Anti Federalist
12-12-2011, 10:58 PM
A couple of money paragraphs from an excellent article.
The growing menace of domestic drones
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/12/the_growing_menace_of_domestic_drones/singleton/
By: Glenn Greenwald
Monday, Dec 12, 2011
[T]he fact is that drones vest vast new powers that police helicopters and existing weapons do not vest: and that’s true not just for weaponization but for surveillance. Drones enable a Surveillance State unlike anything we’ve seen. Because small drones are so much cheaper than police helicopters, many more of them can be deployed at once, ensuring far greater surveillance over a much larger area. Their small size and stealth capability means they can hover without any detection, and they can remain in the air for far longer than police helicopters. Their hovering capability also means they can surveil a single spot for much longer than military satellites, which move with the earth’s rotation (see AV’s Report at p. 11 — the section entitled “Stratospheric Persistent UAS” — for all the reasons drones can provide uniquely sustained surveillance in ways that satellites and police helicopters cannot).
As I noted last week, one new type of drone already in use by the U.S. military in Afghanistan — the Gorgon Stare, named after the “mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them” — is “able to scan an area the size of a small town“ and “the most sophisticated robotics use artificial intelligence that [can] seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity”; boasted one U.S. General: “Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at, and we can see everything.” Only ignorance and irrationality can lead someone to assert that surveillance drones do nothing more than what police helicopters already enable.
The growing menace of domestic drones
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/12/the_growing_menace_of_domestic_drones/singleton/
By: Glenn Greenwald
Monday, Dec 12, 2011
[T]he fact is that drones vest vast new powers that police helicopters and existing weapons do not vest: and that’s true not just for weaponization but for surveillance. Drones enable a Surveillance State unlike anything we’ve seen. Because small drones are so much cheaper than police helicopters, many more of them can be deployed at once, ensuring far greater surveillance over a much larger area. Their small size and stealth capability means they can hover without any detection, and they can remain in the air for far longer than police helicopters. Their hovering capability also means they can surveil a single spot for much longer than military satellites, which move with the earth’s rotation (see AV’s Report at p. 11 — the section entitled “Stratospheric Persistent UAS” — for all the reasons drones can provide uniquely sustained surveillance in ways that satellites and police helicopters cannot).
As I noted last week, one new type of drone already in use by the U.S. military in Afghanistan — the Gorgon Stare, named after the “mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them” — is “able to scan an area the size of a small town“ and “the most sophisticated robotics use artificial intelligence that [can] seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity”; boasted one U.S. General: “Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at, and we can see everything.” Only ignorance and irrationality can lead someone to assert that surveillance drones do nothing more than what police helicopters already enable.