I guess they have already declared war long ago. Here are some examples. Bell 206 Jet RangerBell OH-58 Kiowa M-16 rifles used by both police and military. Body armor developed from military flack vests. Grenade launchers used to launch CS canisters An unarmed drone is just another piece of equipment
These are the kind of uninformed posts that truly irk me. The "facts" they purport are blatantly false, the parallels they draw are meaningless and they information they leave out is obvious.
People are upset by them because they are designed to be constantly in the air.
Drones use fuel and need to land to refuel just like manned helicopters. The flight time of currently used helicopters is limited by the fuel tank not the crew.
If they were used for the same purposes as police helicopters you would only need 1 or 2.
One would need exactly the same number of drones a helicopters to get the same coverage.
Knowing our local police that means they'll start using them to cite traffic violations like speeding, which most Americans don't consider a crime.
To "cite traffic violations like speeding" requires someone on the ground. Sure a drone, like helicopters in use today, can spot for ground personnel they do not "cite" people.
In Virginia they still haven't answered whether or not the drones will be armed. There are serious implications if they are.
Care to cite references. I have seen articles about the Governor wanting drones but nothing about arming them. What does Virginia have to do with Washington State? Is there any mention of arming the helicopters in Seattle? This statement is an obvious Red Herring.
But either way, constantly being watched by flying vehicles is an invasion of privacy.
Is being watched from a vehicle an invasion of privacy? Is being watched by a pedestrian an invasion of privacy? Is being watched by a traffic camera an invasion of privacy? The point is that there is no valid expectation of privacy when out doors and off your property. Can they look over your fence and into your yard? Sure, but then so can helicopters.
I have a reasonable expectation that if I go out for a drive, walk, to dinner etc, that the government is not spying on me constantly.
Unless you happen to be a major criminal the Seattle police department is not going to tie up one quarter of their drone fleet watching you. There are over 620,000 people in Seattle and only 4 drones. You just are not that important.
Crime rates are down across the country.
So are police budgets. They are trying to use technology to reduce costs while keeping watch over the people they are sworn to protect.
It seems an interesting dichotomy. On one hand we want the police on hand to watch so they can stop crimes and protect the citizens.On the other hand we do not want the police to watch us so that they do not invade our privacy. You can not have both. You can either have police watch and intervene or not watch and try to clean up after. Personally I would rather have them intervene.
If the cost to train and employ a drone pilot is half that of a pilot of a real helicopter that meas that they can man only twice as many drones as helicopters for the same operational budget. Doubling the number of eyes in the sky is not a huge improvement and is a far cry from "they can watch everything. That would require 50 to 100 times more drones and they do not have the budget to pay the pilots.
You are missing the point completely. There are many other ways to communicate than official snail mail, email and phone calls. A corrupt official will not us official channels to be corrupt. If all possible channels are not monitored then it is still possible to conduct corrupt business without anything being recorded.
I did not say anything about transparency being bad; it was more a statement that complete transparency is impossible. The point is to publish what one can but do not rely on it to be a complete picture.
Considering that there are several well known spy agencies in the US such as the NSA and CIA I would say that there is a lot of money spent on spying.. I doubt a single person could even read all the government yearly budget reports. There is no way individuals are going to be able to micromanage the government.
The government can not expect to have any right to privacy as long as it is tax funded.
It is not a right to privacy issue; it is a data volume issue. Do you really think that your couple of hundred dollar tax contribution to a multi billion dollar budget can be tracked? Your taxes go unto a huge pot and get spent.
Then there are security issues. Do you really think it smart to make public that the US government paid a specific Iranian citizen for information about Iranian nuclear technology? Do you want valuable intelligence assets killed? When it comes to spying you are not going to get transparency. There is a reason it is called "cloak and dagger".
‘‘ 1312. Oaths and acknowledgments (a) IN GENERAL.—Oaths and acknowledgments required by this chapter—
(1) may be made—
(A) before any person in the United States authorized by law to administer oaths; or
(B) when made in a foreign country, before any diplomatic or consular officer of the United States authorized to administer oaths, or before any official authorized to administer oaths in the foreign country concerned, whose authority shall be proved by a certificate of a diplomatic or consular officer of the United States; and
(2) shall be valid if they comply with the laws of theState or country where made. (b) WRITTEN DECLARATION IN LIEU OF OATH.—
(1) The Administrator may by rule prescribe that any document which is to be filed under this chapter in the Office of the Administrator and which is required by any law, rule, or other regulation to be under oath, may be subscribed to by a written declaration in such form as the Administrator may prescribe, and such declaration shall be in lieu of the oath otherwise required.
(2) Whenever a written declaration under paragraph (1) is used, the document containing the declaration shall state that willful false statements are punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both, pursuant to section 1001 of title 18, and may jeopardize the validity of the application or document or a registration resulting therefrom.
Title 18 Section 1001
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—
(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or
(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both. If the matter relates to an offense under chapter 109A, 109B, 110, or 117, or section 1591, then the term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be not more than 8 years.
It seems that there is law behind throwing someone in jail.
You are only off by a few orders of magnitude. Nuclear plant Chance 3/500=.6% chance. Chance of getting hit by laser.013%. 46 times difference. with is over one order of magnitude Nuclear plant damage at least 1,000,000 people effected Plane downed. Average about 300. 1000000/300=3333 which is three orders of magnitude So a total of four orders of magnitude difference between the two scenarios. Not very similar at all. Did you happen to notice that the helicopter was continually be hit by the laser with and did not go down even though it was holding a stationary position in the air?
Do you understand the use of the English language? I have said many times "It is a problem". My point is that all problems are not epidemics and using the word epidemic in a case that does not warrant it dilutes the word. Are we going to call it a catastrophe when when a minor accident blocks a freeway for a few hours? Different words are used to describe different levels of concern. Problem? Yes. Epidemic? No. Going from 250 to 3700 in a year is a fad not an epidemic. Laser hits got a bit of press last year and more people did it this year. It is still less than 10 a day.
The interesting point that seems to be missed is that from all the laser hits there have been very few vision interruptions and no vision loss. Notice that there are no numbers on how many pilots were actually effected by the lasers? The only numbers are expected laser hits projected to the end of the year. Those are not even real numbers; they are projections. Even the video shows the helicopter being continually hit and still flying.
How will the surveillance data be collected. If it is not 24/7 then it is useless because there will always be time when someone is not watching when they can do corrupt things. There are also not enough people in the world to watch every official 24/7.
You miss the main point; surveillance requires people and people are corruptible. Also the "no one is watching" is BS. There are a huge number of NGO watchdog groups out there looking for corruption or are they corrupt too?
You have not explained anything. All you have done is set out goals but no plan to achieve them. Setting goals is the easy part.
"Do it" is not a plan. How does one actually hold someone to a higher standard? Tougher laws? More surveillance? What is your plan to actuall "do it"? How do we know the "people that will live up to the standard" now will not change when voted in?
They have to know they can no longer make their deals in secret
How do we ensure that? I don't think telling them something they already know will make a difference. Bribery and conflict of interest are already illegal or grounds for dismissal.
They don't see it as corrupt, but it is.
They are not that stupid. The corrupt officials know they are corrupt but do it anyway.
And how do we do that. It is easy to point out a problem but much harder to find a plan that leads to a solution. "All authority must be held to a much higher standard" is a goal not a plan.
Who is the arbiter of who the "better people" are? Are these arbiters corruptible?
if not conscript better people for the job.
The goals are staring us in the face; the plan to reach those goals is much more elusive.
This is circular logic. 1. People in government are corrupt 2.We need to put good people in government. 3.Government had power and power corrupts. 4.The good put in government will be corrupted by the power. 5. Goto 1 How do we break the cycle?
Sorry but watching every government official 24/7 is not a realistic option.
And the NSA (in the US) built a nice big data center to store all our emails. They can cough up some space for this also.
I don't think you quite understand the scale of what you are asking. How would one follow and video a government official in such a way as not to infringe on the privacy of the people around him? The comparison to storing all emails is bogus on two point. Text is easy to compress video and voice is not. Video and voice recordings are very difficult to search; text is easy.
We have to remind people that the government serves us, not the other way around. We shouldn't let their position be turned into a career, with benefits none of us receive. We must turn it into community service.
Can you link the current feed of what the Stockholm police chief is doing right now? Who he is talking to? What unofficial emails he is sending on his personal account? If it goes through a government server or occurs on an official meeting it is probably accessible but that is only a small portion of what goes on. Is every telephone call recorded and transcribed? Do you record and transcribe every time two or more people stop in the hall or washroom and talk? Is every office bugged and transcribed every day? There are plenty of other ways to communicate that can be use by corrupt official and never officially recorded.
[T]he FBI quotes federal air marshal George Johnson saying that the laser attacks have reached an "epidemic level."
I am not saying it is not a problem; it is a problem. To use a term reserved for a rapidly spreading disease that can kill when all we are talking about is possibly 2700 incidents, most of which had no effect what so ever on the aircraft, is inaccurate. It is almost as if this comic was written just for this occasion. Using the term epidemic dilutes the word when a real epidemic comes along and people ignore it because there are "epidemics" every day. Over hyping just muddies the water.
Who would do the watching? Would they not have power over the people they watch and by the theory of automatic corruption would they not abuse that power? Who would watch the watchers? More watchers? More power? More corruption? It is never ending.
Would you work under those conditions where you every move is recorded and stored. There isn't even enough hard drive space in the world to store a month of information that detailed. By the way, the corrupt parties have little to do with it. Bureaucracy is run by the bureaucrats and not the elected officials or their parties.
Slashdot Mirror
Who cares if they do it when the surveillance and anything gained from it (fruit of the poisoned tree) can not be used in court?
Which has already been declared illegal in court. Any pilot caught doing this would be charged.
I guess they have already declared war long ago. Here are some examples.
Bell 206 Jet Ranger Bell OH-58 Kiowa
M-16 rifles used by both police and military.
Body armor developed from military flack vests.
Grenade launchers used to launch CS canisters
An unarmed drone is just another piece of equipment
These are the kind of uninformed posts that truly irk me. The "facts" they purport are blatantly false, the parallels they draw are meaningless and they information they leave out is obvious.
People are upset by them because they are designed to be constantly in the air.
Drones use fuel and need to land to refuel just like manned helicopters. The flight time of currently used helicopters is limited by the fuel tank not the crew.
If they were used for the same purposes as police helicopters you would only need 1 or 2.
One would need exactly the same number of drones a helicopters to get the same coverage.
Knowing our local police that means they'll start using them to cite traffic violations like speeding, which most Americans don't consider a crime.
To "cite traffic violations like speeding" requires someone on the ground. Sure a drone, like helicopters in use today, can spot for ground personnel they do not "cite" people.
In Virginia they still haven't answered whether or not the drones will be armed. There are serious implications if they are.
Care to cite references. I have seen articles about the Governor wanting drones but nothing about arming them. What does Virginia have to do with Washington State? Is there any mention of arming the helicopters in Seattle? This statement is an obvious Red Herring.
But either way, constantly being watched by flying vehicles is an invasion of privacy.
Is being watched from a vehicle an invasion of privacy? Is being watched by a pedestrian an invasion of privacy? Is being watched by a traffic camera an invasion of privacy? The point is that there is no valid expectation of privacy when out doors and off your property. Can they look over your fence and into your yard? Sure, but then so can helicopters.
I have a reasonable expectation that if I go out for a drive, walk, to dinner etc, that the government is not spying on me constantly.
Unless you happen to be a major criminal the Seattle police department is not going to tie up one quarter of their drone fleet watching you. There are over 620,000 people in Seattle and only 4 drones. You just are not that important.
Crime rates are down across the country.
So are police budgets. They are trying to use technology to reduce costs while keeping watch over the people they are sworn to protect.
It seems an interesting dichotomy. On one hand we want the police on hand to watch so they can stop crimes and protect the citizens.On the other hand we do not want the police to watch us so that they do not invade our privacy. You can not have both. You can either have police watch and intervene or not watch and try to clean up after. Personally I would rather have them intervene.
If the cost to train and employ a drone pilot is half that of a pilot of a real helicopter that meas that they can man only twice as many drones as helicopters for the same operational budget. Doubling the number of eyes in the sky is not a huge improvement and is a far cry from "they can watch everything. That would require 50 to 100 times more drones and they do not have the budget to pay the pilots.
You are missing the point completely. There are many other ways to communicate than official snail mail, email and phone calls. A corrupt official will not us official channels to be corrupt. If all possible channels are not monitored then it is still possible to conduct corrupt business without anything being recorded.
I did not say anything about transparency being bad; it was more a statement that complete transparency is impossible. The point is to publish what one can but do not rely on it to be a complete picture.
Has a complaint been made? This might be something for the EFF.
Considering that there are several well known spy agencies in the US such as the NSA and CIA I would say that there is a lot of money spent on spying.. I doubt a single person could even read all the government yearly budget reports. There is no way individuals are going to be able to micromanage the government.
The government can not expect to have any right to privacy as long as it is tax funded.
It is not a right to privacy issue; it is a data volume issue. Do you really think that your couple of hundred dollar tax contribution to a multi billion dollar budget can be tracked? Your taxes go unto a huge pot and get spent.
Then there are security issues. Do you really think it smart to make public that the US government paid a specific Iranian citizen for information about Iranian nuclear technology? Do you want valuable intelligence assets killed? When it comes to spying you are not going to get transparency. There is a reason it is called "cloak and dagger".
I am bothered by many things that are not epidemics. I never said it was not an issue; just that it was not an epidemic.
From the Law
‘‘ 1312. Oaths and acknowledgments
(a) IN GENERAL.—Oaths and acknowledgments required by this chapter—
(1) may be made—
(A) before any person in the United States authorized by law to administer oaths; or
(B) when made in a foreign country, before any diplomatic or consular officer of the United States authorized to administer oaths, or before any official authorized to administer oaths in the foreign country concerned, whose authority shall be proved by a certificate of a diplomatic or consular officer of the United States; and
(2) shall be valid if they comply with the laws of theState or country where made.
(b) WRITTEN DECLARATION IN LIEU OF OATH.—
(1) The Administrator may by rule prescribe that any document which is to be filed under this chapter in the Office of the Administrator and which is required by any law, rule, or other regulation to be under oath, may be subscribed to by a written declaration in such form
as the Administrator may prescribe, and such declaration shall be in lieu of the oath otherwise required.
(2) Whenever a written declaration under paragraph (1) is used, the document containing the declaration shall state that willful false statements are punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both, pursuant to section 1001 of title 18, and may jeopardize the validity of the application or document or a registration resulting therefrom.
Title 18 Section 1001
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—
(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or
(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;
shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both. If the matter relates to an offense under chapter 109A, 109B, 110, or 117, or section 1591, then the term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be not more than 8 years.
It seems that there is law behind throwing someone in jail.
You are only off by a few orders of magnitude. .6% chance. Chance of getting hit by laser .013%. 46 times difference. with is over one order of magnitude
Nuclear plant Chance 3/500=
Nuclear plant damage at least 1,000,000 people effected Plane downed. Average about 300. 1000000/300=3333 which is three orders of magnitude
So a total of four orders of magnitude difference between the two scenarios. Not very similar at all.
Did you happen to notice that the helicopter was continually be hit by the laser with and did not go down even though it was holding a stationary position in the air?
Problem, Yes Epidemic? No.
Do you understand the use of the English language? I have said many times "It is a problem". My point is that all problems are not epidemics and using the word epidemic in a case that does not warrant it dilutes the word. Are we going to call it a catastrophe when when a minor accident blocks a freeway for a few hours? Different words are used to describe different levels of concern. Problem? Yes. Epidemic? No. Going from 250 to 3700 in a year is a fad not an epidemic. Laser hits got a bit of press last year and more people did it this year. It is still less than 10 a day.
The interesting point that seems to be missed is that from all the laser hits there have been very few vision interruptions and no vision loss. Notice that there are no numbers on how many pilots were actually effected by the lasers? The only numbers are expected laser hits projected to the end of the year. Those are not even real numbers; they are projections. Even the video shows the helicopter being continually hit and still flying.
How will the surveillance data be collected. If it is not 24/7 then it is useless because there will always be time when someone is not watching when they can do corrupt things. There are also not enough people in the world to watch every official 24/7.
You miss the main point; surveillance requires people and people are corruptible. Also the "no one is watching" is BS. There are a huge number of NGO watchdog groups out there looking for corruption or are they corrupt too?
You have not explained anything. All you have done is set out goals but no plan to achieve them. Setting goals is the easy part.
"Do it" is not a plan. How does one actually hold someone to a higher standard? Tougher laws? More surveillance? What is your plan to actuall "do it"? How do we know the "people that will live up to the standard" now will not change when voted in?
They have to know they can no longer make their deals in secret
How do we ensure that? I don't think telling them something they already know will make a difference. Bribery and conflict of interest are already illegal or grounds for dismissal.
They don't see it as corrupt, but it is.
They are not that stupid. The corrupt officials know they are corrupt but do it anyway.
Still no plan; only goals.
And how do we do that. It is easy to point out a problem but much harder to find a plan that leads to a solution. "All authority must be held to a much higher standard" is a goal not a plan.
We must nominate and elect
We do that now.
if not conscript better people for the job.
Who is the arbiter of who the "better people" are? Are these arbiters corruptible?
if not conscript better people for the job.
The goals are staring us in the face; the plan to reach those goals is much more elusive.
This is circular logic.
1. People in government are corrupt
2.We need to put good people in government.
3.Government had power and power corrupts.
4.The good put in government will be corrupted by the power.
5. Goto 1
How do we break the cycle?
Sorry but watching every government official 24/7 is not a realistic option.
It only happens when we let them; especially in cases of technical terms such as"epidemic".
And the NSA (in the US) built a nice big data center to store all our emails. They can cough up some space for this also.
I don't think you quite understand the scale of what you are asking. How would one follow and video a government official in such a way as not to infringe on the privacy of the people around him? The comparison to storing all emails is bogus on two point. Text is easy to compress video and voice is not. Video and voice recordings are very difficult to search; text is easy.
We have to remind people that the government serves us, not the other way around. We shouldn't let their position be turned into a career, with benefits none of us receive. We must turn it into community service.
Interesting goals; how would you implement this?
fixed link
Can you link the current feed of what the Stockholm police chief is doing right now? Who he is talking to? What unofficial emails he is sending on his personal account? If it goes through a government server or occurs on an official meeting it is probably accessible but that is only a small portion of what goes on. Is every telephone call recorded and transcribed? Do you record and transcribe every time two or more people stop in the hall or washroom and talk? Is every office bugged and transcribed every day? There are plenty of other ways to communicate that can be use by corrupt official and never officially recorded.
From the article
[T]he FBI quotes federal air marshal George Johnson saying that the laser attacks have reached an "epidemic level."
I am not saying it is not a problem; it is a problem. To use a term reserved for a rapidly spreading disease that can kill when all we are talking about is possibly 2700 incidents, most of which had no effect what so ever on the aircraft, is inaccurate. It is almost as if this comic was written just for this occasion. Using the term epidemic dilutes the word when a real epidemic comes along and people ignore it because there are "epidemics" every day. Over hyping just muddies the water.
We, the voters do.. We put 'em on unedited C-span. It's our job. When we fail, we get what we have.
Sounds easy until you realize you would need millions of channels to watch the millions of politicians and public employees.
So, the real solution is... what?
As Winston Churchill said "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."
Who would do the watching? Would they not have power over the people they watch and by the theory of automatic corruption would they not abuse that power? Who would watch the watchers? More watchers? More power? More corruption? It is never ending.
Would you work under those conditions where you every move is recorded and stored. There isn't even enough hard drive space in the world to store a month of information that detailed. By the way, the corrupt parties have little to do with it. Bureaucracy is run by the bureaucrats and not the elected officials or their parties.