The Coming Drone Invasion

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This short documentary gives an overview of the state of drone technology (short version: further along than you might think) and how its use on civilians is about to explode. Commercial use of drones becomes legal in the US in September 2015. “Copdrones” are one of the targeted uses.

If you thought the US was a police state, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

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71 comments

  1. albrt

    I am not going to vote for either Obama or Romney, but I find myself hoping Romney wins.

    Sooner or later a crazy Republican is going to take the wheel of the “disposition matrix” death machine this administration has created. If it happens now, there might be a chance to turn things around. Four years from now will likely be too late.

    1. TK21

      I’m not sure what you mean. Is it worse to be blown up by a crazy Republican than by a Democrat of questionable mental health? Here, read about president Obama’s drone assasination program and tell me we aren’t already at the crazy stage:

      http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2012%2F05%2F29%2Fworld%2Fobamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html%3Fpagewanted%3Dall&ei=T8qMUN6hCYaHygGFjoHgCw&usg=AFQjCNFgLCp67GcCuuk6a3q4Zb-vUWcdWw

    2. rob

      there is nothing THIS administration has created ,that wasn’t already on the drawing table from the administration before it….. and sad to say…there was nothing created by that administration that wasn’t a holdover of the one before that……you gotta give up on the whole republicans are different than democrats crap

    3. Susan the other

      I don’t like the idea of commercial drones because they will clutter up the air and be noisy and create a lot more recycling to take care of without ever solving any serious problems. They just represent more junk and toys. But the whole idea of military drones is a dangerous no brainer because they eliminate dangerous situations for troops. The downside is that drones numb our brains. It makes attacking our enemies so much more palatable. No more anti-war demonstrations. And cheap too, so that Congress will say, Hey if its that inexpensive you don’t have to ask our permission to go to war! In fact, ‘war’ might become an obsolete word.

  2. NedKom

    Fortunately that could never happen under a Dem president! Oh, wait…

    Let us remember and appreciate only major candidate who has been a steadfast opponent of the rising totalitarianism in the US.

  3. R Foreman

    With drone tech so widely available, I hope it doesn’t start to get used by irresponsible parties. Like, flying drones into the engines of a private jet at 40,000 feet would be a bad thing, right?

    1. Garrett Pace

      “flying drones into the engines of a private jet at 40,000 feet would be a bad thing, right?”

      Unless it’s our government doing it, right? If “they hate us for our freedoms”, then this sort of thing must be FREEDOM.

    2. tts

      Only drones that get up to 40,000 ft are the militaries’ right now.

      Private drones that can do that and still be cheap enough for most individuals to buy may never exist.

      A home made drone that could do that would probably be very hard to pull off. There is a world of difference in doing that and building a ultra light from a kit that putts around at a few hundred feet of altitude at less than 100mph.

  4. YankeeFrank

    The cool thing is that drones are so cheap and easy to make that its not only the police that will have access to them. In fact, it will be very easy for OWS types to build disruptive drones that attack and destroy police drones rather easily, leading to an easy stalemate of drone tech; or build video capable drones that show exactly how the police behave during a protest (without all the handheld jitter and confiscation issues currently experienced). The government will then try to take drone tech away from the people using the law as a cudgel, but the cat will be out of the bag with no real way to stuff it back in (the parts of a drone are so general and swappable it is just not feasible to make them illegal), and no easy way to track the source/builder of a particular drone. Its not the clone wars, its gonna be the drone wars. And everything that applies to protesters applies even more to “terrorists” — hezbollah is already experimenting with them in Lebanon, as we read (if I recall correctly) here on NC a few weeks ago.

    In fact drones will actually reduce the asymmetric nature of contemporary warfare, placing more power in the hands of the currently weaker sides. Just think of highly mobile, directed and high speed IED’s. Game over. The US military will become even more impotent as drones become ubiquitous.

    1. tts

      What you’re wrote there is essentially a near future police state “resistance” sci-fi book back cover synopsis and not something that will play out IRL.

      The difference in capabilites between a hacked “drone” (read: modified off shelf cheap Chinese 4 rotor or some such with a web cam and wi-fi) with perhaps a pistol jury rigged to it and a UAV armed with misseles and/or a .50 cal produced by Raytheon or some other major defense contractor will be VAST.

      The difference in resources between OWS or similar organizations and the US government alone guarantees that such fantasy “drone wars” would be lost before they even got started.

      The most successful tried and true way for OWS like protests to enact real change would be via what is known as Direct Action. They pull out the guns/drones/molotovs they’ll just be crushed by the police state and/or military.

    2. BondsOfSteel

      Ah. Someone else who can see the future. Yea, this technology is a pandora’s box.

      Since you can contol the drone at a distance, the police will have a hard time catching illegal drones.

      I bet there are a lot of people out there now that could also make a weaponized drone. How hard would it be to mount a gun on one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcfP-_3lOD0

      1. tts

        A full size pistol?

        Probably pretty hard, at least if you want the thing to be able to fly any significant distance or stay in the air at all for hours at a time. Which are pretty minimal requirements for any drone. You’d probably be forced to fab up a drone almost entirely from scratch. That would be outside the skill range of most people.

        A drone that could fire a full size rifle would probably be a pretty major undertaking. Even a skilled individual with a fair amount of cash would probably have a hard time doing this. A group of skilled people would probably be required to produce just 1.

        A sub compact pistol or perhaps even a .22LR zip gun _might_ be light enough to work without too much issue on one of the cheap 4 rotors you can find these days. The problem then is hitting what you want to shoot at. Neither of those options is known for being particularly accurate at all even if you do get a decent aiming system cobbled together.

        Neither option is noted for being particularly effective at stopping or killing someone even at point blank range either. I suppose it could still be used for a terror attack of sorts but I’d question how effective it’d be even in that role.

        1. psychohistorian

          How could something like this be used to instill more fear? Looks obvious to me.

          Just one of the tools in the basket for the coming “Social Adjustment”.

    3. RepubAnon

      One wonders when the NRA will advocate private drones – for hunting purposes only, of course.

      Drones, observation blimps, all these technologies have their upside and downside. Wouldn’t it be nice to see footage of Travon Martin’s last moments – or some of the other instances where the official police version of events is contradicted by the video evidence? On the other hand, what if the footage is modified, or if all the drones start following around persons whose politics offend the sensitivities of the powers that be?

      I’m less worried about observation drones themselves than making sure that the footage isn’t altered later.

      1. tts

        Currently drones still need special permission from the FAA to fly in the US outside of hobby interests. That is supposed to change in Sep. 2015, but they keep missing pre set targets for air space integration. So it’ll still be at least a few years before you’d even have a shot at owning one as a private citizen for surveillance purposes.

        http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/20120727/NEWS0107/207270382/

        Even then there’ll be lots of restrictions. For instance, right now its looking like the FAA might require drones to have a “detect, sense, and avoidence” capability in order to be legal for private ownership. That would effectively out law nearly all home made drones.

        1. OpenThePodBayDoorHAL

          Nobody has mentioned the obvious: what happens when the “other guys” get drones just like ours? America has set the worst possible international precedent: that remote pre-crime killing of citizens in other countries with missiles is acceptable. So we should be OK when another nation decides to “pre-crime” kill some people they don’t like in Tampa, or Portland, or NYC?
          Bombing another nation no matter the circumstances should be considered an act of war, with all of the appropriate consequences.

          1. tts

            Other countries already have these drones and have for years.

            You won’t see anything like what you described happen to the US as long as it has a nuclear arsenal. A terrorist made long range cruise drone is still the stuff of fiction and will likely remain so for a looong time.

    4. Jonathan

      One of the apparent doctrines of modern US military thinking is that air superiority enables victory. Perhaps the class war is about to get hot at home.

  5. Doctor Brian Oblivion

    This totally justifies austerity measures. 2015 can’t get here soon enough! I’m glad FAA has this all worked out already so I don’t need to worry about winding up in a school gymnasium that’s been converted to a makeshift morgue.

    Frankly the potential for abuse with these smart surveillance platforms has gotta be really close to Zero. Terrorsymps and subversives can run but they cannot hide as we smoke them out of their holes.

    What could possibly go wrong?

    1. RepubAnon

      Yes, austerity and tax cuts for the wealthy. However, we shouldn’t have government run it.

      Say, let’s “outsource” the police drones to a private company, someone like the-company-formerly-known-as-Blackwater. They could deploy weaponized drones over the scene of the next natural disaster to discourage looting, like the folks that were shot on that bridge in New Orleans. (Of course, those weren’t looters, just some non-white people trying to get to higher ground, but the important thing is to shoot people and worry about the collateral damage later.)

      Plus, we could outsource the actual piloting of the drones to a subsidiary in some low-cost country such as Viet Nam. Great cost savings!

      (/snark)

  6. avg John

    That this technology will be put to evil purposes is a given. Let’s hope that there will be more than an equal amount of good that employs this technology. Saves lives or take lives, the choice is ours (at least for the near future).

  7. Maju

    Cops will no doubt have them, armies will and so will spies… but the really interesting and unexplored zone is the non-institutional use, be it by private eyes, by paparazzi, by corporate militias, by terrorists, by investigative journalists (bloggers also), by demonstrators wanting to anticipate police moves…

    The possibilities are almost infinite. You can’t really hold back the kids from getting or making out from scratch one of those small quadro-copters… or a dozen.

    The issues are many but nobody can prevent them from becoming a regular fact of life small cameras (used for both surveillance and denounce) which are already present with or without drones.

    I personally can’t but love those small quadro-copters, because they have everything a breaking technology must have: general availability (relatively cheap, accessible for most sectors of society, not just the overly powerful as happens with tanks and nukes) and a great potential.

    That does not mean I’m not aware of their risks but, seriously, I’m much more concerned about tasers and nuclear energy for example.

  8. D. Mathews

    Following up on what R Foreman posted above, what is to stop a wayward drone from being sucked into the turbofan of a commercial jetliner. I’ll give the domestic drone “craze” a very limited shelf life due precisely to that eventuality!

    1. R Foreman

      They do mass chemical exterminations of bird flocks for precisely this reason. I don’t have any ready evidence, but when you hear reports of 10,000 birds falling dead from the sky in various places, there aren’t really that many explanations that fit. Perhaps jet contrails would do it, I don’t know. I have heard that bird flocks tend to destroy jet engines when they intersect, so the motivation to eliminate the birds is definitely there.

      1. direction

        Al Quaida has has been running a secret program for over a decade to train flocks of ducks to do suicide missions directed at our commercial fleet. They shot themselves in the foot with 9-11 because it became harder for them to ship the trained avians over here to launch the program in American airspace. Plus the test birds were having problems with the displacement and their internal migration compass and a few of them got sick with the bird flu. I forget where I read that.

        1. tts

          Are you trolling or what?

          This is stupider than even the chemtrails or 9/11 Truthers as far as conspiracies go.

          1. tts

            There are lots of people who truly believe such crap though and they write posts that sound just like that.

    2. Lee

      Interceptor drones and anti-aircraft weaponry, for a start. A rocket launch that put a swarm of quadcopters into the flight-path of the target aircraft could minimize the chance of interception where they would maneuver into the engine intakes before being shot down.

      In response we’d see military drone interceptors patrolling the skies around major airports and modified approaches to include both loud and unpleasant spiraling descents and wasteful 100% power ascents.

  9. juneau

    Right now in our little hamlet in beautiful Westchester, the redlight cameras and license plate scanners are fully implemented-the system presumes a level of accuracy and faithful interface between various databases so of course the machines are always right, and if not, good luck proving it.

    These drones, used locally, will be flying LOW. God help you if the drones are fed bad data and you are in their sights. Incompetence can lead to bigger horrors than malice, and again, good luck proving the database was inaccurate, good luck convincing that machine. Those of you who run websites and databases know how easy it is to keep everything up to date, right….?

  10. Max424

    What’s cool about the bigger drones, like the stealthy Avenger, is they have the ability to buzz quietly under and through enemy air defense systems, and once on target, like invisible ghosts, they can then proceed to leisurely inflict maximum property damage –at extreme close proximity– on any hated adversary.

    No, I’m not talking about half-sneaking into places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, and using low yield conventional HE to blow up weddings and funerals

    I’m talking about an UNBELIEVABLY cheap weapons platform, with the capacity to bear and deliver a 2 megaton nuclear warhead, that in sufficient numbers could expand like a swarm of locusts to cover every sector of the Eurasian continent, and do it, almost completely undetected.*

    * General, visual reports of American drones are pouring in from all the provinces… I know they are just silly peasants General… I understand about the radar Sir, but there are simply too many confirmed sitings from too many disparate sources to be discounted… Yes, General, that is precisely what I am implying! Our silos must be alerted! We must take every immediate precautionary measure to insure that this is not an enemy plzzzzz… sound of static … bzzzzzzzzzzz …

    1. R Foreman

      ..and you know counter-measures are being worked on as well.. directed jammers, rf-interception, etc, even directed microwave pulses which knock out electronics, will all become more widely available. It better be a cheap platform, because you’re going to need a lot of them.

      1. tts

        Cobbled together EMP devices will only have a chance, and a slim one at that and only at close range, to work against older drones. The new stuff coming out is all shielded with better communications capabilities.

        They’re cheap because they’re small and unmanned using mass produced parts. The real difficulty with UAV’s was always with the long range control in a war environment, sensors, and software. But those issues are all “solved enough” now to easily produce domestic police drones.

          1. tts

            If they’re designed properly they sure do. You do realize even common place cell phones have some EM shielding right?

            Shielding internal electronics from a EMP while still using radio communications is not some bizzare unheard of impossibility. Most military telecommunications hardware has been designed that way since the 50’s.

      2. Max424

        “…you’re going to need a lot of them.”

        It depends on your definition of “a lot.”

        3,000 would do the trick, I think. 15 hundred acting as decoys and/or performing secondary roles such as jamming and counter-jamming, and 15 hundred carrying the first strike payload.

        Even if only a quarter get through,* you win, assuming you simultaneously eliminate all the enemy’s subs, of course –the US Navy fulfilling, in grand style, it’s longstanding Primary Mission.

        *But they will all get through, won’t they? You are an Avenger drone over enemy territory with a live air-to-ground nuclear tipped missile in your internal weapons bay. You are through, by definition.

    2. random speculator

      No need for nukes. Microdrones will be so cheap that the MIC will be able afford to manufacture and deploy a dedicated killer mosquito to follow every man, woman, and child on the planet.

      Call it “MWD” – mass weapons of destruction.

      No reason they can’t integrate the “disposition matrix” with the drone command-and-control system either.

    1. Ms G

      Astounding. Best comment: “Great.. a robot that simulates a drunk.” kittehjam 3 hours ago.

      Darpa projects seem like great gigs for clever guys who want to keep doing “cool s**t” when they grow up (and get paid handsomely for it). Social utility? Empty set.

      1. R Foreman

        Heh, a drunk that weighs 5000lbs, doesn’t get hurt easily, and has the mental capacity of a 2 year old. Sounds like a danger to society.

  11. Norman

    Let’s see, the 2nd amendment people, the civil rights people, the millions of disenfranchised veterans of the warmongers folly’s, all the guns in America, the corruption of the police/government agencies, what could go wrong?

  12. rob

    I don’t really see an upside.Recently,I was at a party, and was talking to an engineer that works at a manufacturer of drones(mid-size,still expensive),who ,of course was happy about the new directive,for job security purposes…..they are in full swing…..ramping up production for the upcoming wave……It is happening now….

    I don’t see individuals having really any benefit from these new laws. nothing is stopping anyone now from taking a small plane/chopper remotecontrol and sticking a camera on it … to do what? spy on your neighbor?who cares.
    for the general population,there really isn’t anything to be gained from seeing what is on the other side…of whatever….individuals can’t do anything about it anyway.who cares what the cops are doing?you’ll find out when they bust down your door and shoot your dog or when their boot is on your face…..In a police state,there is no information the population is allowed to use.We know now our gov’t is engaging in illegal wars and extrajudicial killings and staealing resources and abusing its power..everyday,everywhere….and what can we do about it?…NOT A DAMN THING!
    THIS IS JUST A ONE SIDED EVENTUALITY.Part of the legacy we are leaving for the next generation.to live under the heel of a world governed at the behest of the major supra-national corporations.
    lets have a party and kiss the fourth amendment goodbye…why don’t they just erase it from the text books for children?george orwell…where are you now?America is really just a place,It doesn’t mean anything anymore.And YES,I’m pissed about that.
    Everyone thinks they will have more time,until they don’t.

    1. ZygmuntFraud

      One thing that really troubles me is the smugness
      of those of a certain rank in one of the two
      main parties. They tend to avoid embarassing
      questions, respond in an evasive way, or
      not respond. If they respond,
      they’re “obviously” informing and teaching
      the questioner (in their view). The idea that they could be
      taking the USA down an unproductive path
      is easily dismissed by these people.
      It looks like groupthink. Or, in inbred culture.

      Also, in today’s Guardian, Glenn Greenwald
      has an article entitled: “US detention of Imran Khan part of trend to harass anti-drone advocates”,
      two-hour detention for Imran Khan in Toronto,
      taken off a plane bound for New York for a
      fundraiser. The idea that the Council on
      Foreign Relations is always right deserves
      examining. CFR new members are selected by
      old members … Where’s the peer-review by
      outsiders?

      Glenn Greenwald:
      http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/28/detention-imran-khan-drones

    2. psychohistorian

      I want to thank rob for his comment but challenge the following statement he made:
      “Part of the legacy we are leaving for the next generation.to live under the heel of a world governed at the behest of the major supra-national corporations.”

      I want to note that those supra-national corporations along with banks like the Fed are owned by the global inherited rich who maintain their control through ongoing private ownership of property and ongoing inheritance. It has been this way for a couple of centuries now but is well disguised as democracy, capitalism, FREEDOM and other propaganda metaphors.

      1. rob

        I can’t argue that what you say isn’t true.I agree.corporations are a tool,like drones….of the “haves”…the term global inherited rich…is also true in my estimation also.and I agree, that for written history, those with POWER,have had every priviledge,denied to everone else….so I am not quibilling about language.
        But,”the corporation”is like a “superman suit” for those globally inherited rich.It can live ,indefinately.It can be free of certain liabilities.It can be outside of every national jurisdiction,in certain ways…it is not a citizen.the corporation is a beast.the super rich are just the dr frankensteins..the super rich have to worry about people seeing them on the street and grabbing them and setting them on fire…the corporation doesn’t….the corporation is the evil wizard, the rich are the men behind the curtain….so you know,new boss..same as the old boss…yada yada yada…life has always happened under occupation. but ,I do agree with you.

  13. casino implosion

    What is everyone so worried about? Obey the laws and follow all rules and regulations to the letter and you have nothink to worry about.

        1. direction

          agreed, I was just enjoying a typo. You can pretty much guarantee that I employ a continual sense of sarcasm myself as well. I think it’s an East Coast thing. I’ve been in California for decades and no one seems to understand me out here.

          1. Christophe

            That likely wasn’t a typo, but a subtle indicator of sarcasm. Try reading his post with a Colonel Klink accent like, “I know nothink!”

  14. direction

    A Seattle friend was just the other day telling me how the SPD is going back and forth on their justifications for the project. Sounds like they are trying to figure out what PR angle to use when selling this to the public.

    http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2019515508_drones25m.html

    http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2012/10/24/want-to-see-how-our-unmanned-aerial-vehicle-works/

    There are plenty of docudramas on television already where you can see all the drone footage used actively during federal drug busts in the suburbs of California.

    I do not share YankeeFrank’s optimism over OWS types DIYing a drone. I’m sure they’ll lock you up for a good long time just for trying to procure the blueprints.

  15. Crazy Horse

    AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA
    Dear Mr. President,
    In a speech during the early years of your presidency you made a joke about the consequences that would befall any young man who tried to take excessive liberties on a date with one of your daughters. “I have one word for you: Predator Drones.” I found your attempt at humor to be in exceedingly poor taste in view of the “collateral damage” that your policy of terrorism by remote control inflicts upon innocent bystanders who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    As you sit around the weekly conference table drawing up assassination lists for the next week, you must know that those lists contain people fingered to eliminate business competition or settle old grudges, as well as people who have the desire and ability to actually pose a danger to the USA. This may seem like a mere technical problem as you bask in the power of life and death that this new form of warfare has placed exclusively in your hands.

    Be careful what you wish for, Mr. President. You see, somewhere in Pakistan right now there may be a young man whose family was killed because a Predator (you) determined that the man walking past them on the sidewalk was a potential enemy. That young Pakistani man may be a brilliant computer programmer – indeed he may be working for Apple or Facebook at this very moment. And he will not forgive or forget the loss of his family. He may not have the resources to build his own Predator and its sophisticated weaponry, but he most certainly has the ability to create a weapons system much more foolproof and dangerous to your health.

    The drones he might decide to build could be fabricated in his garage and paid for by spare change from his paycheck from Facebook. Each one would be no larger than a grasshopper, but weaponized by a few grams of C4 in its nose. Their flight system controls will allow them to be flown in a single coordinated swarm or in a hundred seemingly random individual paths that mimic the flight paths of their insect brothers.

    Some night in the future 100 grasshoppers may choose to spend the night in the grass alongside the runway that Air Force 1 will use the next morning. As your plane rolls down the runway random swarms of grasshoppers will fly across the runway, positioning themselves in formation at the last instant before takeoff at precisely the height of the engine intakes. Your engines will catastrophically fail after the critical point for take-off has been passed, and you will die in the crash.

    Defense against an attack by a single Predator size drone or aircraft is trivial with the resources of the US Government at hand. There is no defense against an unanticipated attack from a swarm of weaponized mini-drones of the type that your government’s agencies are now are now perfecting. Replicating their flight and control systems is a trivial problem for a child of the digital age determined to extract revenge.

    When you open Pandora’s Box you may not find what you had hoped for, Mr. President.

    ps. Note to the Homeland Security operatives monitoring this site: I am in no way advocating the actions described above— indeed I believe that assassination of a president of either party would be disastrously destabilizing at this point in our country’s history. If such an attack should succeed it is because you have failed at your job. And you cannot claim as did president Bush after 911, “who could have imagined planes flying into buildings”. (or mini-drones downing airliners)

    1. psychohistorian

      I am an computer guy with over 40 years in hardware, software and networking and can tell you this is quite possible.

      Crazy Horse is not crazy and he obviously knows the long term implications of right from wrong.

      Do we really have to destroy civilization for the current cabal of global inherited rich and the insane fundamentalist religious types? I never remember a vote to replace reason with faith, do you? I like the ORIGINAL motto of the US and suggest we return to it……..E PLURIBUS UNUM…..Out of Many, One.

  16. Bill Frank

    Drones are the final step to establish total control over the people. We are so close to entering the new dark ages. Individual/collective freedom will be lost and we won’t realize it until it’s too late. There is a growing realization that this is our future and nothing can stop it. Yes, the future is damn scary. Have a nice day!

    1. random speculator

      With each improvement in spying and drone technology, reining in the 1% grows that much less probable.

  17. diplodocus

    ‘can society keep up?’… beyond absurd… this isn’t only the abolition of society… it’s the abolition of the human species… oh well…

    1. as foretold by roddenberry

      The human species will survive. After privatizing society’s and the planet’s wealth and socializing the losses, Khan Noonien Singh and fellow band of propertarian ingrates will board the S.S. Atlas Shrugged — a product of 18 billion years in the making — congratulate themselves and head off to the stars.

  18. Gil Gamesh

    Stunning cognitive dissonance. As our society continues its collapse (which will accelerate when the global financial system craters for good), our National Security State rolls out more techno-fascist tools for population control, civil unrest, and, most important, protection of property. They’d be smarter to invest in truncheons, cross-bows, and moats –tried and true technologies that aren’t dependent on power grids, networked computers, and abundant energy sources.

    I wonder if ordinary unprivileged Americans would be disappointed if they were to hear how much of their taxes is spent by our governments either promoting the interests of or defending the property of the 1% class. Take about malinvestment…arguably the worst in history.

  19. Howard Beale IV

    Ironically, the same technology that makes drones a reality can work against it. It should surprise no one that with the growth of drones a counter-drone industry will also spring up and create new avenues of drone denial attacks of various kinds. The US government could easily re-implement the GPS spoofing they had done before they turned it off in Iraq War I.

    Something else for everyone else to chew on: in the US the right to privacy is implied and not codified in the Constitution by any amendment-only by specific torts and US Codes.

  20. Fiver

    It’s not just the explosive rate of development these technologies of control and murder,it’s the fact that Obama already has the institutional structure ready to make their use permanent, secret and global, clearly including against individual or groups of Americans. Check out this excellent piece by Glenn Greenwald:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-kill-list

    We can now all be considered as being in a large, open, perpetual prison, the walls of which are defined when the attempt to change things politically/economically/environmentally is made in earnest. Anyone or group deemed a “threat” will be “dealt with” – if necessary by a visit from A Sitting President on behalf of whomever owns him/her. That fact makes it evident that any serious effort in the real world aimed at the sort of crucial change we need ought to be made soon, before these systems are literally everywhere.

    I suggest we all ignore the rest of this election (which Obama will win readily, so no excuse from “progressives” or Bots) and start thinking about what it us the public might conceivably do at this point to avert disaster, it making only tactical sense which one wins, not strategic.

    I suggest that the first 6 months to year following the election, irrespective of who is President, is very likely to be the last chance to contain this latest mutant, killer app. What a testament to the insane logic of this permanent war against terrorists of our own making.

    Activists must stop this, and they must stop the attack on Iran. Both are achievable, if only the tens of millions who are solidly anti-war and against being politically “imprisoned” would co-ordinate an effective action.

    I do not think it can wait until 2016. These are absolutely critical issues. And on both, it’s the millions of professionals, highly skilled, educated and informed who actually have the power to force change. One thing that ought to be born in mind is that with a way to know many others were joining you, it would avoid any violence, yet each individual could take an action with real impact – when millions of people at all levels don’t show up, believe me, it makes an impact. Time for the only ones who ever had the power to change anything, i.e., those who are old enough, smart enough, skilled enough and caring enough to play their Ace. Ban these demonic devices and programs and end the criminal war against the entire Muslim world.

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