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US Air Force Can 'Accidentally' Spy On American Citizens For 90 Days
AstroPhilosopher writes "Researchers at the Federation of American Scientists have discovered documentation (PDF) that allows the military to keep footage from drones for up to 90 days to determine whether further investigation is warranted. Besides using footage from natural disasters and monitoring of domestic military bases, all that's truly required is for an operator to 'accidentally' have the camera running while flying."
"Spy on American Citizens for 90 days" != "retain footage of American Citizens for 90 days"
They can accidentally spy on you indefinitely, or rather, spontaneously whenever you might fall within the vantage of the camera. They can only keep the video for 90 days.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
This not some amazing new discovery. It's called Intel Oversight. All Military intelligence under under these same rules. We are allowed to collect only in accordance with an assigned mission. Said mission cannot be to simply go out and watch of follow or collect on random or even specific citizens. What is allowed is if during authorized collection we come across information about a possible US citizen we are allowed 90 days to review to determine if A: The person is indeed a US Person (legal status and yes US Corporations qualify and did before the famous court ruling that the /. crowd hates so much). And if so B: is there reason to collect and retain the info. This is usually a no but there are certain categories of activities that would allow collection to go forward and the information to be retained in official intelligence reporting.
/. geniuses will let me know how wrong I am, even though they have zero experience with this realm.
Now about applicability. In the US the military is required to assume, lacking other information to the contrary, that anyone we run across is a US Person and thus most likely cannot be collected on. So don't worry, they aren't going to start flying "accidently" across the states filming your backyard activities. We'll leave that to the Jackbooted thugs in the FBI and local PD's. Outside the US the view shifts 180 degrees and we are to assume, again until we get some evidence to the contrary, that any individual we run across is NOT a US Person. But should we collect info on someone and they then turn out to be a US person, we are again given the 90 Window to determine if they are in fact a US Person, and if they are engaged in one of the legally specified activities that allow or even mandate collection and reporting on them. Some examples of these categories would be anyone engaged in espionage for a foreign power, anyone actively involved with a declared terrorist group. (not just someone we think "looks like a terrorist."
And regardless of whether they are involved in collectible activities or not any and all collection on US Persons is reported not just up the military channels but also the DoJ and the CIA. People do lose rank and intelligence positions over violation of the Intel Oversight rules. All military intelligence personnel are briefed on Intel Oversight at least annually.
The poster of this story really has no idea what he's talking about. This is a non-story and it's really nothing new. And once again Wired tries to write about the Intelligence community possibly doing wrong but just proves how little their reporters actually understand things.
But I'm sure the
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Jeng, you're talking to people who think that the Air Force, which currently is YEARS behind on the drone data it already has, now has nothing better to do than spy on Americans.
Furthermore, this is not even just anything that might be suspicious seen during operations. It's only "persons or organizations reasonably believed to be engaged or about to engage, in international terrorist or international narcotics activities," which is a very narrow scope under US law.
Cue the conspiracy theory: "But, but, but, the big bad Utah Data Center is going to mine this data automatically! The idea is to not need people to analyze this footage! The Air Force is going to blanket the nation in drones, and the NSA is going to analyze it all with computers! The exception for international terrorism and narcotics is just a subterfuge, a sleight of hand, to distract us from their true intent!"
Yes, people really think this. It would be amusing if it weren't so shameful and sad.
To say nothing of the US military satellite systems and manned US military aircraft that fly over the US every day, and have been used in civil assistance and force protection for decades. But hey, this is the slashdot comments section: facts and sense need not apply!