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Houston Police Test Unmanned Surveillance Aircraft
54mc writes "The Houston Police Department was filmed testing an unmanned aircraft in a secretive gathering on Wednesday. The media were not allowed into the event; however they were told that the aircraft would be used for 'mobility' and 'tactical' issues, and possibly even for writing traffic tickets. The aircraft has a wingspan of 10 feet and is said to cost from $30K to $1M. Pictures and video are available at the link." The article mentions that the craft was being operated by staff from a private firm called Insitu, Inc.. The device in the video looks like the firm's ScanEagle.
I hope they don't intent to recoup the cost by handing out traffic tickets.
That's a very broad price range.
I didn't know transformers existed.
I'm not sure why this story was filed under "privacy" rather than "technology". Nobody's freaked out by police helicopters, whether they are used to find traffic offenders, in police chases, or as observation posts for police raids. Using unmanned aircraft instead is a no-brainer. They are cheaper to operate, can stay up longer, and people don't die when they collide (though this incident was with civillian helicopters).
Wow, a million may buy from 1 to 33 of these birds... Very specific.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
$30K to $1M? Why not just admit that you don't know how much it costs?
don't commit traffic violations. Brilliant no?
The claim that the innocent have nothing to hide may be up for debate, but "non-speeders don't need to fear the radar gun" is not.
If this thing is ONLY to be used for traffic control then that is a good thing. I doubt it, I think it is going to be used to detect for isntance weed plantations (you can detect them through the heat signatures that the lighting gives off) and surveillance. But as someone who has had two attempts at break in, I am not all that worried about the police getting some new tools. The privacy nutters never seem to come up with better arguments then "this won't allow us to break the law anymore". Fine with me, don't like the law, change it, don't break it. If you really want to speed that badly, get the speed limit lifted, it worked for the germans.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I can't possibly see this thing helping local law enforcement much. It's obviously not going to land next to you and physically write a ticket out, but it would probably take lots of pictures. This would be so very intrusive to have some sort of plane constantly watching over you.
This thing has a hell of a lot of tickets to write. That's some quota!
What?
Cool finaly a chance to try out my skytag
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/tracker.shtml
Hopefully they'll consider this a supplement to officers on the street, and not a substitute. The tech path has bitten many an intelligence agency in the ass as they drop HUMINT in favor of tech.
LA tried this; they were shut down by FAA before the testing was even finished.
I for one want to see if the same "+5 informative", "+5 insightful" inflamed comments about how a similar thing happening in Venezuela was a proof of a totalitarian government will be repeated on this thread, by the same set of people.
If they start handing out tickets with it. Then they better make it bullet proof. Kinda like the Red light camera housings are now.
Normaly copters are used to supplement an active investigation. If you see one, you know something is up ( or its just the local TV station running traffic reports.. )
These things will just fly around and look at everyone, hoping to catch you with your pants down. Later they will just record every move everyone makes, regardless of any suspicion. Do you want that? I don't. Unless I'm under active court supported suspicion, they don't have a right to 'follow' me around, 'just in case'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Im sure they can find other ways of recouping the costs - not just traffic tickets but how about using Guiliani's method (when he was mayor of NYC) of using RICO to impound suspected drunk drivers cars. You had better watch your driving with one of these things flying over, because the brilliance of using RICO is that you don't have to be found guilty in a criminal court to lose your car. I bet they could make up the cost fairly quickly.
http://enemiesforeignanddomestic.com/excerpt7.htm
The STU [Special Training Unit] had its own single-engine Piper Lance, and had obtained a BigEye surveillance pod for it. The BigEye was a gyro-stabilized combination video camera for daytime use, and infra-red camera for night use. An operator in the plane could put the camera's cursor mark on a stationary or moving ground target and the camera would lock on to it even as the plane circled high above, out of sight and sound of its quarry.
The extensive use of light planes was a tradition in the ATF going back decades; from the time when the "revenue agents" had flown them to spot bootleg liquor stills from the air. These pilot-qualified agents bragged that for them ATF stood for 'agents that fly'. The numerous flying special agents and ATF light planes often permitted them to reach the scenes of federal crimes involving illegal firearms or explosives before any other agencies. Any one-horse Podunk town with a dirt landing strip nearby could usually have ATF agents on the ground in a few hours at most. The ATF was independently air-mobile to a greater degree than most other agencies at the light plane end of the aviation spectrum.
After a brief familiarization period with the BigEye Malvone gave his air team the addresses of a dozen senior government officials who were in a position to help the STU. They hit pay dirt on a Sunday morning in June when the Piper was flying lazy eights over Fairfax County Virginia, and they noticed activity at the estate of Deputy AG Paul Wilson. A Mercedes arrived with a young couple who turned out to be Wilson's daughter and son-in-law. Mrs. Wilson then left with them to attend church services.
Soon after the driveway's automatic gate closed behind the Mercedes, Paul Wilson had appeared in a bathrobe on the back patio of the mansion by the swimming pool, accompanied by someone else. The stabilized zoom lens of the Big Eye then recorded in intimate detail the white-haired senior federal official and a black-haired girl playing in the Jacuzzi, with no detail left to the imagination for the next fifteen minutes. Upon further investigation the girl had turned out to be the 16 year old daughter of the Wilson's Costa Rican housekeeper, who had taken the day off.
Malvone was smiling broadly at the memory. "As soon as I saw that tape I knew we'd own Wilson, we'd have him in our pocket. When the time comes he's going to go to bat for us, big time, and we'll get the Special Projects Division approved."
"The FBI's going to fight it. They'll never let ATF have a new division with that much power."
"That's where you're wrong Joe, the STU or SPD or what ever we end up calling it is going to be seen as a dirty outfit for dirty jobs, and the FBI won't want any part of it. If the SPD falls on its face, the stink won't rub off on them. They'll be glad to let the ATF have it, and let the ATF take the hit if things go wrong. By the time they figure out what's really going on, the Special Projects Division will be too big for them to stop."
Please, mod parent AC comment up. I couldn't have expressed myself more clearly.
Just don't let the price be everything that a free democratic republic should hold dear. It's not the monetary cost, it's the cost to your liberty that is at stake.
How valuable will these aircraft be? A price ranging from $30K to $1M is extremely broad. Cars can range from $800 - $4,000,000...but they are significantly different in capabilities. In any case, $30k is more then a lot of officers make in a year anyway. Is the price/value ratio worth it?
Several posters have commented that the price spread is between 30k and 1 M. A quick visit to the company's web site makes it fairly clear that these drones come with a wide range of electronics. The more electronics you stuff into them, the more they cost.
;-)
They've been making and selling these for years and know darn well what they cost.
The company's capabilities are impressive. One of their first products flew across the Atlantic, in 27 hours using 1.5 gallons of gas. Any model plane builder I know would have real trouble doing the same.
Several other posters have complained about the cost. A typical remark concerns how many traffic tickets it takes to pay for the drone. At 30k, the drone costs less than a fully equipped patrol car.
I can't wait to see how this works out. Right off the top of my head I can think of two possibilities. The first is obvious: Good Ole Boys, Shotguns, Pickups and Beer. It would beat hell out of shooting buzzards and road signs.
The second possibility could actually be a real money-maker for Texas. I bet model airplane freaks from all over the planet would trade entire blow-up girlfriend collections for a chance to try their skills against this flying speed trap. And no doubt they'd discover all kinds of interesting things to mount on an air-going Terminator with a two-foot wingspan and a nasty attitude.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The big question is whether Insitu have build in the correct safety features.
For starters they must make sure they included a classified fourth directive regarding action against company executives. It is vitally important that the Insitu management can still drive there porches to work without worrying about niggling details like speeding tickets.
I dont read
Do they plan to remove X officers from patrol? I doubt it. Why? The fewer officers you have, the longer it will take for one to proceed to the scene of an incident. "I'm sorry, it will be 30-45 minutes before an officer can arrive, ma'am. Our UAV has spotted you, but we've only got 2 officers now covering 100 miles of highway." Also, most likely, catching speeders (and following someone who is speeding to keep track of them) is probably the most it's going to be able to do. It's not going to be able to tell if there's any other issue with a car in question, be it a brake light out or something similar. Now, before you go saying "you shouldn't get a ticket because your brake light/turn signal is out," and I agree, but most of the time I've only heard of officers giving the driver a warning, which could easily help prevent an accident (well, that plus teaching drivers to use turn signals when changing lanes and exiting would definitely help).
:-) "Oops, I was just out flying my glider when it hit yours accidentally!"
Also, I think this thing would be useless in a big part of what the helicopters do: help track people who are running on foot. From ground level, it's often hard for officers to follow a suspect if they're running through a neighborhood because of how easy it is to lose sight. A helicopter can easily tell which way the guy is heading, and keep the spotlight in the general area of the suspect. Even if there's a lot of foliage, they can determine the different possible paths the suspect would appear from, and can see if there's any danger ahead and give officers warning. I know this plane will probably not be carrying a spotlight, and obviously can't hover and move slowly (because it's a plane!).
To enforce the law, the police need an easy method to enforce the law, and having a plane up in the air is not going to make anything any easier on them. Uh oh, see a UAV above you while you're speeding? Go park under a tree for a second to make it start changing course so it can double-back, and just go slow when you need to to keep it guessing. Yea, that sounds pretty far-fetched, but I'm sure there are simple methods like this to keep these things from giving tickets.
Oh, here's one...how about you carry your own UAV on your roof. When you see one, you release your own UAV (a simple glider-style remote controlled plane) and have it crash into the other one.
if the cops would get involved in the community instead of hovering over it they'd make the difference they claim they do ~ for instance, rather than radar traps, why not try driving around and giving out tickets to people driving poorly at any speed
it's all about the big toys for the fat boy, if you ask me
as long as the private firm isn't Blackwater, we're safe for the moment.
God Be Gone
...Developed and tested today for their efficacy against Iraqis and Palestinians. All the technologies we are seeing crop up in the west now are being developed against.. let's say a "captive audience" overseas.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%2Binsitu+%2Biraq+%2Btesting&btnG=Search&meta=
Want to wall off a small city to test your biometric systems? Fallujah.
Want to wall off an entire (albeit small) country to test your UAVs? Gaza.
About one year ago i read an "underground news" story of some Americans in Iraq having some "secret weapon" used against them. Back then it was described as "a device that when deployed, made people run away in terror" Now, we all know what that is now don't we. We also know where it's going to be used next. as "crowd control" on U.S streets.
U.S. Tax Dollars at work. For the love of G_d people, do something about the nutcases running your country before its too late.
Since when is any technological development used for anything besides making people lazier?
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Currently police departments collect revinue by rader,laser,redlight camera or aircraft speedchecking. What they obviously want is a pilotless solution that will mindlessly, relentlessly, "tax" motorists from the air. And because its a drone aircraft its innerworkings cannot be challenged in court like they can be with a radar/laser/redlight camera/normal aircraft speedcheck. If I get a ticket for speeding by airborne speedcheck I can request the pilots flightlogs. But because the drones could potentially be used in homeland security applications makes it "top secret" you most likely can request any information. Basicly they are looking for limitless capactiy to "tax" motorists without the ability for motorists to challenge the validity. As an added bonus with the computer enhanced optics required to properly perform airborne speedchecks surveylence and tracking of anyone outdoors can be acomplished electronicly and recorded by computer for your future harassment. This occuring in texas means that the only way this isnt going to happen is if the first one in the air malfunctions and crashes into a gunshop. Then public outcry would shut down the project. But nothing will stop this from branching into the other 49 states.
Apparently these drones launch off a catapult, and are captured mid flight without needing a runway.
Video here
What the gullible Houston police probably didn't realize is that Insitu, Inc., the company that makes the drones, likely regards all the publicity as a plus.
This is the basic problem with all the DARPA-bankrolled projects: even top secret technologies are marketable for the companies that develop them.
And eager to market they are. Here's what they say on their own site:
8:57 PM
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
When there are accidents on the Autobahn, they are spectacular dozens of car pileups. Ick!
From TFA:
Houston police contacted KPRC from the test site, claiming the entire airspace was restricted by the Federal Aviation Administration. Police even threatened action from the FAA if the Local 2 helicopter remained in the area. However, KPRC reported it had already checked with the FAA on numerous occasions and found no flight restrictions around the site, a point conceded by Montalvo. When police department officials lie in an attempt to bully media out of covering simple testing of a technology, why (and how) do they expect that citizens will have *any* faith whatsoever with regard to their claimed motivations for a so-called service or, in the event of a rollout, of adherence to any privacy-related constraints/governance?It's not even off the ground yet (!) and the bullshitting has already started.
The wind blew, the crap flew, and for days the vision was bad.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
Media throws a hook filled with sensationalism... everyone bites. Houston news agencies are well known for making a bigger story out of something. Not to mention the fact that they've been gunning for HPD for a good year now. It's funny that this "wasn't approved by the FAA" considering the test was specifically FOR the FAA and not Houston PD. Read the another article from the Houston news that's less "end of the world" than channel 2.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5323075.html
As a Houstonite, I'd like to point out that KPRC is a shill station in the eyes of many other Houstonites. They frequently blow up minor stories into giant exposés. This was more than likely a demo of some super high tect product that HPD probably won't buy for a while, and they just brought it in as a cool toy.
--<Mike>--
(1) What sort of pilot's licence do you need to operate one of these?
(2) Given that the pilot is sitting safely on the ground, and doesn't have the same incentive that other airborne pilots have to not fly into me, what happens when one of these jokers kills me with one of their toys? They just file a report, and go home to their families, and fly again tomorrow?
Are a few traffic tickets really worth that?
The range is not really that surprising.
For 30k (or 10k if you don't get ripped off), you can build an aircraft that relies on GPS + digital compass with a built in map for navigation, uses sonar for handling weaknesses in the map (e.g. the map didn't mention this aircraft just in front of me), and stores/transmits pictures (over 3G).
However, if you want to have onboard video processing then things start getting expensive very fast. A processor and graphics card powerful enough to do image processing is very hard to make small and low power (where hard is a synonym for expensive). As you start putting higher power requirements on the engine, you have to put greater weight (damn batteries) which coupled with how heavy batteries are means you have to start buying hideously expensive small/light/powerful batteries. Also, you have to do the same with every other component of the system - the motor is the most obvious but the rest of the aircraft has to be specced to handle an extra 10 pounds without being any larger or heavier.
Next, if your computer is drawing nontrivial amounts of juice, you've got to seriously think about whether you're better with a generator onboard rather than seperate batteries. Oh, and you better get a really efficient generator since you can't afford the weight of more fuel. I'm sure you can see where this is heading.
Crudely put, think about cellphone technology. What you're asking for is something like a cellphone (with a couple pretty standard addons like GPS and sonar) except you're wanting a cellphone from five years in the future in terms of power and features. How much do you think it costs to custom-build a cellphone from five years in the future today?
Finally, but perhaps most important, I've skipped over development time. These projects take a lot of work and even more testing. You can only do so much with Flight Gear before you have to build and crash a few to configure the software. Want to test the emergency radio override before you start flying this thing around the city, you'll have to crash a few in the process. Even if you're getting development at cost (ie. you hire a team of programmers to do it for you), you'll still pay around $1M and have to amortise that over all the planes you build. Few people get development at cost either - it is hard to build up a team of decent programmers so much easier to contract to a company that's already done it.
This company is going to the dogs http://www.insitu.com/documents/policies/DOG%20POLICY%20FINAL%20050107.pdf
"These things will just fly around and look at everyone, hoping to catch you with your pants down. "
Maybe you should put that wonderful "news for nerds" brain to use and calculate all the costs and resources it would take to make your paranoia come true? It's easy to be paranoid. It's much more difficult to pay the doctor's bills surrounding it.
Sounds a lot like First Person View: R/C aircraft with cameras patched into VR goggles (optionally with pan'n'tilt cameras controlled by motion sensor)
See for example:
Low and Slow video
Wikipedia
They raise your taxes. Since there is little to no justification its really quite simple.
And just because you are paranoid doesnt make it any less possible.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"I'm just curious. Is there anything that the state could do in "public" where you would finally say, "that's enough"?"
Give free blowjobs.
Seeing as Houston is not too far from Bagdad I'm not surprised they would want to buy some of these for surveillance.
"Yes, you really do seem to understand this. I applaud your pure insight. When an unjust law exists, it is our responsibility to obey it!"
Well we're talking about the Houston police. Not global politics. Despite all the gloom and doom regularly pumped out on this forum. The US is overall a hell of a better place than a lot of places. A fact that's not understood by most Americans because most Americans don't have that kind of background. Our founding fathers (often quoted but that's about it) had the wisdom to put in a system for it's citizens to peacefully change the government at all levels. All this revolution this and slippery slope that comes from those who expect others to do all the hard work so they don't have to. While things like slavery and Russia show that there are times one has to fight.* Anyone with some kind of perspective doesn't think that the Houston police using UAVs are one of those times. So your choice. Use the means provided? Or continue to draw comparisons out of all proportion to the situation? I'm sure there's no mod for overblown.
*Russia also reenforces the fact that the time for peaceful change is as early as possible. Not wait till the last moment when all you have as a choice is revolution and death (in some cases yours).
These become armed with missiles?
"We don't need no stinking warrant"
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
heh, and they don't look anything like those varmints from half life 2
Fascism. What does it mean?
Here are some key ingredients of fascism:
What do you think it means when AT&T is making a copy of all Internet traffic going through it's backbones and giving it to the government? (hint: basically all US Internet traffic goes through AT&T at some point).
What does it mean when we have predator-like spy drones monitoring our cities spying on our own citizens?
Here's the kicker, this will catch all the people who didn't bother to read my post and start calling me a wacko (I assure you I am quite normal, even cool. Please refrain from ad hominems):
I'm not saying we are in a fascist state, please draw your on conclusion. Imagine a sliding scale from the free democracy which our founders intended, free of persecution, with habeas corpus and all our protections, now picture where we are today - Where are we on the road to fascism? Do we have to get to the point where there is a dictator and our citizens are being shot in their homes before we start to think about it?
Liberty.
And once you've finished reading the article, ask yourself which candidates for local, state, and/or national office are promising that they'll stop this whole, Orwellian madness right in its tracks.
Ron Paul has promissed this, but GWB also promissed a smaller, less intrusive government. YMMV.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Kind of like... oh, say, Blackwater is a private firm?? That way, the police departments can't be held accountable for any atrocities that take place. No! I want the police department to operate them so that when (operative word "when") they violate our privacy and civil rights ordinary citizens can protest and hold our civil servants accountable. This is chickenshit - just like Blackwater - and I fear is becoming a trend of how our government operates.
I think it's time to develop our own counter U.S.-based terrorist operations - "private firm" style.
Marijuana hydroponics is a huge issue for Houston. The only way for police to get probable cause is via IR satellite, or helicopter imagery or by subpoenaing the suspects electric bill. Either way, running a hydroponic requires an enormous amount of electricity and in turn releases a large amount of IR seen from the roof tops and walls.
That said, anyone want to guess what a drone equiped with an IR camara will provide? Care to guess its efficiency over the previous methods?
Life is not for the lazy.
The news isn't telling you that the FAA is the one that is funding these birds, not the City of Houston. The FAA is the one that ordered the test. The camera that is installed in these birds is taken out of a generic run of the mill Sony Handycam. These can only see what they're told to look at, much the same way a Police or News helicopter does. The News choppers used in this story have stronger cameras than this thing does.
What the news isn't telling you is that their chopper that was on the scene was asked to leave the area because they got so close to the drone's flight path that the pilot who was flying it thought he was going to have to ditch it into the ground, in the open field so no one would get hurt.
It's amazing what the reporter neglected to tell you from his story. But then it's not a sensational story, and no one wants to see a report about how the Police are testing a new product that's safer and cheaper than what they currently use, in an effort to save the city taxpayer's lives and money.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The HPD has usurped the FAA's authority in this little exercise and is now on the FAA's shitlist. However, the FAA is only able to enforce civil law, not criminal law, and their hands are tied when it comes to extracting justice when their turf in invaded and their feelings get hurt by a state or local law enforcement agency who gets too big for their britches and upsets the FAA, so the FAA usually retaliates in a very unfair manner but still sinks whatever teeth their flavor of federal civil law grants them into the non-federal law enforcement agency. Here is one way very typical of how they've been known to retaliate -- they'll lean very hard on all of Houston PD's regular aircraft pilots - both fixed wing and helicopter, busting them for any and every paperwork violation they can find. They are all commercial pilots and had nothing to do with this drone exercise but unfortunately they are part of the HPD, so the FAA will bird-dog them looking for any and all FAA violations that can possible pin on them. HPD's entire aircraft fleet will be examined under an FAA magnifying glass and individual aircraft will be grounded for the slightest airworthiness violations. The FAA will make all aviation operations of the HPD as miserable as they possibly can and probably suspend some pilot certificates for HPD pilots who had no involvement in the drone operation at all, but just because the FAA will find some tiny infraction committed by the pilots. The FAA's goal will be to make it so that no pilot will want to work for the HPD for a while and the HPD will be left holding some unfillable commercial pilot positions for who knows how long. The FAA will drive home the fact of who's turf the airspace really belongs to. They always do.
I guess a scattergun can shot down this drone.
Anybody firing a weapon in the air over a populated area should speed time in jail (at the very least).
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
They tried this before in LA or something and the FCC grounded their drones.
Yea I can't see them ever finding a real use for this in police work. It's not like these things can stay on a perp like a helicopter and they can't really track individuals without being guided.
I guess they just intend to use it to tail people without using something as loud as a helicopter. Drones are usually only effective when you have a small fleet and exact targets you want to spy on. Houston cannot afford nor would they be allowed to fly a fleet of these simply to spy on their own city all the time, yet that is more or less the best way to use them.
They also use these for border control and as you can see it's working great.
Power to idiots making bad investments. Eventually the public will seek accountability when economic woes affect more people. For now the recession is limited mostly to the new home construction market, but it will, without a doubt, expand.
Sadly people are so dellusional they are even coming up with theories that the economy is healthy even though the tradition of predicting economic well being cleary uses the home building business as a key index for the economy.
The saying has ALWAYS been that the home building market goes first. Many times it's banks that cause these problems, such as the savings in loan crisis and now the sub-prime mortgage fallout.
The DOW isn't really making money like home construction does, however as bottom drops out of the economy the rich use the DOW to make the problem worse by taking their investments back out at exactly the wrong times.
So, we have a lot of people who think their is something positive to be had out of downplaying the home building recession, which hit more or less instantly with the sub-prime fallout, THOUGH housing prices have been on the decline before that, suggesting an ever bigger problem, such as inflation causing the price of homes to HAVE to be devalued since people can no longer afford to pay 10% more a year in rent. Of course, home owners were loving that 10% a year added to their equity.
Sadly it's still an ok time to FLIP cheap houses, leader to further over extension of the real estate market. We are extending prices by allowing people to do amatuer part time work as investors instead of having real jobs. They get rich and the rest of us get poor and/or lose home equity. This is a DIRECT result of Greenspan lowing interest rates VASTLY too far. It caused a boom in housing that SHOULD NOT have happened and now we have to pay back all that money from the boom because it was inflation driving the market via unrealistically low interest rates.
Yet so many people are still in denial the recession is ever here. Well, my father works in construction, so we notice housing recessions and EVERYONE in construction will tell you it's here and about to be pretty bad. Most importantly NEVER in my almost 30 years have we had a housing recession without the economy taking a big dump a few months afterward.
I think the BIGGER the bubble and the more inflation the longer it takes people to realize their home is losing money as an investment and the longer it takes people to realize the trend of buying homes is over since home value is declining. We have one of the biggest real estate booms in history and no real reasons for the home value increases.
The price of building a house has gone down if anything, yet the price of buying them has gone up.
I think appraisers and real estate agents have been conspiring to inflate the price of homes for their own commissions. Then banks just go along for the lending ride.
We need protection from investors. As we all know the rich are getting richer, the gap of wealth is growing and that means MORE people will qualify as investors while less people qualify as making enough money to absorb their profir margins on the investment.
We need fed/state regulation to STOP house flippers from inflating the market while famalies and first time ho
I'm working on a drone that will track down spy-drones and destroy them.
One minor problem, though; my test anti-drone drone keeps chasing its own tail.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
KPRC ....Morons one and all! ...and do they really think that the FAA was not intimately involved in the demonstration? -- morons. ...and do they think that having cameras in helos today somehow strips us of our unalienable rights? ...but put that camera in a small robotic drone and Woeful Day! ...Morons...
Don't they remember that in Katrina we had to have all of the HPD helos leave the area due to the possibility of their being damaged by the storm.
It would have been nice to have unmanned drones to help with the evacuation nightmares that the city faced at that time...
Remember what happened in Robocop? Soon private business firms will control the streets. Then the Terminator plot can't be much further in the future.... Honestly though, why should I allow the private sector to violate my privacy? Corruption should be the first concern in any law enforcement venture.
The Detroit Free Press did the research back in 2002 that showed shaving just 2 seconds off the yellow jumped tickets by over 50%. And, surprise surprise, where for-profit cameras were run, yellow lights were shorter than average. What exactly was made safer by shorter yellows? Just the corporations' money.
In regards to surveillance, no.
That's not surveillance by any definition, especially the legal one. What a disgustingly childish and transparent attempt on your part.
Can you make your point without the straw men? I doubt it.
"Normaly copters are used to supplement an active investigation."
I'd like to see your source for this please. You don't have one, so it's your opinion, which means it's not worth a fucking thing.
Yet there you are at +5 because you say the right things for the slash-anoid morons who populate this place.
That's a textbook example of the prejudicial fallacy.
All right, where's the "adhominem (sic)"? Prove what you said is true or admit you're lying. I didn't even ADDRESS the "goalpost" and, predictably, you accuse ME of moving them. Amazing that you'd think such a tactic would work.
"I would answer your question, but you'll move the goalposts again.
In short, you're not staying on topic, I suspect because you have nothing that can refute OP, so you try to change the definition of the terms used.
Very disingenuous on your part, but not even a little surprising."
Ok, where is the "adhominem (sic)"? WELL? There isn't one, so you're a liar (which incidentally is ALSO not an ad hominem as it is true).
You're a disingenuous, mentally deficient, logically stunted troll, and I caught you.
You claimed I used "adhominems" (sic). Prove it or admit you were lying.
And I really like how you try to deflect attention away from the fact that I proved you were both wrong and a liar by resorting to childish banter.
Is it really that difficult for people like you to admit you're wrong and lying? It's there in black and white, why do you think you can pretend you weren't wrong and lying when people can see it.
You can't make your point without the straw men. That, coupled with your inability to admit you were caught lying means I have stopped giving a fuck about your opinion.
Not that I gave it much weight in the first place, you're obviously not very intelligent.
You claimed I used "adhominems" (sic) but I didn't. That makes you a liar.
Doesn't anyone else find it ironic that the report stirs up concerns over "privacy invasion," when they used hidden cameras to film flight operations at a private ranch? Also, they tout the UAV's scary abilities to see into cars, while filming the reporter, in a car, from a flying helicopter... Maybe the news station should ground themselves if they're so concerned about privacy.