to deal with the millions of clearance requests, etc they'd encounter if they did something so drastic.
What's more likely is that they'll swiss-cheese the airspace with temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) around areas where the drones operate. Presumably they could become so numerous as to make private flight planning a bit difficult. Before then, however, there will probably be enough crashes with drones to result in them be forced into small saftey zones. If the Predator is any indication, there will be many, many crashes as UAVs get used more extensively -- which would totally undermine any safety-selling approach that might be tried.
"I don't see these measures as an infringement on personal freedom, because the measures will target people I don't like."
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Classes of US Civil Airspace:
A: 18,000+ feet, IFR flight plan required
B: Major airport (LAX, SEA, ORD, etc.), 10,000 MSL and below
C: Medium airport, usually only to 4,000 AGL
D: Small airport with tower, usually only to 2,500 AGL
E: Everywhere else above 1,200 AGL
G: Everywhere else below 1,200 AGL
You are thinking of Class E and G airspace.
Just remember in Class G to stay *at least* 500 feet from my barn.
MSL = Mean Sea Level
AGL = Above Ground Level
You seem to be missing a point. That point being that the first 3 wars that you mentioned actually had goals that were achievable. The latter does have achievable goals. Or are you so naive to think that a "war on terrorism" can actually be won?
You also seem to be justifying an erosion of freedoms as ok and something that'll be returned after the conflict ends. Well since this war cannot be won, those freedoms will never return.
For that matter, what justifies this increase in surveillance? Are there operatives about everywhere? Must we fear everyone?
If we all remember the Simpsons episode (paraphrase):
Lisa: I have a rock. It keeps bears away.
Homer: How do I know this rock works.
Lisa: Do you see any bears around?
Momer: I'll give you $10 for it.
Lise: Dad, it doesn't really work.
Homer: $20!
Thus the administration is keeping everyone safe from the terrorists. Because do you see any of them around. Let's just keep letting them do whatever they want.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
> As a little kid I actually tried put this myth to the test it worked flawlessly.
Where's that -1 Evil moderation when you need it?
Why not remote control cars, too? We could change traffic rules to give priority to robot police cars, which could observe us, too.
It's a clear violation of airspace safety in which the pilot is ALWAYS reponsible for avoiding other aircraft. It's the most basic rule you learn when you become a pilot, and it's what every examiner checks for before each maneuver during the practical exam. Unfortunately, the engineers designing these things aren't pilots or air traffic controllers and have no idea how our airspace works. (They work fine in Iraq, but that's a war zone with no civilian aviation.) Apparently engineers do know how to weasel our tax dollars to fund their overpriced remote control toys.
If AI was smart enough to fly an airplane, why aren't they flying airliners? They'd be way cheaper than pilots. If there's no pilot, there's no see-and-avoid. When a camera can see and process as quickly as a human, then it might work, but before then, the only way to do this is to not allow them to fly anywhere near humans fly.
There's currently no FAA-approved technology to relieve a pilot of her duty to see and avoid other aircraft whether or not the AC is on an IFR flight plan. Next time you're on an airliner, listen to the channel with the pilots talking to TRACON or CENTER. There's a lot of human interaction.
In the late seventies, CIA funding changed from human intelligence gathering to satellite intelligence gathering. We can see every place in the world and pick up all their signals, but we still couldn't tell India was testing an Atomic bomb. With all the billions of dollars spent on overhead technology, we still haven't found Osama. Now the people selling the things tell us how similar technology will solve our crime problem...
It's a multifaceted problem, and no solution is readily available.
The way I see it, the problem is by design. It's well known that there's been a lot of "media consolidation" over the past few decades, so that the major outlets are controlled in the hands of a few corporations (e.g. Clearchannel).
John Taylor Gatto tells us in his books & presentations that the government's schools were set up to provide workers for industry. Before government schools, the American dream was an independant livelihood. After government schools, the expectation shifted to finding employment with a good company with good benefits.
The problem is that the same group of people are behind both efforts. Is it really so odd to propose that a small, dedicated group of families has been steadily concentrating wealth in their own pockets for centuries?
Furthermore, why is it that the same group of rotten scoundrels install themselves in government? George H. W. Bush was in the CIA at least as far back as the 60's. Head of the CIA, Vice President for 8 years, president for another 4.
Donald Rumsfeld was in the Nixon, Ford & Reagan administrations, according to Wikipedia. He even got his picture taken with Saddam Hussein back in 1983. Now he's secretary of defense. Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense under Papa Bush, and before that he got himself elected as representative from Wyoming.
I'm sure there are more examples. The problem, as I see it, is that the same rotten bastards keep getting recycled through the political system. Watch for the keywords: Project for the New American Century, Bilderburg Group, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, etc... And that's not even mentioning the more secretive enclaves. See The Controllers: Secret Rulers of the World for a timeline of the consolidation of power over the last 100+ years.
What's more, anytime this sort of observation comes up, the masses have been conditioned to just snicker and dismiss the messenger as a "conspiracy theorist". But how do said masses know that there is no conspiracy? They don't "know", but social conditioning has implanted a nearly impervious belief.
Expose the so-called "illuminati" and their plots, and the problem will begin to go away.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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