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Aussie Police Consider Using Automated Spy Drones
beaverdownunder writes "Police in the Australian state of Victoria have confirmed that they are investigating employing unmanned drones in the war against crime, following the lead of law enforcement agencies in the United States, set to begin using drones as of tomorrow. This revelation has alarmed Australian civil libertarians, who fear that in a country with no constitutionally-protected civil rights, people could be surveilled for political reasons."
Well?
to shoot those out of the sky, shotgun? or rifle? or slingshot? or maybe a bolas to tangle rope or wire in to the props
disclaimer: this comment is for educational purposes only, do not try this at home
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Australian civil libertarians know that in a country with no constitutionally-protected civil rights, people will be surveilled for political reasons.
Fixed that for you.
Currently hooked on AMP
in a country with no constitutionally-protected civil rights
Well, we have them here in the USA, but they make near to no difference whatsoever. We've built a government so big, with so much momentum and attracting so many power-hungry ppls, that it ignores civil rights when they are "inconvenient". Or it passes so many laws in so many ill-defined ways that everyone is guilty of violating them. Then if they don't like something or some group, it's just down to finding *which* laws they are breaking - because everyone is breaking some.
Civil rights only count to the extent that the citizenry defends them, and here, people generally do not. Whether they are written in a several hundred year old document, that doesn't matter. Ppl similarly do not defend against intrusive practices of big corporations. It's the same root cause: keep the people happy with bread and ci... err, Hollywood movies and Facebook, and they won't care about their rights.
from the Age police may deploy spy drones
But what should be news for the US is that both stories point out that US police will start using drones this week. The only indication I have seen about this is things like: US police agencies to begin using drones within 90 days
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>>I wonder how easy it will be to shoot those out of the sky, shotgun? or rifle?
They'll use boomerangs. Everyone in Australia is trained to use these from the age of two.
Disclaimer: My cultural intelligence is mostly the result of action cartoons from the 1980s.
"in a country with no constitutionally-protected civil rights,"
I'm not quite sure what to make of that phrase. I live in a country where, in theory, I do have constitutionally-protected rights of privacy. In practice it is a completely different matter.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
"the war against crime?" That's like calling life "the war against death."
They'll use boomerangs.
Stainless steel boomerangs - with razor sharp edges thrown by feral kids
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Why the fuck can't I edit my own posts?
The motivations might be:
(1) To accurately preserve "history". To prevent you from hiding a statement you later regret.
(2) To encourage people to get their post right the first time since their errors will be preserved.
(3) It can destroy the context of followup posts. The followup may be referring to something deleted or corrected. This would encourage more data usage as followups are incentivized to includes quotes in case of future edits.
What an obnoxious back formation. The word you are looking for is "surveyed".
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
From a *legal* point of view how is this different than helicopters with observers and video cameras?
I get the creepiness angle, you are far more likely to be "seen" when an expensive helicopter/crew is replaced with some number of drones. I just don't get the *new* legal issue. The police have been using that birds eye view for quite some time.
"Unmanned drones... automated spy drones..."
Manned drones are called planes and non-automated ones are called model planes.
in a country with no constitutionally-protected civil rights
Let's see what will happen if I write about drones in an obsolete dialect of English:
"An ability to uncover crimes, incidents, disasters and dangers, being necessary to the safety of a free people, the right of the people to keep and launch surveillance drones shall not be infringed."
Makes much more sense than a certain similar passage about weapons. One person's right is another person's reason to wear a tinfoil hat (and vice versa).
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Why won't you people wake up and realize that there is a GLOBAL movement towards totalitarianism?
Why do you keep turning the other way?
Australia, Britain, USA and many other countries are following the exact Standard Operating Procedure for taking a Free society and transforming it into a Totalitarian state.
Stop looking the other way. Start caring.
Liberty.
A hillbilly lawyer with a shotgun(or the Aussie equivalent) shoots one down, has her day in court, and wins.
If we can have semi-autonomous drones to watch people who might steal things, why not just use the same robotic technology to make lots more stuff for everybody so less people feel a need to steal?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
In the case of the internet, government says that communications technology has made existing laws insufficient, and it establishes new powers to maintain order; in this case technology has made existing laws excessive (it has not been normal to put a helicopter over every street to keep the peace "for quite some time"), and further limitations of government power are necessary.
Star Trek: The Next Generation episode 20 The Arsenal of Freedom The entire population of the planet is destroyed by their own automated weapons system.
Drones are cheap.
Once it's cheap enough to spy on everyone. It will be done all the time instead of just when really necessary for a damm good reason.
Year 2014 is the start of open season to hunt drones.
Seriously all we need to do is have a drone fall on a school. Everyone will hate drones. Problem solved.
If you are upsetting the rich folks, or you've got something they think is theirs, or that they want, you're a target. Otherwise, we can't be bothered to deal with you.
Have gnu, will travel.
If they are so worried about their rights now, what about their rights being taken when the commonwealth banned and confiscated their firearms? Seems to me, the issue of rights started down the slippery slope way back then.
i heard john crihton has a pea shooter and intends to shoot them down or was that dargo with his tongue.
Actually, as an Australian, I can confirm that all public school children are generally taught how to use boomerangs in infants/primary school [before the age of 12]. This was the case in the late 90's, and as far as I know, still is.
My grandpa taught me on the property when I was a kid, but they stopped hunting roo's before I was old enough to be taught how to use the rifles.
Precisely. Before much of our newer technologies, it was only feasible to place surveillance on a select few people, so the assumption was that law enforcement would make sure to get the right person to the best of their ability. It also took the approval of a number of people in the chain of command because of the resource usage, so there was at least some de facto oversight in place.
Now it is quite feasible to track everyone.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
"to the moon alice" didnt ya ever hear that phrase.....
I learnt how to throw and catch them on grade 4 camp as well. Never had to use the skill since, though :(
From a *legal* point of view how is this different than helicopters with observers and video cameras? .
For a start, you could shoot one down without being charged for murder. Just sayin...
Now it is quite feasible to track everyone.
Drones are not autonomous. They have pilots who are on the ground instead of in the air. Lets look at the manpower it takes to track someone 24/7 from the air.
1. A pilot 24/7. Since no one can pilot an aircraft continually for 8 hours at a time the effecting length of a shift is 6 hours. That would mean 28 shifts per week divided by 5 shifts per office makes 5.6 FTEs
2. Drones need to be refueled/recharged so they have to be replaced on station.
3. These replacement drones have to be transported to and from the general area and managed while they are refueling/recharging. That is another 5.6 FTEs as they need 24/7 hour coverage and double the drones.
4. Drones wear out and sometimes crash die to mechanical and/or communication failure. Every flight is a risksome drones will be in for repair and there needs to be backups in case an operational drone goes down. Say an 80% up time for drones that means there needs to be 0.25 standby drones for ever operational drone.
Considering that it takes 11.2 officers, 2.5 drones and a non trivial amount of other hardware to tracks a single person the idea that they can track everyone is ludicrous and merely fear mongering.
The word "automated" in the title has no use at all. Automation generally means to operate with as little human input as possible. All drones have a pilot and sometimes a separate camera operator. All a drone does is move the crew from inside the aircraft to on the ground.
The whole debate of drones being able to track an identifiable person at a protest is also bunk. Here are how individuals can be tracked without drones today;
1. From a helicopter (that could be described as a manned drone>
2. From rooftops
3. From the ground by following
4. From light pole mounted camera
5. From store mounted camera
There is no expectation of privacy when on the streets. All a drone does is make it less expensive to have an eye in the sky. Helicopters are very expensive to operate. Perhaps the savings can go into more police to investigate lesser crimes.
To the slippery slope "it could be used to peak into ours homes" people; by that logic police should not have guns because they could be used to shoot people that disagree with the government. I agree that the laws dealing with how drones are used should be very strict and may already be covered by existing privacy laws. What I don't agree with is to deny the use of a tool because it could be misused. Any tool can be misused but the benefits must be weighted beside the risks. For example, most police officers do not have automatic rifles as they are too powerful for standard use but they do have pistols even though both can kill people.
A drone is just a tool, like a helicopter or police car, to be used for the safety of people.
what do Australians call a boomerang that doesn't come back? A stick!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Drones are and can be autonomous. You are just thinking of the current CIA ones like the predator. drone technology is not static, it is ever evolving and increasing in capability.
You do not *need* a human pilot at all times, computer autopilots have been around for ages.
Drones for surveillance can be told to just loiter around a specific spot with its cameras recording continuously on a specific area. If you want 24/7 coverage, have another drone take over when the first one gets low on juice.
Drones are capable today of loitering a few km away from you, unseen and unheard, with optics easily capable of reading the text message off your cellphone screen while you are tapping away outside. Optics like this have been around for decades.
Its only a matter of time before drones are small and cheap enough that you can have dozens of them flying around a city 24/7.
Advanced programmable surveillance on demand.
Privacy these days is a quaint idea that used to exist in the past.
From a *legal* point of view how is this different than helicopters with observers and video cameras? I get the creepiness angle, you are far more likely to be "seen" when an expensive helicopter/crew is replaced with some number of drones. I just don't get the *new* legal issue. The police have been using that birds eye view for quite some time.
I'm sorry but when (probably not "if") the USA becomes a totalitarian police state, it will be because so many people like you looked at each indicator in isolation and excused it this way, instead of looking at the cumulative total of hundreds of such indicators and realizing the picture they were painting.
What you're doing is like looking at two individual pixels of the Goatse image and saying "they're just dots of color, nothing obscene or distasteful about that" while ignoring the whole picture of which they are a part. It's a form of tunnelvision.
It's not your fault unless you decide at this point to excuse and defend it, at which point you would own it fully. I am hoping that instead you will disown it and see how the most innocent mistakes can have terrible consequences. Seeing that for yourself would be a good reason; because I or anyone else said so would be a terrible reason to do anything.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
government says that communications technology has made existing laws insufficient, and it establishes new powers to maintain order
... which is the part that's bullshit, really. I have no intention of doing such a thing, but hypothetically speaking, if I were to trick you out of your bank account number, what difference does it make whether I do that face-to-face, over the telephone, or via e-mail? None whatsoever. Fraud is still fraud, even "with a computer". If someone were to break into your home, they are gulity of breaking-and-entering as well as trespassing. If someone were to brute-force your password and gain unauthorized access to your computer, they are committing the same crimes against your property.
No exotic new laws are needed to cover these things. The only reason it seems that way is because the government and the legal profession have a pathological, parasitic need to be needed.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Much more powerful equipment in the manned choppers though. The current fleet has FLIR, pilot NVG, high zoom cams - plus the whatever other gear they use which is not publicly acknowledged.
If you think a drone is capable of the same surveillance as a twin engine manned chopper, I think you need to do some research on how much decent gear weighs vs the payload of a small UAS.
Globecorp will have its headquarters in Australia equiped with all the drones it needs.
Helicopters are established in Australia. The funding, maintenance, legal use, hours of use, flight paths, sound issues - have all been set.
Drones offer some new flight school, maintenance training, legal frame works to be set up. Cash for sending staff to the USA, equipment from the USA, ongoing upgrades, more advisors and experts to upgrade the secret export quality optical and telco intercept, voice print systems used.
The political structure that made it all work is not forgotten.
New cash is flowing, to new players in different US states. i.e. the private drone universities in the USA want export $
24/7 day/night lets a drone circle a suburb and track anyone of interest, no matter how smart they are not using real SIMs/landlines, just a car and a voice print on record...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Care to provide a reference for autonomous drones? And by reference I mean make and model of a drone that actually exists or is even on the drawing board that is within the budget of a police department. As far as I can tell there are no autonomous drones that are anywhere within the budget of a Police Department to purchase one let alone hundreds of them.
Drones for surveillance can be told to just loiter around a specific spot with its cameras recording continuously on a specific area. If you want 24/7 coverage, have another drone take over when the first one gets low on juice.
Even is this is possible now there still has to be someone to watch all that video and find the important parts.
Drones are capable today of loitering a few km away from you, unseen and unheard, with optics easily capable of reading the text message off your cellphone screen while you are tapping away outside. Optics like this have been around for decades.
Reference please? I see no way a camera kilometers away can read test 1/4" high. Another issue is the the cell phone would have to be positioned exactly for the camera to see the text. Can you read the text through the back of the phone, side of the phone or through a person? It is hard enough for someone a few feet away to read someone else's test let alone kilometers.
Its only a matter of time before drones are small and cheap enough that you can have dozens of them flying around a city 24/7.
That may be true but what time period are we looking at? Five years? ten years? 30 years? The point is that right now authorities want to use a few drones that they can afford to replace expensive helicopters. Slippery slope arguments are invalid. There is no reason to stop something good happening now because in the future with many changes something bad might, may or possibly could happen. It is also possible that it will not happen and a good thing is squashed for no reason. If it is good now then do it. If things change in the future we can deal with it then.
How many times do people have to say this; There is not privacy from visual surveillance when in public.
What do we call a boomerang that doesn't come back? That is a successful hit.
100% probability that the drones will be used to enforce speed limits.
After all, the police will have to justify the cost of their new toys with a bump in the detection rate for some category of "crime".
The current laws were made way before the Internet and current electronic communication abilities were developed. Changes will need to be made to eventually address the relevant issues but it doesn't happen overnight. And in the US justice system even a judge can refuse to apply certain laws because if they don't really apply too any on-going litigations. This will cause the laws to be revisited to determine if they can exist in today's environment. Plus the US has a history of changing the laws and Bill of Rights if required.
Civil libertarians... We have them do we? ... Since when?
Can a person program a new solution to a problem? Why should anyone be able to stop such a thing? -Richard Stallman
The article indicates, and most UAV's are remotly controled by a human operator. The title says Automated implying that the drones will fly by themselves.
I see you've played knifey spooney before.
what do Australians call a boomerang that doesn't come back? A stick!
Technically a boomerang is any of a class of bent throwing sticks. They are not all designed to return to the thrower - the ones used as hunting weapons are thicker and heavier. The kink in the middle gives the stick an axis on which to turn, stabilising it and allowing it to be thrown further and with more accuracy.
The returnable boomerangs are curved on one side and flat on the other like an aeroplane wing.
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
Ok, let me clear up some misconceptions seeing as I was working for a vendor involved in the exploratory process of this whole thing:
- These are not fully automated, they have human controllers.
- The main use-cases that needed be demonstrated was surveying sites for the purposes of crowd control and disaster response, an eye-in-the-sky, not wholesale surveillance. These are cheaper to run and purchase than traditional rotatory and fixed wing aircraft.
- The numbers they want are low, not hundreds and probably not dozens and dozens either, because frankly, they are still quite expensive (5 figures). They'll probably start with just a few.
I would tell you more, such as the technical limitations that make these units unsuitable for wholesale surveillance, but I would be breaching an NDA. I'd be more concerned about wholesale telecommunication surveillance than this sort of thing.
I see you've played knifey spooney before.
Knifey? You have knifey in Australia?
(one quick Google later)
Ach, it's not the same, our knifey is more like a cross betwixt twister and chicken...
...is when are we going to start the War against Tyranny?
It is a lot harder to score a buckshot on a helicopter..
They'll use boomerangs.
Stainless steel boomerangs - with razor sharp edges thrown by feral kids
Brilliant.