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Police Buy Military Drones To Fly Over U.S. Cities

 

U.S. Police Departments have all been militarized!

 

The above video features two news reports focusing on Drones flying in American skies. The first is about American law enforcement agencies purchasing military drones for their own use here in the United States.

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Air Force's New Drone 'Can See Everything'

Jan 2, 2011

Newser

 

It's called Gorgon Stare, after the beast of Greek myth, but this Gorgon is a new Air Force surveillance system set to be deployed on drones in Afghanistan. With nine cameras that can send up to 65 different images to different users at once, Gorgon Stare takes cues from ESPN football and reality TV, and can tag images in a particular area for more than a month, instantly beaming information to soldiers in the field. "We can see everything," a senior Air Force official tells the Washington Post.

But questions remain about how effective even this $17.5 million surveillance technology can be. Can the military process such a huge quantity of data? And can it get enough intelligence on the ground, from human sources? Despite reservations, the Air Force is greatly expanding its use of drones in Afghanistan, quadrupling over the past two years, and demand for more continues to grow. "What these technologies will allow us to do is remove more and more ground forces and replace them with sensors where we normally would have to rely on people going somewhere to find something out," says an official.
 

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Miami-Dade police buy military drones

By Tim Elfrink

Miami New Times

 

In places such as Kabul, Gaza, and Baghdad, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) hovering over homes, following suspects, and tracking enemies of the state are a daily reality.

So where are the high-tech drones buzzing to next? Miami-Dade County, natch!

The Miami-Dade Police Department is poised to become the first large metro force using drones in its aerial missions. The department finalized a deal to buy a drone called T-Hawk from defense firm Honeywell and officially applied for permission from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last month to begin flying it around the county.

What's not clear is how cops will sort out the raft of thorny privacy questions hovering around plans for using this powerful, new eye in the sky.

"At this point, it doesn't really matter if you're against this technology, because it's coming," says P. W. Singer, author of Wired for War and an expert on drones. "The precedent that is set in Miami could be huge."

Drones, or UAVs, have exploded in popularity over the past five years. As Singer writes in his book, the military barely used the technology during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Now the Army and Air Force have more than 7,000 drones overseas, and 44 other countries use the devices.

But Miami-Dade is blazing new territory for civilian law enforcement agencies. Cops in Houston have tested UAVs, and a sheriff's office in Colorado has a drone to look for stranded hikers. But no one has deployed a drone in a large metro area.

"Miami-Dade is really at the front of this trend," says Lindsay Voss, a researcher with the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), a trade group.

MDPD is keeping the details of its deal with Honeywell quiet. The department didn't respond to Riptide's Freedom of Information Act request about the contract, but sources confirm the drone purchased is Honeywell's T-Hawk.

The 20-pound drone, which resembles a hovering Roomba vacuum with cameras mounted on the sides, can fly for 40 minutes at a time, reach 10,500 feet, and cruise at up to 46 mph, according to one analysis.

The FAA has never approved a drone for regular flight in an urban area, and it's not clear how long it will take the department to get full clearance.

When that happens, MDPD will likely deploy the aircraft with its Special Response Teams. Packing powerful cameras, the drone could track suspects, sweep past houses, and peep through windows. Boosters say the gadget will keep the 305 safer.

"We've seen over in Iraq and Afghanistan, where troops have needed eye in sky, it's been enormously beneficial," Voss says. "Those same qualities can help cities too."

But drones have also stirred up strident criticism from human rights groups, which say the overseas robots bomb indiscriminately and violate basic rights. Amnesty International recently condemned Israel's smothering use of drones for surveillance in Gaza.

That might seem far-fetched in Miami-Dade — but politicians, police, and lawyers will soon have a whole new realm of privacy issues to fight about.

"All the legal and political and ethical... complications and questions we have to figure out are enormous," Singer says. "What seemed like science fiction just a few years ago is becoming reality."

 

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Miami-Dade Police to get Unmanned Flying Cameras to Keep You Safe

By Carlos Miller

Pixiq

 

Look up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane.

No, it’s Miami-Dade police spying on you.

The Miami-Dade Police Department is about to become the first large metropolitan police department in the country to buy a drone, an unmanned plane equipped with cameras that until now, has only been used by military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Police say the drone is necessary to keep us safe, but ACLU officials say it will allow police to invade our privacy by peeping through our bedroom windows and into our backyards – where we have an expectation of privacy.

But technology experts say we better get used to this idea because this is only a sign of things to come. Soon all large-scale police departments will be flying drones.

But before that can happen, the Federal Aviation Adminisration must first approve the airways.

According to the Miami New Times:

At this point, it doesn't really matter if you're against this technology, because it's coming," says P. W. Singer, author of Wired for War and an expert on drones. "The precedent that is set in Miami could be huge."

The irony, of course, is that police have been doing all they can to prevent us from recording them even when they have no expectation of privacy.

So next time you choke the chicken inside the privacy of your own home or make love to your wife, your photo can wind up in a police file labeled for domestic terrorists probably along the side your crotch-shot from that time you walked through a TSA checkpoint during the holidays.

The MDPD will purchase the 20-pound T-Hawk from Honeywell for an unspecified amount of tax dollars that are supposedly coming from some federal grant.

Probably the same grant that allowed the MDPD to create its Homeland Security Bureau that responded to Stretch Ledford and I taking photographs at the Miami-Dade Metrorail.

A Detective Bustamante told us we would be arrested if we continued taking photos, even though he had shown him official documentation that we were allowed to take photos on the trains.

We were then “permanently banned” by the Metrorail sesecurity company while the MPPD Homeland Security jackasses looked on approvingly.

Our tax dollars at work sure as hell are not going towards the brains of the Homeland Security operation.

The Federal Aviation Administration still needs to approve the drone so it can fly at 10,500 feet at a cruise of 46 mph at 49 minutes at a time.

Knowing Miami, it probably won’t be long until somebody shoots it down.

Meanwhile, citizens can purchase their own smaller-scale drone for only $300 that can be operated with an iPhone.

The Boston Herald reviewed that drone here. And you can check out the company's website here.Maybe they'll send me one of those drones to review on this site.

I'd like to see what will happen if I fly the drone outside the window of the Miami-Dade Police Department.

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