Posted on 12/10/2011 7:34:07 PM PST by Jet Jaguar
Unmanned aircraft from an Air Force base in North Dakota help local police with surveillance, raising questions that trouble privacy advocates.
Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.
Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.
He also called in a Predator B drone.
As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.
But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.
"We don't use [drones] on every call out," said Bill Macki, head of the police SWAT team in Grand Forks. "If we have something in town like an apartment complex, we don't call them."
The drones belong to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which operates eight Predators on the country's northern and southwestern borders to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers. The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Since nobody would take you to court on that evidence alone, you would need a lawyer anyway. The legal precedence on FLIR are pretty well set. The bigger legal concern these days is the use of trackers and the lowering of the bar for federal warrants.
If they dont have them already, there are new drones designed for hover and stare surveillance that work like miniature helicopters that are cheap enough even mid-sized police departments will be able to afford them.
Now prostitutes and hot-looking exhibitionists can loan themselves out to criminals as "decoys". During good sunbathing weather, they do their thing while the crims can do whatever they were doing while the TSA-like perverts manning the drones are distracted.
I have not seen it in the air. I wonder how much air time it gets and where it is based at.
Domestic drone use ping.
Domestic drone use ping.
Domestic drone use ping.
I don't think that angle will fly. (heh heh)
That drone flew out of a US Air Force base, and I'll bet you a steak dinner there was Military pilot at the stick.
There's also a law called Sarbanes-Oxley that says you can't misplace $1.2 billion of your client's money.
Nobody pays attention to that one either.
So far, they've been respectful of citizen's rights - criminals gave up any claim thereto. Also they are acting as private citizens, not affiliated with a government entity. I can suspend belief for that hour. :^)
Just because you may have an expectation of privacy does not mean that it will not be violated.
What was once expected to be reasonable in the past is no longer reasonable in the age of the so-called patriot-act.
I never mentioned anything about using “film” in court.
Under the patriot act you would be lucky to even make it to court.
Guess Montgomery co. is chalked full of Middle Eastern muzzie terrorist.
There everywhere I tell ya...everywhere.
Carrying a rifle on 3000 acres is brandishing?
Well, if that is the case, we should take away their vehicles, their weapons, their radar, their binoculars, their night vision glasses, their fingerprint database, their DNA database and all the other equipment and tech they use they use because, gee, it’s unconstitutional. Oh, and take the brands and tags off the ears of those cattle because they threaten the Constitution. Really, I don’t see this as any more threatening to liberty than a police helicopter. CBP has had a marine and aviation unit for years, the drones have been flying the border for years, and there’s never been any problem. Why all of a sudden is this a nefarious plot against the Constitution? John Wayne was not a nutcake.
Many of those who weren't here for the impeachment wars don't understand that the rule of law ended in 1999.
Now, we have laws for the peasants, and winks for the elite & connected. It's why Obama the Tool can say that "they [the Banksters] did nothing illegal, only found loopholes that we worked to close."
In a militarized police state where EVERYTHING is against the law, you want the police to have MORE military gew-gaws? Why not Abrams tanks?
This is a major problem with the Right - many of us think that if it has the "law enforcement" stamp, we're good to go! Ya-hoo!
I beg to differ. I'm not duped by the Holy Trinity of the Left - teachers, police & firefighters.
They have helicopters that can fly at an altitude of 2 miles, and can tell if you're armed from that distance? Hmmmmmmmmm.
How long have you worked on being so condescending? Or did it come naturally. I have been here since the year 2000. I do not consider cattle rustling to be part of “everything is against the law.” In fact, cattle rustling has been against the law since the founding of the Republic. The Rule of Law includes a concern for the security of one’s private property, in this case cattle. There are a lot of things in our country we need to worry about, CBP drones aren’t really very high up on the list.
I'm sure many thought this same thing about the Warsaw Ghetto....
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