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."

Comments

I wonder how easy it will be

[FudRucker]

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

Re:I wonder how easy it will be

[causality]

when societies fracture and become "us vs them" is when bad things happen

Yes, they sure do. And when those bad things happen, why, of course the solution will be more government power and more funding for an increasingly paramilitary police force. If your idea is implemented, said RF devices will become illegal or (if already illegal) the laws against them will be strengthened. Of course those laws will be hard to enforce if you don't equip and train the police to catch people operating such devices, and make it easier for police to search for them. The War on (some) Drugs already established this pattern.

Does anyone still doubt this? The way dysfunctional government operates is that it either neglects a foreseeable situation until it becomes a crisis or it just straight up creates problems through its bureaucratic failures, and the solution is always more government. This one would be the latter case -- the drones are not the result of overwhelming popular demand that the politicians are responding to; it is a bureaucracy that insists on doing this anyway.

Government power is a great big hammer that gives a great big woody to those who wield it, and of course everything is a nail.

You know what a bicameral legislature should have been? One house creates laws and the other house repeals as many as possible, the result being that only the necessary ones are kept. Speaking of foreseeable situations, what happens when you have something like law that only ever expands and there is no reliable mechanism to make it contract? It collapses under its own weight, of course, and that's an eventuality. How foolish it is not to anticipate that, not to design legal systems that account for it!

what they really meant

[wealthychef]

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.

Re:what they really meant

[causality]

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.

That happens also in countries with constitutionally-protected civil rights. Really it happens anyplace where the highest penalty an elected official is likely to ever suffer is the loss of his job. That's really the problem with the American Constitution -- it is the highest law of the land, yet it has no severe criminal penalties for politicians who support unconstitutional laws. Start throwing abusive legislators in federal pound-you-in-the-ass prisons where the typically feeble old men will be somebody's bitch and suddenly abuses of power will become more rare.

You know, the same thing the rest of us are legally threatened with for doing much less damage to society than a legislature can do. Plus the beauty is, the more time politicians spend trying to prosecute each other, the less time they have to produce bad laws. And any successful prosecutions would function like term limits. It's really a win-win, unless you disagree with me that a lust for political power should make someone less privileged than the rest of society, not more.

Re:what they really meant

[ixuzus]

Only in Australia there is constitutional case law saying that political free speech is implied by the constitution. There are three or four High court decisions I know of on the matter but probably the best known is Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v Commonwealth. As the High Court interprets it, so shall it be. Granted, it isn't nearly as broad as elsewhere but it is there.

Re:what they really meant

[rtb61]

More interestingly than that, the argument against a bill of rights is not that it guarantees rights but that it limits them. You only get the rights as defined without a bill of rights all rights are yours and must be challenged in a court of law to take away any implied on non-limited rights. Bill of rights, these are you rights and not one bit more and we will use interpretive law and corrupted courts to limit them based upon wealth.

civil rights don't matt

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Another story on the subject

[OzPeter]

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

Re:Another story on the subject

[OzPeter]

A better link about the US story (*)
 
  Drones with an eye on the public cleared to fly
 
(*) Why the fuck can't I edit my own posts? If you can track my karma, then you should be able to let me edit what I wrote. Sure it could be misused by trolls .. but on the whole it would make things easier by not having to reply to my own posts like this.

Boomerangs. It's Australia.

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>>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

[frovingslosh]

"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.

Re:in a country with no constitutionally-protected

[93 Escort Wagon]

I know the US government is a favorite whipping boy here - and deservedly so, much of the time - but, in my opinion, the government wouldn't be able to get away with these sorts of shenanigans if a large enough portion of the population actually cared about this. Thing is, large segments of the US population seem to see nothing wrong with these activities. And, frankly, I don't think it's as simple as right versus left either - that just seems to affect which manner of curtailing one's civil rights that individual thinks is okay.

I'm not one of these people that thinks European countries and their citizens get everything right, far from it; but I do wonder if having a world war rage across your home turf makes you culturally more sensitive towards what can go wrong in your own back yard. Here in the US, we perceive threats as always being external - the internal threats don't seem to register.

Re:in a country with no constitutionally-protected

[PPH]

I do wonder if having a world war rage across your home turf makes you culturally more sensitive towards what can go wrong in your own back yard.

Good point. The powers that be in the USA like to inculcate their population with a sense of trust in domestic institutions. And they don't like skepticism of the same. These principles are found in ideas of "institutional intelligence". That is: The group is smarter than the individual. This may be true for cases where members of the group independently arrive at a consensus. But it overlooks the susceptibility of the group to influence by self-appointed leaders. Some with their own self interest placed before that of the public. Europe has had recent history with such leaders and is in a better position to recognize them should they arise again.*

The study of social psychology is more common in Europe than in the USA. One reason for that might be Europe's past experience with problems relating to group behavior. But its also due to the fear that American power brokers have with too close an inspection of their methods. One of the primary methods of dealing with dissent is to turn it into a "them vs us" fight. If you don't buy into the group philosophy without question, you must be an outsider. And by definition, a troublemaker. So, you are out of the group and the group, by definition, has no internal problems.

*Its interesting to note the corollary to Godwin's law: That a reference to Hitler automatically ends a discussion. In part, because often that's a sign that the discussion has descended to the level of being ridiculous. But also because Americans (in particular) aren't comfortable with the idea that they are being manipulated by their own leaders for other than the good of the group. And with this remark, I end the thread.

Re:in a country with no constitutionally-protected

[TapeCutter]

Devil's advocate: Aussies really don't give a flying fuck what's written in their constitution, we think and act like we have certain rights, therefore we have those rights. Ink on paper in the legal sense is soley for the purpose of binding people to an agreement, regardless of the fact that the weaker party may not even know or comprehend the contents of the articles that bind him.

It's also abundantly clear from our history and countless opinion polls that Aussie's do not want or need a '2nd amendment', I for one kinda like the fact that both our most popular and most reviled politicians can walk the streets or go for their morning jog without the aide of helicopter gunships and snipers on rooftops.

And if I haven't convinced you yet that we don't need this shit pot stirred then I invite you to come and visit, enter via Perth 'international' airport and compare it to the US airport you left behind.

War

[Dzimas]

"the war against crime?" That's like calling life "the war against death."

Re:Boomerangs. It's Australia.

[OzPeter]

They'll use boomerangs.

Stainless steel boomerangs - with razor sharp edges thrown by feral kids

No editing of posts?

[perpenso]

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.

Re:No editing of posts?

[OzPeter]

The motivations might be:

Then only let people with super high karma edit their own posts. Or make it so that they can only "Add" to their posts.

Re:No editing of posts?

[perpenso]

Then only let people with super high karma edit their own posts.

Sounds like a privilege designed to keep the top 1% in the top 1%. What could go wrong? ;-)

Or make it so that they can only "Add" to their posts.

A clearly labeled add/followup in the original would be good. It allows for clarifications and such. A far simpler chain of followups could result.

Re:No editing of posts?

[OzPeter]

Most of the time I'd just want to add to my post in order to clarify things, so a timestamped addition would be good. However there are times when I screw things up even after reading and re-reading my post before committing. So perhaps a small time window for changes would also be desirable.
 
But anyway this is all just BS'ing .. /. won't listen to me. If they had listened to complaints then things like unicode would have be supported for a long long time.

Re:No editing of posts?

[ColdWetDog]

Burma Shave.

Different than police helicopters with observers?

[perpenso]

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.

Re:"Surveilled"?

[OzPeter]

What an obnoxious back formation. The word you are looking for is "surveyed".

The verb form of surveillance is kinda weird given that it is a foreign word used in English. A quick google found What verb goes with surveillance ? which suggests that the back-formation you are complaining about goes back to the 1960's, that the form is in both the OED and M-W dictionaries and that the BBC even uses it. One poster also disputes your suggestion of "survey" saying that:
 
'Survey' comes from the Latin for 'to see' - videre.
 
'Surveillance' comes from the Latin for 'to watch' - vigilare.

Re:Who said it is/should be a "war"?

[nurb432]

Everything is a war. This way you cant oppose it without being 'unpatriotic' or 'against the children' called a 'terrorist' etc etc, and they get unlimited, perpetual funding.

Let's see...

[Alex Belits]

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).

Global movement to totalitarianism

[7-Vodka]

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.

Re:Different than police helicopters with observer

[causality]

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.

Re:Boomerangs. It's Australia.

[barv]

What do we call a boomerang that doesn't come back? That is a successful hit.

Misconceptions.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.