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FAA Grants Arlington Texas Police Department Permission To Fly UAVs
cylonlover writes with news that another police department has received authorization to start using drones for tasks like "...photographing crime scenes and searching for missing people." From the article: "The police department in Arlington can now use new tools in support of public safety over the Texas urban community — two small helicopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. The FAA has granted permission for the Arlington police to fly these unmanned aircraft under certain circumstances: they must fly under 400 feet, only in the daytime, be in sight of the operator and a safety observer, and be in contact with the control tower at the nearby Dallas-Fort Worth airport — one of the busiest in the country."
They're using a Leptron Avenger, which "has been designed with military grade features" but don't worry, "police are quick to emphasize that the 4- to 5-foot-long aircraft aren’t the same as military drones."
Just another way for the police department to pick the low hanging traffic enforcement fruit. Too bad the sequester didn't knock "public safety's" budget more heavily.
Doesn't really surprise me in this particular city. They'll probably use it for aerial views of the Cowboys losing. :(
Originally there was some opposition to police car dashboard cameras. The thinking was that they would result in an invasion of privacy for average citizens. This has actually happened to a small extent, but I think the primary result has been an increased transparency of the police department. Procedures are better followed and cops who violate rules are more easily punished.
So for all of the doom and gloom about a police state and the lack of privacy this technology will bring, I tend to think the opposite will happen - Police departments that use these UAVs for inappropriate purposes will be caught and publicly denounced. In the meantime, they might actually find missing people or spot criminals, which is definitely a public good.
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
Given the operational parameters I predict a short life span for these.
Please, please fly one of them over my house.
That way they can have an mid air collision with the Estes model rocket I will happen to be launching at the time. My special one where I replace the parachute cord with steal cable to make sure it does not break. :P
When will you buffoons accept that any selfish philosophy will inevitably end up in the government being run by businessmen, for businessmen?
The police service exists firstly to make revenue for itself, and secondly to make revenue for its friends who provide it with useless toys.
Feudalism failed. Capitalism failed (I put 1973 as capitalism's final death - when the government took full control of the money supply - although there have been so much state interventions/tweaks since then that it's never really stood on its own two feet). State capitalism failed (although that bastard Stalin called it "communism").
Mankind's never going to move forward again until it continues with the principle of being decent to each other rather than being out for oneself, something which died around the time ex-cowboy actor Reagan ascended to the throne. Bring back social democracy.
How are these "new" rules/permissions any different than what have already existed for hobby RC flight?
Under 400 feet. Check.
In sight of operator. Check.
Daytime only. Check.(?)
Being in contact with the control tower is a new requirement that has not been present for hobbyists in the past, that I am aware of.
So, what's new/different about the po po vs prior rules?
Given that this is the same State that recently had to be told to stop shooting people from helicopters, I really don't understand the hysteria over unarmed reconnaissance drones. There are real and present dangers to worry about with our police departments; screaming about hypothetical, flying, robotic killing machines comes off as a bit superfluous in that light.
R/C aircraft != UAV.
See the 2nd link in the summary. The thing even has a RADIO!!!!!
How many times does it have to be pointed out?????
Having been mocked for saying we're screeching towards Big Brother and the surveillance state ... here you go.
This will go through the inevitable scope creep until it becomes 24x7, warrantless, and used for whatever they want it to be. All political parties are willing to allow this to happen these days/
Enjoy it bitches, you don't live in a free country any more, and you never will again.
This is an RC helicopter.
The heli referenced in TFA is equivalent to the Align T-Rex 700
Hyperbole much?
like my city ~1 million inhabitants, the police dash cams are often turned off, or they "forget" to change the tapes (yes, they run off VCRs), or some other thing happens exactly when the tape would be most useful
don't piss on us and tell us it's raining.
Excuse me Mr. Government Guy, Mr. Reporter? I think I missed the part where you assured us that these drones wouldn't be armed. Or in some way acknowledged everyone's tacit reservations about using drones in civilian areas. *checks TFA again* yep, definitely missed that. If you could just append here.......and.....here....
Because the police are the modern rendition of the standing army our founding fathers feared would oppress us. They'll cut the military in a heart beat because it's not useful to them; the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits them from using it in any "interesting" capacity on us. Amending the PCA would also cause a furor among the public and the military. All of that sort of beside the point because many cops today have the same weapons, training and equipment as infantrymen.
Ironically, law enforcement, unlike military service, is precisely the sort of government function that needs to be heavily privatized. It used to be mostly private anyway. When your county hired a sheriff, they were literally just an armed citizen who carried a gun and badge that let the world know "I do full time, what any citizen can do when faced with a crime." Like a private citizen doing risky work, they had to be bonded and insured. Broke in the wrong house and did $10k of damage? Didn't come out of the treasury; it came out of your privately funded insurance and/or bond money.
Our system is broken today because we moved away from the principle of least privilege. That used to be the operating assumption of law enforcement (if I don't know the law, I don't enforce it because getting it wrong means I'm a criminal). We went from a law enforcement system where each officer was a mostly unprivileged user to being damn near like root.
Same is true in South Carolina, only you are less valuable than the many pigs and other livestock raised in the state.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
given that i bet these are the Exact Same UAVs used in military contexts i put it no more than 5 years before "Less Than Lethal" ammo is normally loaded onto these.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
"Pull!" *BOOM*
Maybe it's time to revive the punt gun....;-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
"The FAA has granted permission for the Arlington police to fly these unmanned aircraft under certain circumstances"
Sure is nice of them to allow Texans to fly shit over TEXAS.
You people are pussies, apparently in Texas also.
Wake up.
That UAV ain't right.
Uh, considering the drones that've recently been developed and are being proven out in the current theaters of operation, the short response to the "not the same" is, "Uh, BULLSHIT!"
The issue I have with all these complaints is it seems like the rule is this: According to Slashdot's readers, the police are allowed to do something if it's hard and expensive, but they're not allowed to do something if it's easy.
For example, the police are allowed to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars secretly tailing Tony Soprano, seeing where he goes and who he meets with. However, they're NOT allowed to put a GPS on Tony's car to do exactly the same thing.
The police are allowed to operate helicopters over a city to help fight crime, complete with HD and nightvision cameras, provided they are multi-million dollar whirlybirds with expensive operators, but they're NOT allowed to operate a remote-control helicopter with a Canon Handycam bolted to it.
Which is it, Slashdot?
Does that include all citizens that the government currently does not know where they are and what they are doing, or just people actually on missing lists?
And when it is scanning all those people looking for little lost Jullian, does it record who it saw where, and alert police if it sees a crime?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Radio controlled aircraft used to be just hobby aircraft. But in the past few decades, military versions of UAV's have proven that they can be used for lethal purposes. With terrorism on the rise, and as the number and type of UAV's growing hugely (I mean, they will have unmanned full sized fighter planes soon, for real!), the US government has correctly decided to regulate UAV's. The hobby lobby (couldn't resist that), has done a stellar job working with the FAA in protecting the venue of the RC hobbyists. One of the ways to distinguish a "UAV" from an RC hobby aircraft is "purpose". Am I enjoying my hobby, or am I taking pictures of houses for a Real Estate company. Moving away from strict hobby use to Commercial or Military use redefines the RC aircraft from "hobby use" to "UAV", under a different set of laws, even if it is the same plane. Hobbyists are limited to 400', line of sight, weight restrictions, no-flyover-people, and must contact the airport if flown within 3 miles of an airport. By following these rules, we hobbyists protect our hobby even in the face of more strict UAV laws. And even we hobbyists get "NOTAM" alerts, shutting us down for a few hours when the POTUS comes to town.
My ass... more like "we want a dragnet so we can charge more people with petty crimes to raise more money for our department."
The use of "Searching for missing people" is obvious the cover for any misconduct. You can always be looking for missing people, everywhere and at any time. Do something you should not be doing with a drone, use the excuse of searching for missing people.
Load New Commander (Y/N)?
The pinkertons got away with what they did to the unions because many local governments were bought and paid for by monied interests. This is really not any worse than today where cops routinely get away with stuff that is actually worse than what the pinkertons were permitted to do. A pinkerton who broke into the wrong house and shot up a family could be lawfully shot dead by the head of household. Today, you do that to a cop with a warrant based on a false statement and you're going to get it so far up the ass from the local DA that you'd think Vlad Dracula made an appearance in town. Not only is the law not even theoretically on your side today, but the government circles its wagons to protect its people and interests in a way that makes justice night impossible.
There's a word for people who think Fascism is a catch-all dirty word: morons. No Fascist state in history has ever moved toward privatized law enforcement where the government police and general public have the same arrest powers and liability for "getting it wrong" (enforcing non-existent laws, arresting when no formal arrest power is recognized under law, using excessive force, raiding the wrong house, etc.). Privatizing and leveling the playing field is actually a bulwark against Fascism. When a concealed carry permit holder can arrest a cop "going Rodney King" on someone and drag his sorry ass to the sheriff, that's not Fascism. That's what liberty and equality before the law looks like.
(And when several private citizens can get into a shoot out with said cop's colleagues who attempt to stop that lawful arrest, shoot most of the responding officers dead and be exonerated before the court, that's even more of an example of liberty and equality before the law).
The military has been able to get away with operating drones in places like Afghanistan, because there are not very many people there who have sophisticated hacking ability. Since these drones are radio controlled flying computers, like every computer ever created by the mind of man, they too can be hacked and jammed. Any of these drones that depend on GPS data, could be made to fly who knows where until they run out of juice or fuel. Because GPS signals originate from satellites hundreds or even thousands of miles away, these signals are rather weak and are easily overpowered by local jamming. If this drone thing becomes ubiquitous, there will be electronic warfare just as there is now on the Internet. The difference is that on the Internet, people's lives are seldom endangered by hackers. There is a much greater chance that someone could get killed by a hacked and misguided drone. A few expensive lawsuits later, most police departments would likely forgo the use of such vulnerable technology and go back to old-fashioned standard police work.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
received authorization to start using drones
From the article this link points to:
Police are quick to emphasize that the 4- to 5-foot-long aircraft aren’t the same as military drones.
“They’re unmanned aircraft,” Arlington police spokeswoman Tiara Richard said. “They aren’t military grade. They’re somewhere in between that and remote-control helicopters that are used recreationally.”
Hunting rifles will easily take these down, you have a 3 UAV limit per day.... Dont be a hog, let others have fun shooting them as well. The state will get more of them each month.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Remember, May 16 is national destroy-a-camera-day. For me, I am throwing mud at a local traffic-camera.
Help eliminate stupid speeding tickets
Seriously? It's not, when it comes to privacy issues you all seem to be so worried about. They have far better EO/IR packages on the Police helicopters they currently use, and can watch / record you from anywhere as it is. So, they want to move to something cheaper. Cool. The big deal is?
If you're gonna bitch and moan about the "UAVs" they want to use, in a highly limited fashion at a much lower altitude with far less advanced optics in LOS operation only, that cost far less then manned aircraft then cool. But you look like an idiot because they have far better platforms to spy on you with and they've been using them far longer with almost zero complaints by people. But hey, its an evil UAV. Whatevs.
Don't know if two is all they bought, but damn, those things aren't cheap.
http://arlingtontx.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=902&meta_id=111433
No... you're correct. Privatized law enforcement won't work in our current system, but that's really only because the rest of the legal infrastructure is governmental in nature.
EG. The judges and court system are NOT privatized, nor are the prisons, so you'd only be privatizing one component of a greater whole. Such a combo (as we're already witnessing with such projects as the red light and speed cameras, where a private company gets a cut of as much as 50% of the revenue of each ticket issued) just encourages more corruption. In these "partnerships", it's all too easy for each party to shirk their responsibilities by pointing fingers at the other party involved. Plus, with private industry essentially sapping part of the revenue stream of the operation that used to go completely to the govt. system, there's increased pressure to collect MORE revenue so both parties are satisfied with the outcome.
I'm not sure I agree that a fully privatized law enforcement system would automatically equate to fascism? I can see how it *might*, but there are a lot of "what if's" in such a proposal.
I think the key is understanding that law has to ultimately get handled at the governmental level, if one is advocating having a centralized body of government at all. (Proponents of agorism or anarchy would obviously have visions of alternate ways to run things.) Really, the only difference between a private business handling an aspect of the job of law enforcement and govt. handling it is the fact that private businesses have a primary focus or goal on profit-making. But as long as govt. retains control of actually making the laws and verifying they're enforced fairly/justly, it shouldn't matter if it's accomplished by "outsourcing" it to private contractors or doing it with govt. employees.
Right now, I'd argue that govt. often has a primary focus of money-making anyway, because we've built up such an expensive and elaborate system - they can't sustain it otherwise.
Except that it did come out of the treasury, because his pay has to cover his insurance costs, and those costs included operation expenses, money to promote their services in the form of ads and the like, and profit for CEOs.
The difference is that with a private police/law enforcement organization is that if the company screws up too badly:
1. The government organization that hired them are at least somewhat shielded from the total liability.
2. The company itself will go bankrupt (no profits for the corrupt/incompetent owners)
3. Another company will replace the bad one; absorbing only the 'worthy' assets of the old company(preferably, I know this stuff is often messed up).
4. It's much easier to 'fire' the entire police department if they're screwing up too badly.
Despite saying all this, on average I still support public police departments(IE government run).
I don't read AC A human right
An autonomous EMP-armed drone; just have to get close enough...
Down side: it will only justify accelerating the Police State. Same reason one can't (shouldn't) bring great justice to some truly scumbag governors (aka Koch Whores).
The 'cheaper' is the issue. A 'copter is expensive: The police aren't going to get that out unless they have a specific need for it, like a search-and-rescue operation or wanting aerial coverage of a SWAT raid on an armed suspect. Drones are cheaper, which means it becomes practical for them to go trawling for easy arrests - looking for speeding vehicles, fly-tippers, illegal water butts, violation of water usage laws, etc. While it can be a good thing that enforcing the law becomes easier (all those things are illegal for reasons, even if the water butts one is a very unpopular law), it also makes it much easier for the police to abuse: Eg, someone upsets a police officer or local government official in some manner, and for the next week a drone makes occasional passes over their house in the hope that maybe they'll use the lawn sprinklers during a drought or failed to maintain the minimum seperation between their garden tree and the neighouring house seperated by fire codes. The state of police varies greatly even within a single state, but stories abound of police departments and individual officers willing to abuse their power for often quite petty reasons.
"Can't tell if Ayn Rand or not..."
But they painted the noses orange, that clearly proves it's not a military drone! What could go wrong?
Apparently little, this sort of thing has been going on for many decades with respect to helicopters. The difference between some military and police helicopters is little more than the paint job, missing military avionics and no weapons mounted. This drone situation seems entirely comparable to the helicopter situation, and the light observation aircraft that goes back even farther.
Aren't the drones just a higher tech lower cost alternative to helicopters and light observation aircraft? It seems they do nothing new, they may be more numerous though.
I'll bet lawyers are lining up advertisement spots already to "assist" those clobbered by the 2000 rpm blades, or who inhaled toxic burning lithium battery fumes. Best of luck to the police, locating the person who shot the 1mm steal ball into the exposed, unprotected LiPo batteries hanging off the side. Even if not on purpose, I know from experience these things are fantastically mechanically complicated, not to mention "autopilot" bugs. Not much has to break for one to go out of control and hit someone. A single broken servo gear tooth, broken tail-rotor drive-belt, or any of the 10+ ball-links jamming will do it real quick.
No worries, this is Texas a small government, 2nd amendment, god fearing, freedom loving, republican state. Nothing wrong with it at all.
Arlington is home of the Rangers and Cowboys, not to mention there's a Six Flags there as well. I can see them using it there for public safety reasons since there's can be very large crowds there at times.
Now what they actually use it for, I'm not sure.
From the Leptron website: "[...]The Pilot can fly the Avenger in a fully stabelized (sic)[...]"
"has been designed with military grade features" but don't worry, "police are quick to emphasize that the 4- to 5-foot-long aircraft aren’t the same as military drones."
They have been armed with sacks of the most fiery chili source available in Texas. They call it the Plastic Hellfire, with meat.
Lets see who can shoot down hat Obama Flyer
Seriously with the QB shit, im not a lover or a hater, but do you have any recognition of what it was that came before Romo, Quincy, Bledso, Leaf, Testiverde, Hutchinson.
Of course... it was the golden boy with the golden arm, Troy Aikman. He was a helluva QB indeed . Hard act to follow. ;-D
But seriously, about Romo, when you look at his accumulated stats, he'd really not that bad at all, in fact he's got serious skills. He's certainly put out some damn impressive numbers. If he'd have had a better OL to work (definitely the owner's and coaches' fault on that) with these past few year, things would be very different. He does however have a bit of a record of choking under pressure though, and helping to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the last minutes of the 4th quarters... but that problem seems to be endemic for the Cowboys as a whole thru their entire history.
why isnt the FAA giving out COA's to civilian companies? There are people who want to use them for precision agriculture, forestry, fire fighting and tons of other stuff but the process is so long, expensive and paperwork heavy that only government agencies and research institutes can actually get through the process! Some of the guys at http://honeycombcorp.com are working with the Oregon legislature to get a licencing process setup like cars have where you walk in, take a written test, do a flight test and get a licence that lets you operate in visual range or out of visual range depending on what license you want.
Seriously, these would be good, high paying jobs but people are willing to turn their back on them because they are afraid of toy helicopters with cheap cameras on them.
Yes, it could be used for warrantless spying, but they have plenty of ways of doing that already. They could, say, have a UAV follow a car thief until he stops, then have the police suddenly rush the place. Thief is caught, no high speed chase.
Also useful if an armed and dangerous person is having a standoff with police. It would certainly help scout rooftops during VIP events.
Except that, well, there's encrypted GPS channels intended to prevent spoofing(and increase accuracy), and while some of the video feeds were unencrypted on some models of UAV, the control lines are encrypted.
Running a GPS spoofer on US Soil(where you have to worry about US Police) is likely to get you far too much attention from other parties.
I don't read AC A human right
Please tell me you're just trolling.
Really, the only difference between a private business handling an aspect of the job of law enforcement and govt. handling it is the fact that private businesses have a primary focus or goal on profit-making.
Right there. There's your problem. People wail about cops having quotas, and rightly so. Privitization will only make the situation worse. The more tickets handed out, the more arrests made, the more hazardous situations handled, the more the contractors get paid.
But as long as govt. retains control of actually making the laws and verifying they're enforced fairly/justly, it shouldn't matter if it's accomplished by "outsourcing" it to private contractors or doing it with govt. employees.
Enforcing, you mean with cops... like the ones you just privatized? Or will you keep IA public? Where will you hire your IA cops? Oh, right, out of the private sector. We already have a problem with revolving door politicians and regulators, let's do it with our cops too.
You can say that government oversight would keep this from happening, but it WOULD NOT. Just look at the housing bubble to see how blind regulators PREFER to be.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Hmmm.
Ok, let's look at this in terms of economies of scale. Unions are a great idea. They help keep employers honest, working conditions good, and pay high.
Except when they don't.
Why not? I mean, sometimes unions are fantastic. We need them. Why do they frequently make things worse and not better? There's a little known sociology principle: Regardless of what a bureaucracy was originally created for, it will eventually come to value self preservation above its design goal.
Ok, that's one reason, but it's not the complete picture. Today, we don't have unions. We have mega-unions, and they're a different animal. It is important for big companies, like Boeing, to deal with someone who can keep them in check. What about a 10 man shop, though? Should a gigantic union come in and "represent them"? Would they represent them? Could they? Most of the time when a big union comes into a very small shop (happens all the time, often entirely uninvited) wages are forced to DROP to meet the "industry standard", and then union dues are subtracted. If the employees are lucky, the union stops there.
This isn't always what happens. Some business owners need to be "reminded" what it means to be an employer. But this happens so often that it's become a meme.
----------------
So, why did I bring this up? I'm not really ranting against unions here. I'm making an analogy.
Private security contractors would not stay small, or local. They'd need office facilities, training facilities, training officers, health insurance, calibration equipment, and all manner of other things that give a lower overhead (ratio) on a larger scale. Besides, if a firm is successful in one place, they have a reputation that they can use to expand into other venues.
Just like the telcos, a few big fish will swallow up all the little fish. The technology is totally different, but most of the business philosophy is the same.
Now you'll wind up with a few really big security conglomerates... armies really. Who do you think is going to have more sway on police matters in a local municipality? What are they going to do? Fire them? And hire who? Image if your choices for police force were limited to AT&T and Comcast. That's what it would be like.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Sure, you identified one of the problems (private business having a profit motive), and I agree with that. But as I said in the last line of my comment, govt. is often just as focused on making a profit for itself (despite not being in a situation where it promises that to its stockholders). That's a result of having TOO MUCH government, to the point where organization after organization has to try to justify its continued existence. If, say, a municipal police force can rake in lots of revenue on questionable traffic tickets, they can say, "Look at how much we've done! You surely can't think of eliminating us and using that police dept. owned by the municipality next door!"
To have a successful privatized police force, I think you'd have to have several things in place.
1. You'd ensure they're not paid based on tickets or revenue generated. I'd suggest they receive a flat contracted payment of $X per month, with the contract specifying they meet certain expectations - or else it's subject to termination. The expectations would include being held to a code of ethics/conduct -- so substantiated complaints of officer misbehavior would count against them, etc. Response time would have to meet certain standards as well.
2. The public would have an easily accessible method to file complaints or compliments, which govt. officials approving the contracts could review. The comments would be kept in public view as well, for easy searching and reading. (If the news media wants to look into something, this should be a free, accessible resource for doing so.)
3. The privatized police firm in use should be subject to a regular public "yes/no" type of vote, on top of everything else. If a contract is up for renewal, let the public decide if they're collectively ok with them continuing to "protect and serve" them, or not. If the firm is voted down, then govt. will have to find another vendor to use. (Heck, we do that with our judges already. They have to be re-elected or else they lose their position -- but most people voting on them really have little to no solid information to make that decision. At least voting on a privatized police force used in their community, they'd be more likely to have a personal opinion based on their experiences.)