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Predator Drone Helps Nab Cattle Rustlers
riverat1 writes "KTLA reports police in North Dakota arrested three men accused of cattle rustling with the help of a Predator B drone from nearby Grand Forks AFB. The sheriff of Nelson Country was chased off by three armed men when he went to serve a warrant, so he came back the next morning with reinforcements, including the drone, which, while circling 2 miles overhead, was able to determine the whereabouts of the men on their 3,000 acre spread and the fact that they were unarmed. A SWAT team quickly moved in and apprehended the men. Local police say they have used the Predator drones for at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and DEA have used the drones for domestic investigations as well."
I never would have guessed that they would actually take HL2 as a guide. Did someone forget to tell them it was just a video game?
three men accused of cattle rustling with the help of a Predator B drone
You know, the story would have been a lot cooler this way.
Before anyone goes all ape-s$%t about this being an intrusion of the military into civilian affairs, the drones in question are owned and operated by Customs and Border Patrol, a division of the Department of Homeland Security. They are housed at an Air Force base, but not used nor owned by the USAF.
CBP had been using drones for a couple of years to patrol the borders and this is an extension of that mission. Works better than a helo, especially for very large areas.
I'll take some cattle rustlers over militarized police chasing cattle rustlers any day, thanks. Much like the cure/disease metaphor, not every policing measure targeting every crime improves society, even if successful...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It's poorly identified at the story link. The original can be found at latimes.com.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Some bizarre version of Phil Dick, Orwell, Terry Gilliam and Mat Groening.
If William Gibson had imagined anything like "The Kardashians" in Count Zero? It would have seemed over-the-top.
Now, we have the dystopian technologies, without the advances in immersive entertainment that these were supposed to come with.
Predator drones and Jersey Shore. The Jeffersonian experiment is really over.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Dude, the tent is full of fucking camels already.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
The other reason is that there are a lot more SWAT teams than they used to be, so the threshold for calling them out is a lot lower. Gotta justify that taxpayer money spent on fancy equipment somehow...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Once you chase off a sheriff with weapons, your claim to use of excessive police force goes out the window, in my book. Further, the drone technology may have limitations that prevent it from being able to determine whether the suspects were truly unarmed. If you have 3 guys walking around a field, a drone can probably tell that they don't have long guns on them, but I highly doubt that the scan (thermal mode or visual) can detect sidearms. If I were a sheriff, I certainly wouldn't bet my life on that technology.
"The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior."
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The FAA is still trying to figure out how to integrate UAS's. (They are not called UAV's in the FAA NAS system).
Many legal issues remain:
- Enforcing see and avoid rules required in VFR flight
- Defining standards for communication with aircraft
- Who do you enforce rules with a violation when there is an accident if there is no pilot
- How to handle technical issues such as loss of control / software failure, physical issues such as loss of a trim type control, flap system, etc.
- Weather issues such as high winds, icing
As a pilot and somebody active in aviation software, I'm interested to see where things go here. The reason the military has been able to fly UAV's is because they don't have any rules. Do whatever you want. But in the civil area, we have rules because we choose to protect ourselves from our government and others.
The tech is not infallible. They appeared unarmed would be more accurate.
I do feel that the whole "police UAVs = 1984" thing is slightly odd, given that all a UAV is in this role is a cheaper police helicopter. Unless your objection is specifically against all cameras between altitudes of 1.6m and 100km, I don't see much difference between the platform being manned or unmanned.
I do feel that the whole "police UAVs = 1984" thing is slightly odd, given that all a UAV is in this role is a cheaper police helicopter. Unless your objection is specifically against all cameras between altitudes of 1.6m and 100km, I don't see much difference between the platform being manned or unmanned.
It's the same thing as a GPS tracker on a car vs a full surveillance team. In both cases the problem is that the new tech is much cheaper. Because it is cheaper it will be used much more frequently and by many more agencies. My local police department can't afford their own helicopter, but 10 years from now I wouldn't be surprised if they have a drone.
It boils down to the previous expense made it much less common, and traceable. You probably couldn't use a police helicopter to follow some guy who made your shitlist 24/7, but drones will soon make that sort of thing inevitable. At least when this stuff was less common abuses were also less common; when it was more expensive, accountability was also higher.
Because the government was never meant to have near omnipotent power over its citizens, which is where we are headed.
Originally, citizens were allowed guns to protect them from the military (and conceivably the police).
But now technology and tactics have advanced to where you cannot protect yourself from the government at all.
Sure crime, murder, and disorder are bad. But I don't want to live in a country where absolutely none of those exist because the government has absolute control of everything. The government does not even have to abuse this power (simply for that amount of power to exist is an abuse of power) for it to be a dystopia.
It helps to keep the government honest and just to know that really to control the country you need at least 50% of the citizens behind you. But with all the weapons, tech, and know how we have today the government could enforce anything on the people with only a comparative handful of people working with them.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.