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How Drones Entered the FBI's Spying Toolkit
Jason Koebler writes The FBI has had an eager eye on surveillance drones since first experimenting with remote control airplanes in 1995. But budget cuts nearly ended the Bureau's unmanned machinations in 2010, and it took a dedicated push aimed at making drones "a tool the FBI cannot do without" to cement their place in the FBI's surveillance toolkit. The near termination—and subsequent expansion—of the FBI's drone program over the past four years is chronicled in hundreds of heavily-redacted pages released under a lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington over the past several months.
Everybody should have one
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Beware. For tolls for thee.
Dan from Oakland
Seriously, if some dumb epileptic Japanese Kid can have one, why wouldn't the FBI do it?
They're still working out how to safely keep a monkey in the trunk of a car. It's been a bit elusive.
But budget cuts nearly ended the Bureau's unmanned machinations in 2010
Because using a small, cheap, high-velocity, can-move-in-3D, expendable drone is more expensive than using more agents?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
If FBI agents want a hobby great, let them pay for it out of their own pockets. Quad copters are not that expensive, and off of the tax payers dime they can do what ever they want. Watch porn, go to the bar, fly kites, or fly drones.
On the tax payers dollar, there is absolutely nothing for a drone to do that manpower can't do better.
The FBI's job is to investigate federal crimes and arrest suspects of those crimes. Can they covertly listen in to conversations with a drone? Can they covertly film better with drones? Can they make arrests with drones? No to all of those things. The only thing they can possibly do with a drone is survey a bust location with a drone, and if a cop does not already know the bust location they are not good cops. The "bad guy would have gotten away if we didn't drone him" are impossible scenarios that don't happen.
With the lack of arrests and prosecution the FBI has shown, I simply distrust the agency. I'm sure there are great agents working there that want to do the right thing, but the executive side shuts down real criminal investigations. The concocted "terrorist" attacks that the agency propagated to get additional funding plays a part in that.
I'm not against some of the drone technology in the Military. As a veteran I know first hand that the Military has to deal with situations that are based on 2nd hand or out of date intelligence. This makes for unknown scenarios and a simple surveillance drone can turn the tide of an encounter. Their job is to handle well armed well trained military units of other countries. They are trained to watch out for civilians and try not to harm them, but civilians are the secondary concern of a soldier.
Law enforcement, including the FBI, is not the military. The jobs are totally different, and the expectations are totally different. The Police's job is to protect and serve the public first. If an "unknown gang" has "unknown weapons" then the police have failed miserably at their jobs. That's not a dig on the individual officers, that's a dig at their management who sends them out to do the wrong jobs. Speed traps for example piss off the public and serve primarily to obtain revenue (which is in addition to what we pay for in taxes). It takes police off of patrols and basically turns them into thugs (we all know about the quotas, don't bother trying to bullshit us). If police were visible, patrolling the streets, and actually talking to members of the community, they would have been tipped off about that "unknown gang" long before there were problems.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
They respond really well to buckshot when they get caught scoping out ur girl in the bikini and produce awesome high res photos. They get board too when she's not on the phone and leaned to fly radio controlled aircraft.
I can't resist commenting on a so obviously stupid posting. Drones vs human agents are a false dichotomy. Drones are of course a tool for human agents to extend their sensory range. In words of a single syllable drones allow one to extend the range of one's vision, hearing and perhaps even the ability to track people as well as vehicles.
I can't resist on pointing out your failure to read. or Perhaps the explanations of their jobs and examples given were not specific enough? Here ya go then.
A human can plant a device in the right place at the right time to get audio/video when needed. Even better, once planted they can leave the scene. They can crawl through air ducts and sewers if needed, and even though you may have to pay for the laundry it's possible. Humans can also retrieve those devices when the mission is done. A human can adapt to a situation, fake a heart attack if a distraction is needed, and do all kinds of things on a whim that don't relate to blowing things up or firing bullets into bad guys. Pretty often, you prefer criminals to be alive. And one human can do all of those things without too much difficulty.
A drone can only get to locations where enough air space exists, unless you are talking about drones that currently only exist in movies. The smallest REAL "spy" drones can't fly in a breeze very well, and can't look like a screw in a wall socket after they land. You could get a different drone to walk around, but a step limits their functionality unless you have a very large drone. A drone makes noise, if you are close enough to listen in to a conversation the bad guy can most likely hear the drone. A drone has a higher chance of failure which risks missions, a gust of wind is all it takes to blow cover. They are much larger than a micro camera or microphone therefor easier for bad guys to spot. Of course you could get fleets of drones which replace several of the things a human can do, but you really are not doing anything better or smarter.
So your claim of "tools" to make humans better is simply delusional bullshit (or sock puppetry).
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
After all, citizens, I mean criminals, could fight back with anti-drone drones. Better make these people terrorists for just attempting that. And also make anybody shooting at drones, except "law"-enforcement, a terrorist as well, easier all around.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Drones are military weapons and the FBI is a civilian organization. No civilian organization should have access to military style weapons, uniforms, or equipment.
I own a UAS, does that make me a military organization?
So do you think citizens shouldn't be allowed to own them either? Or is it that citizens should be allowed by not the cops? Whats the logic in your position? Is it okay for me because I don't have a hellfire missile? The FBI doesn't either, just cameras and mics ... just like mine.
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When drones are outlawed, only terrorists will have drones!
Knives are military weapons too! I hope you are prepared to go to Gitmo V2 for your beliefs, because with people like you we are well on our way!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
With all the publicly available research on how surveillance destroys trust and privacy and increases stress overall, I still can't believe we are buying into this mindset. The only place which was left unsurveilled was the oceans, and now private and public companies alike are having talks of doing that as well. A world where everything is recorded and layers of secrecy to manage it, we really are preparing ourselves for a massive war aren't we? It's not like we're all going to evolve to not require trust, it's how we learn, we're truly headed for the Idiocracy movie where we're going to simply end up with a population of conformity and shunned originality. It's terrible, we got so stuck on whether we could I think we forgot to ask whether we should. This is what we get for declaring war on fear, I mean it, we literally declared war on fear itself. Think about that one more time and see if the world is going somewhere sane or not.