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Honeywell To Sell Miami-Dade Police a Surveillance Drone
AHuxley writes "The Miami-Dade Police Department recently finalized a deal to buy a 20-pound drone from defense firm Honeywell. The drone can fly for 40 minutes, reach heights of 10,500 feet and cruise in the air at 46 miles an hour. As the Miami-Dade Police Department has recently made a lot of budget cuts, the funding may have come from a federal grant. An eye in the sky like over Iraq and Afghanistan may soon be looking down over South Florida 'to keep people safe.' Honeywell has applied to the FAA for clearance to fly the drone in urban areas."
Does it come with missiles?
doesn't sound like a very long time, do they launch it with an elastic band or something ?
Nullius in verba
I hope this doesn't complicate Dexter's employment at the department.
Assault on a Police officer with a door knob. Yeah you read that right told Miami police to pound sand at 3 AM after they woke me up talking about a dead body smell (was the refig in the apartment next door which was off and had gone bad) with no warrant. Closed the door and got my ass handed to me when the door knob hit the officer and he claimed I assulted him. Spent the night / next day in MIA prison waiting for bail facing 7 years for assault, & resisting arrest.
fuck miami, and 'the man' that live there! sorry had to be said.
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
So, with the superfluous knowledge about hacking, how long will it be before it is hijacked and goes AWOL from the police?
The drone in question is a "T-Hawk". Seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_RQ-16_T-Hawk
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I'm guessing one use will be following criminals from the air to relay positions. That, and keeping track of a car on a protracted chase, although from what I read, this bird doesn't have that long a radius and run time compared to a helicopter. I wonder if it is cheaper to spin something like this up than get the police in the air, so that is one reason this is being looked into.
"Honeywell has applied to the FAA for clearance to fly the drone in urban areas. This has never been allowed before, but if it does happen, the Miami-Dade Police Department will be the first police agency in the US to use the technology."
I am less worried about flight duration than the sensor payload that Honeywell is installing for Miami-Dade. IR, Thermographic, NightVision, and HD cameras at the very least to make the drone "useful". TFA only mentions "cameras" not what type.
This statement by police says it all. "It gives us a good opportunity to have an eye up there. Not a surveilling eye, not a spying eye. Let's make the distinction. A surveilling eye to help us to do the things we need to do, honestly, to keep people safe," said Miami-Dade Police Director James Loftus.
Hmm. "Not a surveilling eye," then "A surveilling eye to help us..." Maybe a typo, but still telling.
We knew this was coming. http://news.cnet.com/Drone-aircraft-may-prowl-U.S.-skies/2100-11746_3-6055658.html
Time to start-up my own residential sheilding supply and installation company. Any investors interested?
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I can only hope the FAA is smart enough (funny joke there) to say no. The risk to other aircraft can not possibly be justified. And given that this would likely trigger as a "pop up" means that the pilot and passengers this drone may murder would likely be "at fault." - even if hit from the rear.
There is absolutely nothing safe about having an idiot cop with a remote control aircraft mixing with air traffic which has can not see and avoid - which is a mandate of the FAA.
The summary insinuates that this drone will be circling the skies watching the citizens below, big-brother style. But with 40 minutes flight time (and every flight would cost money) it's far more likely this would be used to track fleeing suspects, as a cheaper alternative to a helicopter.
A solar-powered plane that can stay up for days at a time, or a blimp with cameras, would be much more threatening to our privacy. If the police want me bad enough to send a drone up to track my movements, then the drone is probably the least of my worries.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Your screed assumes that the public has the same access to all these cameras as the police.
The reality of the situation is a bit murkier.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
in fact, most will be turned on, pointed at the police, should they see the police do something abusive
Except in the increasing number of places where recording the cops is a crime.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Considering the proximity of several very busy airports there has to be an awful lot of trust in allowing drones in the area. Miami International Airport among others is right in the center of Miami. We could get a huge oops type of event and it is so hard getting those bodies out of the Everglades.
I'm not saying one is right and one is wrong, but I find the contrast confusing... Is it simply the case that surveillance is OK provided it's difficult? If that's the case, why do we allow helicopters at all? Or in the case of manned surveillance, why are the police allowed to use radios? Shouldn't they have to use call boxes? Either we're OK with the concept, or we're not.
The difference is that "difficult" surveillance can't be mounted on a massive scale - they actually have to be frugal in its use. They can't go around tracking everyone; they have to be pretty sure they have the right people to follow before committing the resources to it.
"Easy" surveillance OTOH, can be used to simply monitor everyone. Well, actually, that should read "will" instead of "can". It's basically Murphy's law as applied to surveillance: if the opportunity exists to misuse a law or technology, it will be misused. Surveilling everyone is way easier than bothering with all that pesky "probable cause" nonsense.
Every time a new gee-whiz technology is created, it is soon used to solve social problems. In Great Britain millions of surveillance camera have failed to dent crime rates, in spite of a few high-profile successes.
In education, which is even more fad-driven than crime fighting, deployment of educational tv, audio tapes, laptop computer and other gizmos have failed to engage turned-off students. iPads are the latest gadget.. I expect they will be another expensive fiasco.
There is no substitute for engaged teachers and parents.
The issue is not one of cameras. The issue is of pervasiveness and data management.
There being a camera on every street corner isn't that big of a privacy issue if every one of those feeds into a separate tape deck for a convenience store that gets reused every two weeks when they don't get robbed. No one looks at that video. If something interesting happens on the corner, someone might think to get a warrant for it and search through it for something interesting, but that's about it.
But network them, put them all where some data center can crunch through facial recognition, or where a guy can sit in front of a computer and track you around the entire city, and that's a whole different privacy issue, because now a small organization can monitor an entire city.
Just because you're in plain sight doesn't mean someone isn't invading your privacy by stalking you.
But really, this isn't about you and me. Privacy rights are a nice luxury for normal people - we don't like people messing with our personal lives, but most people don't care.
They're a much bigger issue for the journalist working on a big leak about the current administration, who can now have a drone tracing him all day to find out who he's talking to and if he has any habits that can be used to blackmail him out of doing his job. Or for the people's rights advocate lawyer or political candidate going against the incumbent. For those sorts of people, the functioning of a democratic system *requires* that they have privacy rights against the government.
has introduced a bill the have the name of the state changed from Florida to Oceania.
The name of the State has always been Oceania.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.