The write-up below was shared with Cop Block via email (though submissions are most-often received via the form at CopBlock.org/Submit) and was written by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster. Note that portions have been omitted for length though the main thrust – the good that comes from transparency and the real change that can occur by focusing on individual actors – remains unchanged.
As you’ll see, Pillsbury-Foster encourages others to step-up to identify and hold-accountable those profiting from the growing industry around drones, which she notes includes over 2,000 contractors, and which is now so pervasive that one college in Minnesota now offers a major on drone repair.
One could claim that it’s shame that people are only now paying attention to the drone issue, which has already caused so much destruction abroad, but this call-out from Pillsbury-Foster is a step in the right direction and shouldn’t be belittled. Especially when the sheer volume of propaganda peddled by those who profit from the growth of the police state, based on the post 9/11 culture of fear, is considered.
We can each individually make a difference.
Props to people like Pillsbury-Foster, James Jeffrey, a drone operator who last fall spoke out against their use, Essam, for using humor to delegitimize the use of drones, Jacob Crawford, who documented the use of a drone over Oakland recently, and Davi Barker, who made the video “Alameda County Doesn’t Want Drones“, for working to keep the skies free of drones.
-Pete Eyre
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by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
Direct Action, Locally Delivered
We all know about the kind of threat represented by the purchase and use of drones in our communities. We also know the potential for profit with drone technology is measured in the billions of dollars.
Visit this site and see how many such contractors there are today.
The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International shows you just how serious a threat this is to our real security and freedom. When this many corporations are lined up, hands out, to grab the largess, you know the money available is only beginning.
What kind of people would, today, be ready to sell their fellow Americans down the river and into bondage so they can profit? The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International provides a list of their members, to which we linked.
At Drone Free Zone we would like to google map these ‘businesses,’ making them visible in their communities so their fellow Americans, congregants, club members, neighbors, and family members with conscience, can let them know, face to face what they think of how drone enablers make their money. They must be stopped. We must do this in every way possible, including direct, personal, confrontation.
It takes integrity to be willing to stand up for what we believe. It is not always easy. There are over 2,000 contractors and we need a team to find and catalog locations and other contact information.
Contact me through DroneFreeZone.com if you can help.
Additionally, we need to research the people in positions of authority within these corporations. Are they persons of rectitude? Or are they the kind of people who will do anything for the buck? We need the evidence.
Please help us roll out a protest to close the doors of those who are locking down our skies and lives. We need to expose those whose lives lack integrity.
The meaning of the word, Integrity.
in·teg·ri·ty
1. Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.
2. The state of being unimpaired; soundness.
3. The quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness.
If a man engages in a scheme to violate the law, suborning the justice system to gain power and wealth, while destroying the lives of an entire family and putting some of them at risk of their lives, does he have any claim to ‘integrity?’
And what if the list of crimes the man enabled and covered for includes placing uncounted women and girls at risk? What if he is known to have paid off victims, or intimidated them into silence?
And if such a man hides behind the cloak of power to cover his crimes, what is he then? And who if such a man had the audacity to name his technology, INTEGRITY?
Our country, today, is waking up to question those who have been entrusted with power. One of the first questions to be asked is what can be proven of their integrity? Have they honored their obligation to follow the law, used power in ways which made all of us safer, more secure in our homes and lives? The evidence will speak for itself.
Contact me through DroneFreeZone.com if you can help. It will be very much appreciated.
Banning the drones locally is already happening, as detailed in Thomas Jefferson’s Home Town First to Ban Drone Surveillance.”
The movement to stop drones, used domestically, is now launched.
I have one of those “drones” it’s called a hexecopter. Thousands of people have these all over the world. Get one for yourself. It’s a fun hobby.
Slappy,
I think the issue is who operates the drones, which ones are armed, and how many there are.
David Brin wrote about something similar in “The Transparent Society.” Two versions of the same scenario, a surveillance society, and a woman walking down the street, who has to turn onto a dark street to get home. Problem is, the light on that street is out, so she can’t particularly see.
Scenario 1: She gets an odd feeling, and pulls up the local cameras on her smartphone. Switches to infared, sees there are people in the dark, bypasses that street, turns on the next block, continues to home.
Scenario 2: Only police can access the cameras. She gets to the corner, looks down the street, can’t see anything. Funny feeling in her gut, but she figures its just nerves, and it’s late, she wants to get home. Proceeds down the street, gets attacked, mugged, maybe raped. Police cameras record it all. when police get there 15 minutes to 3 hours (or more) later, her body is recovered, the video is analyzed, APBs for the suspects issued. Goes to trial, suspect is convicted. (Whether or not he’s/They are guilty is irrelevant.)
Also in scenario 2: Since only the police control the cameras, police misconduct is all but impossible to prove. (Brin wrote before smartphones had cameras; but even today, we see lots of dismissal of bad cop cases, even WITH evidence – if the phone isn’t damaged / erased, that is. Evidence has a habit of going missing around police, when it shows them in poor light.)
Just so you really get the gist of it:
Wiretapping laws are being applied to recording conversations and videotaping police. Who they are dealing with is irrelevant, could be you’re talking with the cop, could be you’re observing. HOWEVER: While YOU will be prosecuted for “illegal wiretapping,” the POLICE – who have dash-cams, and sometimes even button cameras (IE, worn on the body) are IMMUNE to such prosecution, and you DO NOT have a right to request they turn it off.”Officer Safety” uber alles, even if when you do the same thing, it’s a crime.
The tail is wagging the dog. Sites like this merely point it out.
For example, a list of some obvious items that would NEVER show up vs. those that would:
Fireworks (illegal in some states)
- Cop sets them off in his backyard – not a crime.
- Prole sets themmoff in his backyard – CRIME, backed up by VIDEO EVIDENCE from the drone.
Sex:
- Two gay men in their bedroom get it on – Crime (where sodomoy is still on the books)
- Anything involving a cop – Not a crime, and there’s no evidence it even occurred. Whether he/she/it had sex with a willing subject or unwilling subject of any age or species. the drone wasn’t looking there. or the feed was corrupted, or … (whatever)
Drugs:
- Cop has meth lab and/or marijuana plant(s) – not a crime, no drone evidence, no snitch hears about it (it’s for private use).
- Prole has same setup – MAJOR BUST of POTENTIAL DEALER, all found via Police Drone (IE, a flagship case used to justify & increase drone usage, and ensure there are also IR sensors and cameras on the drones.)
And if we move on to whether or not the drone is armed – If it’s a citizen (prole), the car/building goes boom. If it’s a cop, the drone was never really there.
Now, would we get there TOMORROW? No. But in 10 years, maybe…? Well, 10 years ago, no one thought the real estate bubble would burst this way, nor that gas would hit $4/gallon for REGULAR. Nor that we’d have a war in Afghanistan. That Greece or Spain or Italy would implode, and the EU be on the verge of collapse. That blatant election fraud wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow, let alone be ignored by the politicos. (And let’s face it: obtaining 100% of the vote in A district is statistically impossible, but people don’t conform to statistics. However, in multiple districts, not even ONE vote for ANYONE but the Chosen One? In multiple districts, you get 104% voter turnout? That illustrates there MUST be fraud. Only option is, BOTH PARTIES are defrauding us, and NEITHER wants to be caught. Banana Republic, anyone?)
Further point, it’ll be a progression. Drones for traffic observation; then for surveillance; then to do surveillance sweeps and get clues on who else is doing something illegal; then an officer shooting or similar, an armed drone is used to deal with the “known guilty” suspect; then all drones get armed, and privacy and due process cease to be, REGARDLESS of what the laws say. Progression over 10-20 years.
You want drones? Fine – let them be PUBLIC STREAMS. ANYONE can access from the website on their smartphone. (Brick users are SOL, but that’s by THEIR choice, in a sense. and Obamaphones don’t get to be smartphones with data plans. Smartphones could be subsidized and the user pick up data, though, that would be OK. so, we pay $100 for a Droid; Obamaphone user gets $20 off the $100 price and pays the difference, plus the data fees. The brick they’d get costs $20 anyway, and the minutes are part of the Obamaphone plan. [Caveat: I object to the Obamaphone BS as well, but will waive that for sake of defeating the discrimination claims.])
Anyway – public access would at least LIMIT arming drones – don’t want a hacker to gain access and make it look like cops are pulling the triggers. Anything open to the public eventually cna be hacked. And public access to drone cameras would mean ANYONE can see what’s going on – but that immediately kills such concepts as DUI Checkpoints, so we KNOW it will never (heh) “fly”. OTOH, finding ways to miniaturize SAMs or to EMP the drones or to shoot them down – those markets will open up soon.
People get tired of being monitored like we’re living “1984.” Watch your ads on web pages – Google is tracking you, so is Yahoo, and doubleClick, and 3-4 others I know of. PLUS the data will be sold. So, as an example – if you hit Alt.Com, you’ll be plagued by all sorts of “romance” ads afterwards – some for foreign brides, some for erotica, some for “clothing,” maybe some for GLBT ad sites, lots of Porn. some of it is even automatic, no data purchase made, per se. Look up Web Beacons, look up K’Nect sensor people in room, look up Cable Boxes, even – the tech is being deployed to all of them, let alone the Google OS turning on your camera and audio and GPS to determine if they can advertise something to you, or find you.
And NONE of that existed 10 years ago. 10 years back, we were still talking triangulation – Independence Day, for example, when the scientist pinpoints his wife’s location in the white house? Exaggeration of triangulation, but not totally impossible – accurate to within something like 5 meters, even then. (Lots of mitigating factors, like signal strength, number of towers, if those towers are happily telling you the locations of themselves and the target signal, or giving lag times; if there’s bad weather; interference; did you drive around the block and take multiple readings to confirm it all a few times; what’s your rage to target; Are you just using the old-fashioned “Map and lines” technique; do you have extra capacities, such as knowing the model of phone, to judge the receiver capacity and antenna type? Multiple towers reporting positioning information beyond just that cell the target is using? Electrical storm? etc, etc, ad nauseum.)
The FAA has ‘exclusive right’ over the airspace in the US. Unless you can make a valid “air rights” claim, you might just have to suck it up and understand that drones are a part of life.
HEY COMMON,
DO I HAVE AN EXCLUSIVE RIGHT TO FLY MY DRONE BY YOUR WIFE’S BATHROOM WINDOW AND WATCH HER TAKE A BATH AND USE “BOB” TO PLEASURE HERSELF. POST IT ON THE WEB AND MAKE MONEY OFF OF YOUR WIFE. I MEAN IT IS JUST AIRSPACE THAT I HAVE A CLAIM TO. YOU MAY JUST HAVE TO SUCK IT UP AS A PART OF LIFE, LOL………CAN’T WAIT UNTIL THE LEAKED VIDEOS COME OUT OF COPS DOING THIS. I MEAN IT IS A WELL KNOWN FACT THAT COPS HAVE SELF CONTROL ISSUES. LOL, WE SEE IT EVERYDAY. IT WILL HAPPEN YOU CAN COUNT ON IT, AND IT WILL MAKE IT TO THE WEB. AND HOLY SHIT, WAIT TIL ARMED AND THEY HURT INNOCENT PEOPLE. IT’S HAPPENING IN FAR AWAY LANDS SOON TO BE IN A NEIGHBORHOOD NEAR YOU, LOL……….. WHEN IS ENOUGH, ENOUGH?
COOL THING IS THIS, YOU CAN BUY SOME DECENT DRONES WITH DIGITAL VIDEO CAMERA’S FOR FAIRLY CHEAP. SO WE CAN HAVE A BALL “WATCHING EACH OTHER”, PARANOIA WILL DESTROY YA……..LOL
JUST GRAB A SEAT AND WATCH THE DESTRUCTION OF SOCIETY, SO FUNNY. AND ONLY THE STRONG, SUCH AS MYSELF, WILL MAKE IT.
YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE IS GOING TO COOL. THE FIRST DRONE SHOT OUT OF THE SKY SPYING ON PEOPLE DOING NOTHING WRONG, THAT WILL HAPPEN SOON ENOUGH, LOL………….
Hey man, don’t go through the hassle, she lays out topless all the time. I paid good money for the DDs and she’s proud of’em!
I like great tits but can’t stand a nasty snapper. I just can’t stand big meat curtains. Nothing worse then a pussy that looks like a hunk of roast beef hit with a cleaver. Sorta like Wicked’s snapper. She’s actually got a pic of her’s online. Just google ‘blue waffle’ – but do it on an empty stomach.
Maybe it will be instead of ‘you sunk my battleship’ it will be ‘you shot down my drone’
I wonder how you would you regulate it? “your drone flew over my imaginary property line that’s 1000 feet up and 30 acres east and west?”
LOL, THAT IS ALL I GOT TO SAY
ha ha ha, wait til she reads it, it’ll be all ‘replusive’ this and ‘misogynistic’ that.
here’s one for ya.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tieA5wfcgH4
ha ha ha, Wicked tells Fakewood that the odor is because her PH is off, too much red wine. Meanwhile, wherever she pisses, grass never grows.
Drone surveillance isn’t as big a deal as it once was. There are cameras everywhere including cellphones, dashcams, and utility poles. Its the arming part that worries me. Anyone know what kind of drones were ‘donated’ to the police force?
it wont take long for the techies to come up with counter measures all kinds of signal jammers possible, maybe they will even take over control of them and crash a whole group of them into the local cop shop before you start screaming about how this wont happen better remember everything hacker groups have already done
I would doubt anyone would want to ‘take control and crash drones into police stations’ – something tells me that would be a federal offense, and since USDA’s are bred without a sense of humor, I would tend to shy away from that.
well we both know there are plenty of crazies out there both in and out of uniform so anything is possible where does that leave the rest of us who just want to live their lives with liberty and JUSTICE FOR ALL!
Maybe they could have drones that fire those taser shotgun rounds. Nothing better than a hippy ‘riding the lighting’ for a full 20 seconds. 50,000 volts of justice.
“Where’s your Ron Paul now!”
buy your own drone they are not to expensive. you can learn to fly them easily. then learn to use them to take out government drones.
hmm and if those drones get taken over it could just as easily be quick fried pork with skittles on top
Wow, missed common spouting before he was found out as a fake cop / badge licker / poser.
Doesn’t he seem even more pathetic now?