Loss of Privacy

When drones were first introduced, Americans were told that they were for military use. As has been seen time and again, what’s good for the military, eventually, becomes good for American law enforcement. In the past few years, drones have seen increased use in the United States, from border patrol to regular street policing. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Texas is no exception.

Beginning next year, the ShadowHawk, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UVA) manufactured by Spring-based Vanguard Defense Industries, will be available for an array of missions. Unlike UVA used by the military, which are used chiefly to gain intelligence, the ShadowHawk will give deputies a “bird’s eye view” of crime scenes, search and rescues and large-scale emergencies, Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel said.

“The sheriff’s office has no air patrol unit,” McDaniel said. “To have an aircraft we can deploy quickly when we need it seems to be an appropriate means of equipment and technology. It’s something that will be able to protect our personnel on the ground and the public.”

McDaniel said there has not been any major opposition since the Sheriff’s Office unveiled the drone in late October.

None of the Montgomery County Commissioners opposed the use of the UVA when the grant application was submitted to the Commissioners Court in December, he said.

Of course the county commissioners are not going to object. They are not the general public that are going to be spied upon. Despite the fact that the police department is trying to reassure the public that they are not going to be spying on citizens, that is exactly what this device is intended to do. Naturally, the police department is stressing that the drone’s missions will be specific, such as finding lost senior citizens and helping firefighters. Mission creep, however, is inevitable and it won’t be long before justifications will be made to expand the use of drones regardless of threats to privacy.

Because they can perch hundreds or thousands of meters in the air, drones literally add a new dimension to the ability to eavesdrop. They can see into backyards and into windows that look out onto enclosed spaces not visible from the street. They can monitor wi-fi signals or masquerade as mobile phone base stations, intercepting phone calls before passing them along. Using a network of drones, it would be possible to follow the movements of every vehicle in a city—a capability that would be invaluable to a police department tracking the getaway car in a bank robbery but invasive if used to track a patient driving to a clinic to get treatment for a confidential medical condition.

Given the fact that these drones have the capability of invading individual’s privacy, is this something Americans should be comfortable in accepting without question?

Denys Lopez Moreno says her son got into a fight, punched a kid once, then fled, which led to a police officer killing her son over the incident.

Denys Lopez Moreno sued the Northside Independent School District, of San Antonio, the district’s Chief of Police John Page and the alleged shooter, Daniel Alvarado, in Federal Court.

Lopez says her son, Derek, got into a fight with another boy at a school bus stop and punched the other boy once, in November 2010.

“Defendant, Alvarado, having responded to a call regarding a bus with a flat tire, witnessed Derek strike the other boy. He ordered Derek to ‘freeze.’ Derek hesitated and then ran from defendant Alvarado,” according to the complaint.

“In his patrol car, Alvarado began chasing Derek in the neighborhood across the street from the high school. Alvarado lost sight of the boy in the neighborhood and returned to the location of the school boy fight. At that time, he called dispatch. Dispatch recordings reflect that his supervisor directed Alvarado to stay with the other boy and to ‘not do any big search over there.’

“Ignoring his supervisor’s orders to ‘stay with the victim and get the information from him,’ Alvarado placed the second boy into the patrol car and sped into the neighborhood to search for Derek.”

Lopez says her son jumped over a fence and hid in a shed in the back yard of a house.

The police were alerted to where Lopez was, at which point, Alvarado went to the area and shot the boy who was unarmed and still hiding.

“In approximately a four (4) year period leading up to the shooting, defendant Alvarado had been reprimanded sixteen (16) times,” the complaint states. “Specifically, he had been reprimanded for insubordination and failure to follow supervisors’ directives seven (7) times. Due to his poor service record, Alvarado was suspended without pay on five (5) occasions. On May 21, 2008, Alvarado was recommended for termination by Page. Despite being recommended for termination for insubordination and for refusal to follow supervisor directives, Alvarado remained on the force without remedial training.”

Rather than fire Alvarado, the district transferred him to patrol, “an area of duty with less supervision,” according to the complaint.

If these allegations are true, then the police department is in some serious trouble for allowing a person such as Alvarado to remain in his position for so long.

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 is coming up and the Dallas police and FBI have been stepping up police presence in areas they believe are targets.

This year on September 11, the FBI, Dallas police and state agencies will closely monitor potential targets. “Anything from NFL football games to a political rally will have maximum coverage,” Revell said.

The city will be on high alert. Everything from the water supply to mosques and synagogues will merit extra patrols.

Really? You’re worried about crazy Muslims and Jews, but not crazy Christians?

The fear isn’t a big terrorist organization like al-Qaida striking here, but rather the “lone wolf” who might try something.

Yeah, this is typically the crazy Christian factor, but, since we’re in America, we’re ignoring white folks as only brown folks are going to cause trouble on such a day.

The article also mentions Hosam Smadi, who tried to blow up Fountain Place, in downtown Dallas. The hilarious part to this, of course, is that the FBI set Smadi up by providing him with the homemade bomb and then arrested him after giving the bomb to him and he tried to use it. The FBI, essentially, foiled the plot they created and then patted themselves on the back for it.

When unmanned drones were first introduced, many people thought it was perfectly okay to have such drones, but overseas and for military use. Many others, such as myself, claimed that, while they were being used overseas at the moment, they would eventually land on our shores and be used against American citizens in the name of security. That day has now arrived.

View more videos at: http://nbcdfw.com.

The drones look like nothing more than model helicopters. But at 11 pounds and 20 inches long, the unmanned aircraft would be a powerful asset to the city, Bowman said.

In a City Council briefing Tuesday, Bowman said the aircraft are capable of carrying cameras that shoot high-quality still pictures and video and have night-vision capability. The aircraft also have heat-sensing technology the fire department can use.

At the moment, the drones are said to be used for emergency situations such as fires and accidents, but it is sure to be expanded once those capabilities have proven to be effective.

Police say they would operate the aircraft using standard operating procedure for any law-enforcement mission. The unmanned aircraft would not do anything more than a regular helicopter would, they say.

The drones would be able to do more than a regular helicopter simply due to its size. It can go places that a regular helicopter cannot and, therefore, will be invading people’s privacy on a regular basis.

“We are just looking at a vehicle that is a fraction of the cost, that is smaller, that will allow us — in an urban area, where we can’t use the bigger helicopter — to assist with better, more efficient police operations,” Hill said.

And thus the police admit that their aim is to use a helicopter in a small place where regular-sized helicopters cannot go.

“You’ve got to have a reason to go to third base.”

- Texas Rep. David Simpson, author of an anti-groping bill that would make TSA patdowns a misdemeanor. This was his response after Texas Public Utility Commission chairman Barry Smitherman was “punished” with a TSA patdown that left his private parts “sore,” after opting out of a whole-body-imaging scan in New Orleans. The anti-TSA-groping bill failed to pass in the Texas Senate after the feds threatened to cancel all flights out of Texas, but it may sputter back to life in the state’s current special session.

via Forbes.