The Drones Are Here

[meazza]

 

You really don't see the issue?

 

I think he would be much more concerned if TPS was flying the helicopter.

[DC Tom]

You really don't see the issue?

 

Of course we do. If the government can own and operate completely autonomous assassination drones, then I should be allowed to as well. It's a Second Amendment issue.

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

I just had an attack helicopter fly right over my house. My privacy was invaded.

It wasn't an attack chopper, it was "search and rescue" because you disappeared from the "Democrat's Convention" thread.

Edited March 9, 2013 by ICanSleepWhenI'mDead

[B-Man]

From the New York Times:

 

 

The Drone Question Obama Hasn’t Answered

 

THE Senate confirmed John O. Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency on Thursday after a nearly 13-hour filibuster by the libertarian senator Rand Paul, who before the vote received a somewhat odd letter from the attorney general.

 

“It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: ‘Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?’ ” the attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., wrote to Mr. Paul. “The answer to that question is no.”

 

The senator, whose filibuster had become a social-media sensation, elating Tea Party members, human-rights groups and pacifists alike, said he was “quite happy with the answer.” But Mr. Holder’s letter raises more questions than it answers — and, indeed, more important and more serious questions than the senator posed.

 

What, exactly, does the Obama administration mean by “engaged in combat”? The extraordinary secrecy of this White House makes the answer difficult to know. We have some clues, and they are troubling.

 

If you put together the pieces of publicly available information, it seems that the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, has acted with an overly broad definition of what it means to be engaged in combat. Back in 2004, the Pentagon released a list of the types of people it was holding at Guantánamo Bay as “enemy combatants” — a list that included people who were “involved in terrorist financing.”

One could argue that that definition applied solely to prolonged detention, not to targeting for a drone strike. But who’s to say if the administration believes in such a distinction?

 

{snip}

 

In a 2010 Fox News interview, under pressure to explain whether the Obama administration was any closer to capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, Mr. Kerry’s predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton, said that “we have gotten closer because we have been able to kill a number of their trainers, their operational people, their financiers.” That revelation — killing financiers — appears not to have been noticed very widely.

 

As I have written, sweeping financiers into the group of people who can be killed in armed conflict stretches the laws of war beyond recognition. But this is not the only stretch the Obama administration seems to have made. The administration still hasn’t disavowed its stance, disclosed last May in a New York Times article, that military-age males killed in a strike zone are counted as combatants absent explicit posthumous evidence proving otherwise.

 

Mr. Holder’s one-word answer — “no” — is not a step toward the greater transparency that President Obama pledged when he came into office, but has not delivered, in the realm of national security.

 

By declining to specify what it means to be “engaged in combat,” the letter does not foreclose the possible scenario — however hypothetical — of a military drone strike, against a United States citizen, on American soil. It also raises anew questions about the standards the administration has used in deciding to use drone strikes to kill Americans suspected of terrorist involvement overseas — notably Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

 

Is there any reason to believe that military drones will soon be hovering over Manhattan, aiming to kill Americans believed to be involved in terrorist financing? No.

 

But is it well past time for the United States government to specify, precisely, its views on whom it thinks it can kill in the struggle against Al Qaeda and other terrorist forces? The answer is yes.

 

The Obama administration’s continued refusal to do so should alarm any American concerned about the constitutional right of our citizens — no matter what evil they may or may not be engaged in — to due process under the law. For those Americans, Mr. Holder’s seemingly simple but maddeningly vague letter offers no reassurance.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/opinion/the-drone-question-obama-hasnt-answered.html?pagewanted=all

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

It's a continuation of the all out assault on our right to privacy. It's bad enough police cruisers are being equipped with heat sensors that allow them to "see through walls" on their patrols, now we have drones with that same capability, constantly in the air monitoring everyone, everywhere, without any sort of legal construction to assure due process.

 

And people's reaction is, "meh". ESPECIALLY the younger generations which is the most terrifying part.

 

The beginning of the end.

I share your concerns. Maybe my views are outside the mainstream, but I am often astounded at how little most people value privacy. I don't know if they're ignorant of the extent to which their privacy is disappearing, or if they know and just don't care.

 

As just one example, you could not pay me to join Facebook:

 

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-03/12/facebook-personality-predictions

[We Come In Peace]

I share your concerns. Maybe my views are outside the mainstream, but I am often astounded at how little most people value privacy. I don't know if they're ignorant of the extent to which their privacy is disappearing, or if they know and just don't care.

 

As just one example, you could not pay me to join Facebook:

 

http://www.wired.co....ity-predictions

Absolutely.

 

The most terrifying part to me is the younger generation, the ones who are the most tech savvy, are the ones who are so gleefully surrendering their privacy on a daily basis. So much so that they see it as a necessary means to an end. Hell, everyone in the country now carries with them a fully functioning GPS tracker/microphone surveillance device that the government (or any technically competent ne'er-do-wells) can hack and access at any moment. A whole generation is growing up not knowing anything BUT our current electronic nanny-state and thinking that it's fine so long as their wi-fi is fast and tweets are live streamed.

 

Think about that 25 years now.

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

Think about that 25 years now.

OK, but why do I have to wait?

[We Come In Peace]

OK, but why do I have to wait?

Never post and drive. I mean drive and post.

[Keukasmallies]

Considering the several definitions of the word drone, I've decided that POTUS is a true drone.

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

Countermeasures:

 

http://www.wired.com/design/2013/01/anti-drone-camouflage-apparel/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=MoreRecently

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

More effective countermeasures:

 

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/03/marine-laser-drones/

 

. . . the Office of Naval Research thinks that Marine air-ground task forces are too vulnerable to adversaries flying cheap, small spy drones overhead, like the four-pound Raven the Marines themselves used in Iraq. Its answer: outfit Marine ground vehicles with laser guns.

[We Come In Peace]

More effective countermeasures:

 

http://www.wired.com...e-laser-drones/

 

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

Would you believe sushi and pizza delivery drones?

 

http://o.canada.com/2013/06/11/sushi-drone/

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

The drones are here:

 

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/congress-surprised-drone-u-soil-shouldn-t-194751908.html

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

Now we can launch them from submerged submarines:

 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/06/us/submarine-drone-launch/

[Tiberius]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/06/tech/innovation/underwater-drones/index.html

 

Affordable underwater drones! We can search for lost treasure at the bottom of Lake Erie

[ICanSleepWhenI'mDead]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H4wBtiMMnQ

[B-Man]

MLB team called out for using drones at spring training

CBS News

 

 

WASHINGTON -- A small, four-rotor drone hovered over Washington Nationals baseball players for a few days during spring training in Florida last month, taking publicity photos impossible for a human photographer to capture. But no one got the Federal Aviation Administration's permission first.

 

 

"No, we didn't get it cleared, but we don't get our pop flies cleared either and those go higher than this thing did," a team official said when contacted by The Associated Press. The drone flights ceased the next day. The official wasn't authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be named.

[IDBillzFan]

MLB team called out for using drones at spring training

 

Some call them drones.

 

Some call them them sporting clays.

[Tiberius]

So if Rand Paul becomes President will he have the stones to kill terrorists with drones or will he wuss out and let these dangerous criminals plan to perpetrate mass killings of Americans? I don't trust him. Too much of a poo-say if you ask me