Droning On 2
Secret Sheriff surveillance secrecy in San Diego:
They were “as transparent as they can be” except when they weren’t.
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November 23, 2012 at 11:50 am
It’s interesting to note that the smaller drone manufacturers are pitching these little surveillance machines all over the country. The one they were trying to sell in San Diego is such, not the big General Atomics Predator series, of which Homeland Security and Immigration Border Patrol fly a few. They’re too expensive unless bought by the federal government, plus they’re controlled technology.
So the type pitched to San Diego was similar to the one used by the animal rights group hounding the pigeon shooters in Pennsy. Which is amusingly shown as shotgun-dispatched wreckage here. It’s a second time a pigeon shooting group has shot down one of the group’s machines.
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Flying-Camera-From-Animal-Rights-Group-Shot-Down-at-Pigeon-Shoot-Cops-179983451.html
So I think that we’ll see a great enthusiasm for the right wingers in the hinterlands to shoot down these things if they wind up hovering over their land. And the guys who shoot down these things will become little local folk heroes. Which you think would occur to the people employed in small to medium-sized local police and sheriff’s departments around the country. Their fascination or enthusiasm for acquiring these flying toys is overriding their common sense in law enforcement. It isn’t just about finding marijuana crops, which are hardly a plague, and the job of which can be done by helicopter, for example — in California. It’s about the testosterone enthusiasm for militarization. So if the sheriff of San Diego decided not to buy Datron Scouts, it probably saves him a headache down the road.
November 23, 2012 at 1:23 pm
My sympathies are with the hunters in these cases. I got nothing against hunters–I grew up with hunters. It’s the sadism inherent in the pigeon shoots that repels me, but I don’t think that excuses spying on them. And if the gun nuts want to shoot down police drones, well, I can understand that. Catching one loony “sovereign citizen” does not justify spying on thousands of citizens without cause or warrants.
My girlfriend is from Hungary. She can tell you a little about life in a surveillance state, even though her father brought her out when she was eight.
And you are certainly right about cost and equipment. You can pick up a toy quadcopter for under $50.00. If you followed my earlier link to Peter64’s YouTube channel, you can see aerial videos taken by a serious hobbyist’s machines. It’s a short step to watching you sunbathe.
I think there’s more to it that a fascination with militarization; I think there’s a general societa; fascination with gadgets of all kinds and a hope that more eyes will mean easier work. It won’t–all the CCTV in England shows that–but I fear it could mean we get our own airborne Stazi.
Given how open the San Diego sheriff has been about this issue, I would not be surprised–oh, never mind.