DHS drones equipped to eavesdrop on Americans
March 4, 2013The US Department of Homeland Security already has an arsenal of drones to be deployed for whatever the agency deems fit, but the actual capabilities of those vehicles exceed what many Americans may expect.
The unmanned drones being used inside of the United States right now can’t shoot Hellfire missiles like their overseas counterparts. They can, however, conduct surveillance, intercept communications and even determine whether or not a person thousands of feet below the aircraft is armed.
The latest revelation comes courtesy of a DHS document that was recently obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, through a Freedom of Information Act request. After analyzing a partially-redacted drone “performance specification” file received through their FOIA plea, EPIC said that records indicate “the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection is operating drones in the United States capable of intercepting electronic communications.”
Of the ten Predator B drones currently maintained by the agency, EPIC adds that the document confirms that those aircraft “have the capacity to recognize and identify a person on the ground.”
“The records obtained by EPIC raise questions about the agency’s compliance with federal privacy laws and the scope of domestic surveillance,” the center writes on their website this week.
Speaking to CNet, EPIC’s Open Government Project director, Ginger McCall, says the discovery shows just how dangerous drones could be to the privacy of the millions of Americans who could have drones overhead right this moment.
“The documents clearly evidence that the Department of Homeland Security is developing drones with signals interception technology and the capability to identify people on the ground,” McCall says. “This allows for invasive surveillance, including potential communications surveillance, that could run afoul of federal privacy laws.”
Since EPIC published their FOID’d documents last week, Cnet has managed to scrounge up an unredacted copy that outlines what the DHS was looking for in drones when the report was written in 2010. Specifically, the performance specifications note that while the DHS is not implementing drones for eavesdropping on America right now, “Further tasks, such as communication relay and interception, although not yet evaluated in the field, are assessed to also be best performed” by the unmanned aerial vehicles.
Additionally, DHS drones must “be capable of identifying a standing human being at night as likely armed or not” and “be capable of marking a target into a retrievable database.” No information is given as to what database that refers to, but a Homeland Security official speaking on condition of anonymity tells DHS that the drones lack — for now, at least — the ability to read a subject’s face to find out who they are.
“The drones are able to identify whether movement on the ground comes from a human or an animal, but that they do not perform facial recognition,” Cnet reporter Declan McCullagh says the DHS source’s claims.
“Any potential deployment of such technology in the future would be implemented in full consideration of civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy interests and in a manner consistent with the law and long standing law enforcement practices,” the source adds.
The Homeland Security department’s drones are currently used to allow federal officials to monitor any criminal activity on America’s borders to the north and south. As RT reported recently, however, a 2012 Supreme Court ruling determined that the government can conduct border patrol operations within 100 miles of an international crossing. By that logic, the approximately 200 million Americans residing within that parameter are subject to Border Patrol searches and, perhaps soon enough, surveillance drones.
I normally don’t use Tumblr for ranting, but being around family for the Holidays, I find myself so frustrated with the weird binary thinking of Western “patriots”.
People who think America is a great country with a great past that we need to “get back to”. Just. Stop. This country was built on the genocide of indigenous people, and built by a totally separate group of indigenous people who were stolen from across the ocean, all to benefit a class of white, capitalist rulers who have nothing to do with either the land or the stolen labor force. And neither the indigenous people who were subjected to a colossal genocide, nor the indigenous people who were stolen from Africa to build this country have ever recovered from what was done to them. And since rising to super-power status via military dominance, & economic/military coups, thievery, and colonialism across Asia & the Middle East, the nation has used its swelling conquests to fuel the strength of the empire, which continues to stretch across the globe to this very day.
There were never any good old days. America has never been good. Never. If evil exists, it’s the Western ideology that allows otherwise ‘kind’ and ‘good’ people to believe that this history & these current wars for domination aren’t enough to tarnish the entire history of this ugly country. How can people continue to swear fealty to the red, white and blue flags and sing songs praising this fucking country? I just don’t get it. And when I stop to think about it for too long, I get so angry. I want to shake everyone around me and ask “why?” or “how?” How do you differentiate between the morality of America and Nazi Germany? What about America seems better than Nazi Germany to you (really answer if you believe America is better than Nazi Germany, I’m genuinely curious what the line of thinking is)? If Nazi Germany had won their bid for conquest, don’t you think we’d all be singing songs and praising the Nazi flag, while talking about the importance of the great “founding” Nazi fathers?
Why do you salute the troops – who I don’t mean to demonize, who I genuinely pity, but who I also think are anything but heroes. Bullies, probably. Victims, definitely. But heroes? Really?! Give me a break! They fly around the world terrorizing civilians & political dissidents in their own countries. Yuck.
For decades, the ruling elite super-rich capitalists have been able to offer a standard of living to the working poor in America that is better than the alternative – living in the chaos and squalor that their own policies have created for the poor around the world. But in the age of information, can empathetic people really continue to support this country? We don’t have to. We can live a different way. We’re so far off from utopia but the conditions for a different world are so promising. The empire is seemingly stretched to capacity, and stretching further still (see the troops the U.S. is sending across three dozen African countries in 2013 that we posted about yesterday), class-consciousness and an awareness of the inherently horrible nature of capitalism in this country is higher than it’s been, maybe since the 30s. We can’t lose sight of the context of what we’re fighting for and what we have to fight against. Again, the conditions are promising; movements with the capacity to really affect global change are actually building and we have a responsibility to participate in them. Seriously.
-Robert
