States banning domestic drone use
Please read "The coming drone attack on America" below. You need to
understand why many states are passing legislation banning domestic drone use.
In the fight to keep America a republic, grassroots activism is pitched in an
unequal contest against a militarized federal government.
In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of drones domestically. In time, they will likely be weaponized. Drones on domestic surveillance duties are already deployed by police and corporations. By 2020, it is estimated that as many as 30,000 drones will be in use in US domestic airspace. A total of 110 military sites for drone activity are either built or will be built, in 39 states. That covers America. See a map here: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/where-are-the-63-drone-sites-approved-by-the-faa-in-the-u-s/ We don't need a military takeover - a messy, distressing declaration of martial law: with these capabilities on US soil and air force white paper authorization for data collection, the military will be effectively in control of the private lives of American citizens.
From Carol Stopps, Chair: Virginia Tea Party Federation Legislative Action
In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of drones domestically. In time, they will likely be weaponized. Drones on domestic surveillance duties are already deployed by police and corporations. By 2020, it is estimated that as many as 30,000 drones will be in use in US domestic airspace. A total of 110 military sites for drone activity are either built or will be built, in 39 states. That covers America. See a map here: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/where-are-the-63-drone-sites-approved-by-the-faa-in-the-u-s/ We don't need a military takeover - a messy, distressing declaration of martial law: with these capabilities on US soil and air force white paper authorization for data collection, the military will be effectively in control of the private lives of American citizens.
From Carol Stopps, Chair: Virginia Tea Party Federation Legislative Action
The Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation is working on Drone legislation. The deployment of drones in Virginia remains a very serious concern that goes way beyond out of control government. The Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act's plan for 30,000 drones over this country by 2020 is totally unacceptable! http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.658: and combined with the new National Defense Authorization Act http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.1540 allowing the military to detain US citizens indefinitely without charge or trial is a path to tyranny! We are counting on the Virginia General Assembly members to protect the citizens of the Commonwealth from this total invasion of privacy and ignoring of rights guaranteed under the Constitutions of both the US and VA.
The coming drone attack on America
By 2020, it is estimated that as many as 30,000 drones will be in use in
US domestic airspace. Photograph: US
navy/Reuters
People often ask me, in terms of my argument about "ten steps" that mark
the descent to a police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am
sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US
military and by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific
mandate to engage in surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization – which
is due to begin in earnest at the start of the new year – it means that the
police state is now officially here.
In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with
its provision to deploy fleets of drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an
attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that this followed a major
lobbying effort, "a huge push by […] the defense sector" to promote the use of
drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be in use by 2020, some
as small as hummingbirds – meaning that you won't necessarily see them, tracking
your meeting with your fellow-activists, with your accountant or your
congressman, or filming your cruising the bars or your assignation with your
lover, as its video-gathering whirs.
Others will be as big as passenger planes. Business-friendly media stress their planned abundant use by
corporations: police in Seattle have already deployed them.
An unclassified US air force document reported by CBS (pdf) news expands on this unprecedented and
unconstitutional step – one that formally brings the military into the role of
controlling domestic populations on US soil, which is the bright line that
separates a democracy from a military oligarchy. (The US constitution allows for
the deployment of National Guard units by governors, who are answerable to the
people; but this system is intended, as is posse comitatus, to prevent the military from taking action
aimed at US citizens domestically.)
The air force document explains that the air force will be overseeing
the deployment of its own military surveillance drones within the borders of the
US; that it may keep video and other data it collects with these drones for 90
days without a warrant – and will then, retroactively, determine if the material
can be retained – which does away for good with the fourth amendment in these
cases. While the drones are not supposed to specifically "conduct non-consensual
surveillance on on specifically identified US persons", according to the
document, the wording allows for domestic military surveillance of
non-"specifically identified" people (that is, a group of activists or
protesters) and it comes with the important caveat, also seemingly wholly
unconstitutional, that it may not target individuals "unless expressly approved
by the secretary of Defense".
In other words, the Pentagon can now send a domestic drone to
hover outside your apartment window, collecting footage of you and your family,
if the secretary of Defense approves it. Or it may track you and your friends
and pick up audio of your conversations, on your way, say, to protest or vote or talk to your representative, if you are not
"specifically identified", a determination that is so vague as to be
meaningless.
What happens to those images, that audio? "Distribution of domestic
imagery" can go to various other government agencies without your consent, and
that imagery can, in that case, be distributed to various government agencies;
it may also include your most private moments and most personal activities.
The authorized "collected information may incidentally include US persons or
private property without consent". Jennifer Lynch of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation told CBS:
"In some records that were released by the air force recently … under their rules, they are allowed to fly drones in public areas and record information on domestic situations."
This document accompanies a major
federal push for drone deployment this year in the United
States, accompanied by federal policies to encourage law enforcement
agencies to obtain and use them locally, as well as by federal support for their
commercial deployment. That is to say: now HSBC, Chase, Halliburton etc can have
their very own fleets of domestic surveillance drones. The FAA recently
established a more efficient process for local police departments to get permits
for their own squadrons of drones.
Given the Department of Homeland
Security militarization of police departments, once the circle is completed with
San Francisco or New York or Chicago local cops having their own drone fleet –
and with Chase, HSBC and other banks having hired local police, as I reported here last week – the meshing of
military, domestic law enforcement, and commercial interests is absolute. You
don't need a messy, distressing declaration of martial law.
And drone fleets owned by private corporations means that a first
amendment right of assembly is now over: if Occupy is massing outside of a bank,
send the drone fleet to surveil, track and harass them. If citizens rally
outside the local Capitol? Same thing. As one of my readers put it, the scary
thing about this new arrangement is deniability: bad things done to citizens by
drones can be denied by private interests – "Oh, that must have been an LAPD
drone" – and LAPD can insist that it must have been a private industry drone.
For where, of course, will be the accountability from citizens buzzed or worse
by these things?
Domestic drone use is here, and the meshing has begun: local cops in Grand Forks, North Dakota called in a DHS
Predator drone – the same make that has caused hundreds of civilian
casualties in Pakistan – over a dispute involving a herd of cattle. The military
rollout in process and planned, within the US, is massive: the Christian Science Monitor reports that a total of
110 military sites for drone activity are either built or will be built, in 39
states. That covers America.
We don't need a military takeover:
with these capabilities on US soil and this air force white paper authorization
for data collection, the military will be effectively in control of the private
lives of American citizens. And these drones are not yet
weaponized.
"I don't think it's crazy to worry about weaponized drones. There is a
real consensus that has emerged against allowing weaponized drones domestically.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police has recommended against it,"
warns Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the ACLU, noting that there is
already political pressure in favor of weaponization:
"At the same time, it is inevitable that we will see [increased] pressure to allow weaponized drones. The way that it will unfold is probably this: somebody will want to put a relatively 'soft' nonlethal weapon on a drone for crowd control. And then things will ratchet up from there."
And the risk of that? The New America Foundation's report on drone use in
Pakistan noted that the Guardian had confirmed 193 children's deaths from
drone attacks in seven years. It noted that for the deaths of ten militants,
1,400 civilians with no involvement in terrorism also died. Not surprisingly,
everyone in that region is traumatized: children scream when they hear drones.
An NYU and Stanford Law School report notes that drones "terrorize citizens 24
hours a day".
If US drones may first be weaponized with crowd-control features, not
lethal force features, but with no risk to military or to police departments or
DHS, the playing field for freedom of assembly is changed forever. So is our
private life, as the ACLU's Stanley explains:
"Our biggest concerns about the deployment of drones domestically is that they will be used to create pervasive surveillance networks. The danger would be that an ordinary individual once they step out of their house will be monitored by a drone everywhere they walk or drive. They may not be aware of it. They might be monitored or tracked by some silent invisible drone everywhere they walk or drive."
"So what? Why should they worry?" I asked.
"Your comings and goings can be very revealing of who you are and what you are doing and reveal very intrusive things about you – what houses of worship you are going to, political meetings, particular doctors, your friends' and lovers' houses."
I mentioned the air force white
paper. "Isn't the military not supposed
to be spying on Americans?" I asked.
"Yes, the posse comitatus act passed in the 19th century forbids a military role in law enforcement among Americans."
What can we do if we want to oppose this? I wondered. According to
Stanley, many states are passing legislation
banning domestic drone use. Once again, in the fight to keep America a republic,
grassroots activism is pitched in an unequal contest against a militarized
federal government.
Where Are the 63 Drone
Sites Approved by the FAA in the U.S.?
See a map here: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/where-are-the-63-drone-sites-approved-by-the-faa-in-the-u-s/
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." - Thomas Jefferson Virginia Tea Party Patriots www.virginiateapartypatriots.com Danville Patriots http://danvillepatriots.com/
See a map here: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/where-are-the-63-drone-sites-approved-by-the-faa-in-the-u-s/
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." - Thomas Jefferson Virginia Tea Party Patriots www.virginiateapartypatriots.com Danville Patriots http://danvillepatriots.com/
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