You say Police State, I say potato. Either way let's discuss surveillance and government overreach.

OG_slinger wrote:
KrazyTacoFO wrote:

Bill will allow 30,000 drones in American skies

A bill passed last week allocating more than $63 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration would increase the existence of drones in civilian airspace across America and is expected to be signed into law by President Barack Obama.

Not quite. The bill requires the FAA to figure out how to integrate UAVs into the existing airspace as well as establish standards for pilot training and how and when they can be used.

Also, the bill won't "allow 30,000 drones in American skies." That figure is how many drones the FAA expects to be in the skies by 2020 because of all the demand for their use (yes, there's a tremendous amount of innocent commercial, non-police state demand for drones). I'd much rather have the FAA figure out how drones need to safely fit in our airspace than wait around with their thumbs up their ass until some idiot crashes one into a passenger jet on accident because there weren't any established rules for their use.

So you have absolutely zero privacy concerns with the government and private organizations using aerial drones? You have full faith that the government and private industry will not use these drones for unscrupulous purposes?

93_confirmed wrote:

So you have absolutely zero privacy concerns with the government and private organizations using aerial drones? You have full faith that the government and private industry will not use these drones for unscrupulous purposes?

Do I have absolutely zero privacy concerns? Pretty much. I mean how, exactly, is the government or a private organization going to invade my privacy with drones? Watch me take a shower in my house using thermal vision? Stare at me cutting my grass from 20,000 feet?

Do I have full faith that government or private industries won't use the drones for unscrupulous purposes? Of course not. But that has nothing to do with the drones, which are only a hunk of technology, and everything to do with the organizations themselves.

I mean there's not really any difference between what the government could do with UAVs and what it can do now with helicopters and other aircraft. UAVs are just new technology that can do similar jobs. The biggest difference is that they are much cheaper to own and operate.

Instead of blindly fearing the new technology, why not make sure that existing privacy laws are updated to reflect the new technology or new rules put in place to make sure they aren't abused by organizations?

93_confirmed wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Also, the bill won't "allow 30,000 drones in American skies." That figure is how many drones the FAA expects to be in the skies by 2020 because of all the demand for their use (yes, there's a tremendous amount of innocent commercial, non-police state demand for drones). I'd much rather have the FAA figure out how drones need to safely fit in our airspace than wait around with their thumbs up their ass until some idiot crashes one into a passenger jet on accident because there weren't any established rules for their use.

So you have absolutely zero privacy concerns with the government and private organizations using aerial drones? You have full faith that the government and private industry will not use these drones for unscrupulous purposes?

I can't speak for OG, but while I do have concerns that government and private organizations will misuse UAVs, I also feel that the legitimate uses of them far outweigh the damage they can do with illegitimate uses. Search & rescue in particular would greatly benefit from being able to use UAVs. Border patrol is another place where they can (and do) help. It might be because I'm fairly familiar with them (my brother operated a surveillance UAV for the Army in Iraq, and taught others how to use them when he got back). I will say that I'm absolutely not comfortable with armed UAVs being used in our skies (outside of as a replacement for a normal fighter jet), but as OG pointed out, all this bill does is require the FAA to more fully integrate them into our current airspace and make it easier for non-hobbyists to get permission to use them.
I would very much welcome restrictions on how & when UAVs could be used. I'm okay with them being used by police to search for missing persons, border patrol, or monitor large crowds/events, but I'm not okay with them being up in the air 24/7 just cruising around gathering data for no particular reason.

Funny. I had this conversation 10 years ago with a buddy of mine when the DC area was paralyzed in fear over the DC area sniper attacks. He posited that the only thing you'd need to completely paralyze the DC area was to fly an entirely harmless model plane in a random pattern over the section of the beltway connecting 495 and 270 (known around these parts as "the spur"). To do it right, you'd need to hard wire the pattern in as a state machine so it couldn't be brought down by radio jamming. It would take tens of hours for law enforcement to determine if it belonged to anyone important (e.g.: NSA, DMA, etc.), it would take even longer to figure out if it was a threat of any kind, and it could take a week to figure out an adequate response. If it flew higher than shotgun range, you couldn't shoot it down because the population density would make the near certainty of collateral damage unacceptable. Aside from shutting down the beltway and 270 until it ran out of gas, I don't know what you'd be able to do.

When I think of an entirely unregulated UAV marketplace as the technology becomes more and more accessible for commercial applications (e.g.: traffic reporting), I see an accidental incident similar to the scenario I painted above being almost unavoidable.

I mean how, exactly, is the government or a private organization going to invade my privacy with drones?

If they get interested in you, that will let them follow you without a warrant. As technology continues to improve and processors and memory get smaller and cheaper, they will eventually be able to watch more and more people. Eventually, they'll be able to monitor you all the time, 24x7x365, anytime you're visible from the sky.... just in case.

And, of course, we should embrace this wholeheartedly, because law enforcement should instantly use any new technology that becomes available. As soon as those look-through-wall radars get cheap enough, they'll put them on every wall of every house, so the police can make sure you're not up to anything you shouldn't be.

Of course, NORMAL people won't be able to turn the radar on, only the cops, so it'll all be okay.

In all seriousness, though -- they really could use these things to track you without a warrant, looking for 'suspicious behavior'. Initially that would be 'looking like you're buying drugs', but definitions of illegal behavior always expand, and processor power always gets cheaper.

And think of how easy it would be to track movements like Occupy -- you could know every person in a group within days, and be able to track their every movement.

Significant domestic dissent will not be tolerated.

Do you really want to have to focus on not looking suspicious in your daily life? I sure as f*ck don't want to live that way. I deeply resent and fear the idea that I'll have to self-monitor my own behavior just so that it doesn't accidentally look like I'm a criminal.

Except that there is considerable legal precedence that establishes the expectation of privacy in your home or place of business (as an owner), so the idea that law enforcement will simply be able to use "look through walls" technology without a warrant is a pretty serious overstatement. There is no such expectation of privacy in a public space. As such, surveillance drones don't much alter current rights.

Malor wrote:

And think of how easy it would be to track movements like Occupy -- you could know every person in a group within days, and be able to track their every movement.

If they're occupying public property, why shouldn't the police be able to surveil them? If Occupy can use surveillance drones to monitor cops (like the Occucopter), I can't see any reason why the police can't use surveillance drones to monitor Occupy.

Instead of outright banning them from using new and extremely useful technology, why not focus on setting limits on when they can use them, and what they can use them for. The privacy issues existed before UAVs (police using aerial surveillance without a warrant), all UAVs do is make it easier to do.

Malor wrote:

Do you really want to have to focus on not looking suspicious in your daily life? I sure as f*ck don't want to live that way. I deeply resent and fear the idea that I'll have to self-monitor my own behavior just so that it doesn't accidentally look like I'm a criminal.

I hate to break it to you, but this is what I do every waking moment of every single day.

Don't we all self-monitor? If we didn't, we'd be sociopaths.

I'm far more worried about a UAV crashing into my house than I am about being watched by one. If I were paranoid enough to worry about looking suspicious in my daily outdoor activities, I'd never go outside. There are people around with perfectly functional eyeballs who could be tracking my every move. Heck, they might even have binoculars!

LouZiffer wrote:

I'm far more worried about a UAV crashing into my house than I am about being watched by one. If I were paranoid enough to worry about looking suspicious in my daily outdoor activities, I'd never go outside. There are people around with perfectly functional eyeballs who could be tracking my every move. Heck, they might even have binoculars!

Police shouldn't have binoculars.

Malor wrote:

If they get interested in you, that will let them follow you without a warrant. As technology continues to improve and processors and memory get smaller and cheaper, they will eventually be able to watch more and more people. Eventually, they'll be able to monitor you all the time, 24x7x365, anytime you're visible from the sky.... just in case.

Perhaps. But likely only to the point where a case works it way through the Supreme Court and it gets smacked down as unconstitutional, just like what happened with the FBI and law enforcement attaching a GPS unit to your car without a warrant. As with most things technological their use always outpaces the law.

It's still going to take gobs of manpower and resources to track someone all the time, even if that's even ever possible. Every drone will have to have a pilot and there will need to be even more people analyzing the video footage to make sure they're watching the right person.

Either way, I'm not going to claim the sky is falling quite yet.

LouZiffer wrote:

I'm far more worried about a UAV crashing into my house than I am about being watched by one. If I were paranoid enough to worry about looking suspicious in my daily outdoor activities, I'd never go outside. There are people around with perfectly functional eyeballs who could be tracking my every move. Heck, they might even have binoculars!

That's a good point, the kind my brother used in Iraq didn't have any way for it to restart once it stalled (which happened more frequently than you'd imagine), so they'd just wait for them to crash and go recover them if possible.

Malor wrote:

If they get interested in you, that will let them follow you without a warrant.

Honest question: do the police need a warrant just to follow someone? I can absolutely understand the need for warrants for things like wiretapping, but if you're out in public then anyone, cop or civilian, could decide to follow you, videotape you, etc. without your knowledge or permission. As long as they're not following you onto private property I'm not sure what the problem is.

Yeah, it's like all the OWS protestors who were whisked away to secrete government prisons! You know, those thousands of vocal dissidents who disappeared! You heard about they right? They're probably being water boarded right now. Funny that we don't hear more about that?

Oh that's right...it NEVER f*ckING HAPPENED!!!

Bear wrote:

Yeah, it's like all the OWS protestors who were whisked away to secrete government prisons! You know, those thousands of vocal dissidents who disappeared! You heard about they right? They're probably being water boarded right now. Funny that we don't hear more about that?

Oh that's right...it NEVER f*ckING HAPPENED!!!

This is the thread where I begged people who don't think the US is a police state not to come in and slam and berate those of us who have a different opinion. We've already had one thread go this direction. Do I need to create a third thread?

Bear wrote:

Yeah, it's like all the OWS protestors who were whisked away to secrete government prisons? You know, those thousands of vocal dissidents who disappeared! They're probably being water boarded right now. Funny that we don't hear more about that?

Oh that's right...it NEVER f*ckING HAPPENED!!!

You can be concerned about privacy issues without thinking that the government is disappearing OWS protestors. I don't think we're a police state, either, but the concerns about using UAVs aren't as ludicrous as you make them out to be.

Edit - I would say we're in a surveillance state, but a lot of that is voluntary and done by corporations, not the government (facebook, google, twitter, foursqaure, etc.).

muttonchop wrote:
Malor wrote:

If they get interested in you, that will let them follow you without a warrant.

Honest question: do the police need a warrant just to follow someone? I can absolutely understand the need for warrants for things like wiretapping, but if you're out in public then anyone, cop or civilian, could decide to follow you, videotape you, etc. without your knowledge or permission. As long as they're not following you onto private property I'm not sure what the problem is.

Pretty much. The police have the authority to follow you, but need a warrant to gather information that would invade your reasonable expectation of privacy. They can not, for instance, read your mail without a warrant, but they can sift through your garbage the moment it hits the curb. They can't tap your phone, but they can use a directional mic to listen to you talk on a cell phone in a parking lot. They can't, as it turns out, track your car via a GPS tracker without a warrant, but they can use cameras to take pictures of license plates and run a statistical analysis against crime scene proximities to narrow down the list of suspects (how I theorize they actually caught John Allan Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malvo).

There are occasional violations and the exact line is a push-pull relationship between privacy/security/convenience/accessibility interests, but by in large, we get it a whole lot more right than we get it wrong. We're still the world's gold standard for personal freedom.

DSGamer wrote:
Bear wrote:

Yeah, it's like all the OWS protestors who were whisked away to secrete government prisons! You know, those thousands of vocal dissidents who disappeared! You heard about they right? They're probably being water boarded right now. Funny that we don't hear more about that?

Oh that's right...it NEVER f*ckING HAPPENED!!!

This is the thread where I begged people who don't think the US is a police state not to come in and slam and berate those of us who have a different opinion. We've already had one thread go this direction. Do I need to create a third thread?

I know you've re-iterated this point a squillion times, but when we start talking about real events in the country we live in, we're no longer talking about a hypothetical state that we agree is a police state.

The thread becomes "Living in America: What do you do? What can you do?" And a perfectly valid answer to that is "Stop worrying about it being a police state, because it isn't."

It's no wonder we keep coming back to this. You might do better to suggest people stop bringing real-world examples into this thread.

As an aside, I find it amusing that we're now discussing policing this thread.

DSGamer wrote:

This is the thread where I begged people who don't think the US is a police state not to come in and slam and berate those of us who have a different opinion. We've already had one thread go this direction. Do I need to create a third thread?

No, this is the thread where you're supposed to talk about what you're doing because we live in a police state.

Instead, for every one post about what you're doing there's a dozen that talk about our awful police state. It's a thread where absolutely anything and everything that has to do with law enforcement is used as an example of how we're "in a police state". Despite how far removed from sanity or common sense it may be.

Maybe I should start a thread and cite every instance where camera footage from our evil surveillance overlords was used to catch a criminal or save a child?

Bear wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

This is the thread where I begged people who don't think the US is a police state not to come in and slam and berate those of us who have a different opinion. We've already had one thread go this direction. Do I need to create a third thread?

No, this is the thread where you're supposed to talk about what you're doing because we live in a police state.

Instead, for every one post about what you're doing there's a dozen that talk about our awful police state. It's a thread where absolutely anything and everything that has to do with law enforcement is used as an example of how we're "in a police state". Despite how far removed from sanity or common sense it may be.

Maybe I should start a thread and cite every instance where camera footage from our evil surveillance overlords was used to catch a criminal or save a child?

Feel free to start the "We don't live in a police state" thread. I just find it crazy that people keep migrating to these threads to berate people who don't share their opinion. I'm happy to rename this thread and create another one.

And yes, I do understand the opinion that "I don't feel we live in one, so the 'what to do' is relax" point of view. I truly do. I don't agree, but I understand it. But this thread was specifically created so there would be a thread, however bereft of traffic, where those of us who believe that the US is a police state and don't feel it's negated by yelling something like this...

Oh that's right...it NEVER f*ckING HAPPENED!!!

...at us, are free to debate this stuff without being accused of being crazy, wearing tinfoil hats, etc.

Bear wrote:

Yeah, it's like all the OWS protestors who were whisked away to secrete government prisons! You know, those thousands of vocal dissidents who disappeared! You heard about they right? They're probably being water boarded right now. Funny that we don't hear more about that?

Oh that's right...it NEVER f*ckING HAPPENED...yet!!!

FTFY.

It's important to raise concerns and awareness well before things get to a point where it's too late to act. Liberties and freedoms are slowly trickling away from Americans in the name of the War on Terror, War on Drugs, etc. Although some changes may seem relatively harmless and necessary at the time, we still should think about the bigger picture and future impact of these changes to our way of life. It's essentially The boiling frog analogy.

Stengah wrote:

Edit - I would say we're in a surveillance state, but a lot of that is voluntary and done by corporations, not the government (facebook, google, twitter, foursqaure, etc.).

I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not live in a police state. I do not....

It's not working!

Oh that's right...it NEVER f*ckING HAPPENED!!!

How do you know?

If one or more of the OWS protestors were disappeared by the government, how would you know? How do you know that it's not happening all over the world right now? We know there are secret, black prisons. We know they remain open, despite Obama's claims he would close them.

How can you be certain that no US citizens are disappearing into them? The simple answer is that, unlike any time until 2001 or so, you cannot. The government now explicitly says this behavior is legal. And because they can hide behind secrecy, you have no way to find out if that power is being exercised.

And how can you be okay with this goverment disappearing anyone, without the ability to defend themselves, US citizen or no?

So you can hum along and say "WE'RE NOT IN A POLICE STATE", but the police very explicitly say that we are, they just haven't chosen to use those powers on you.

You get some serious dissent going in this country, and you'll see the gloves come off. They came off partway with Occupy, with beatings and torture in public. What will happen if they really start to gain traction? What happens when the oligarchs can't just smile and ignore the whackjobs?

DSGamer wrote:
Bear wrote:

Yeah, it's like all the OWS protestors who were whisked away to secrete government prisons! You know, those thousands of vocal dissidents who disappeared! You heard about they right? They're probably being water boarded right now. Funny that we don't hear more about that?

Oh that's right...it NEVER f*ckING HAPPENED!!!

This is the thread where I begged people who don't think the US is a police state not to come in and slam and berate those of us who have a different opinion. We've already had one thread go this direction. Do I need to create a third thread?

DSG you have banged on that drum before, all due respect to you, it seems to me to be a completely unreasonable expectation to get to have as volatile a thread as one positing that America is an evil police state, on an open internet forum, and have no dissenting views. I don't think this is the corner of the internet where you get to have that. I am no mod and I can assure you Certis has never intimated to me his grand plan for us all, but it seems to me that it is a courtesy on the mods part to even have a P&C section, and I don't think that courtesy extends to private members making threads where only people who agree get to post.

How would you respond if I posted a thread where I said, "Incest is God's plan - only post if you agree!" You just don't get to do that on a video game enthusiast website.

I think people taking a critical view of life in America is an important thing, and I respect those who do it - but critics open themselves to criticism as well.

Malor wrote:

And how can you be okay with this goverment disappearing anyone, without the ability to defend themselves, US citizen or no?

If it happens often enough, the chance that I end up in a threesome with my wife and another female (as opposed to my left and right hands) increases from statistically impossible to somewhat feasible.

(I am sorry, the opportunity was too great to pass up.)

I respect what you're saying and I understand what you're saying. I'm fully aware I'm walking a fine line when I ask politely if people will stick on topic. I don't think saying the US is a police state is equivalent to saying "incest is great". I'm sorry if it came off as at heavy-handed but that wasn't my intent. My intent was simply to carve off a thread where people didn't call those of us who share this opinion names, didn't accuse us of being conspiracy theorists and actually let us debate the issue on its own merits at the very least.

In the process I hope that perhaps there would be a place to discuss these issues so that they weren'5 taking over every other thread on this forum. I felt it was urgent and necessary to talk about this but didn't feel like we were getting anywhere productive. I apologize if my solution came off as heavy-handed. I'll drop it. Just please know I was trying to help not hurt.

DSGamer wrote:

Feel free to start the "We don't live in a police state" thread. I just find it crazy that people keep migrating to these threads to berate people who don't share their opinion. I'm happy to rename this thread and create another one.

And yes, I do understand the opinion that "I don't feel we live in one, so the 'what to do' is relax" point of view. I truly do. I don't agree, but I understand it. But this thread was specifically created so there would be a thread, however bereft of traffic, where those of us who believe that the US is a police state and don't feel it's negated by yelling something like this...

I guess I could start another thread where I and others can cite the thousands of reasons why you and others are going way overboard with this police state stuff but that seems superfluous. If you are so convinced that we are already a police state then why in God's name would you post it on a forum and openly talk about what you're going to do stay off the grid? Not exactly the best way to avoid monitoring is it? Besides, are we really expected to sit on the sidelines or start another thread to house all the massive amount of information that shows we're not even close to be a police state. Overly monitored, maybe, police state, not even close.

You and Malor don't seem to be interested in discussing or debating this topic. I'm sorry I can't grant you an open space where you can just bang the drum on how awful this country is. You, Malor and others have taken the position of "we're right and the rest of you are too stupid to see what's happening". There's no room for debate when you adopt a fundamentalist viewpoint.

Malor wrote:

How do you know?

I tend to think that if dozens of "terrorist protesters" suddenly disappeared from their OWS camps that somebody might have noticed? I don't see a lot of stories on the news with crying moms saying "my son went to OWS and I haven't heard from him in months".

Then again...maybe the government isn't letting them talk.

If you are so convinced that we are already a police state then why in God's name would you post it on a forum and openly talk about what you're going to do stay off the grid?

BECAUSE IT'S NOT ABOUT ME.

It's not about you either.

It's about the MARGINAL people. The people on the edges. The Muslims. The blacks.

Every single time you come back with this 'we're not in a police state' argument, it fundamentally comes down to "Well, they're not threatening ME, so it's not a police state." It is so utterly selfish. It's like your whole universe stops at the boundaries of your skin -- if it's not a threat to you, personally, right now, it's not a problem and not a threat.

It's NOT ABOUT YOU.

It's about ALL Americans. ALL citizens. Even the ones, like Al-Alwaki, that the government hates and wants dead. They have rights too. At least, they used to. Now they don't. Ergo: police state. Full stop.

It's worth pointing out (repeating?) that this is the only time that rights matter. If you only have them when you don't need them, you don't have them at all.