Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveillance-midwest

by incompatible • 7 years ago

483 289 7 years ago

jhayward• 7 years ago

The article notes that this uses the same balloon technology that Google's project loon uses.

cardamomo• 7 years ago

Possibly. What the article specifically states is that US Southern Command (Southcom) is using the same supplier as Project Loon:

Raven Aerostar, the company that is supplying the balloons for Southcom’s tests and launching them from its facility in South Dakota, told the Guardian that it has had balloons remain aloft for nearly a month. Raven also makes balloons for the Alphabet subsidiary Loon, which uses them to help deliver internet and cellphone service from the stratosphere.

sambull2• 7 years ago

Ah so loon possibly was never about internet

daeken• 7 years ago

Loon didn't supply the balloons, they just have a shared supplier.

davisr2• 7 years ago

I don't comment much, but I feel compelled to mention how this currently has a 36:1 vote-to-comment ratio. The kinds of thing the US military is testing on their own people is horrific, and it's our duty as American citizens to oppose this kind of surveillance.

I sometimes feel I'm talking to a ghost. It is truly terrifying that my fellow Americans are selling themselves out. Ring will let the government, Amazon, and your neighbors spy on you. Grammarly will keylog and text-capture each webpage. The FBI will fly planes overhead. Balloons will be launched, always watching everyone.

There is no way to opt-out of this. I can't believe how stupid the "Hacker" "News" community is--commenting on things that don't matter, then shutting up for matters of grave importance.

You all deserve the tyranny that is coming.

davisr2• 7 years ago

The most important thing one can do is write, AND call, their legislature. Don't ever shut up about it. Does it stand a chance against corporate lobbyists? Probably not, but it leaves one with a clear conscience.

ultrarunner2• 7 years ago

I don’t think that sending a sternly written letter should have any bearing on one’s conscious. I upvoted GP, but on the same note I know there is nothing we can do at this point against a powerful bureaucracy with a lot of ideological and financial incentive to proceed. That this has continued and accelerated under multiple administrations with varied talking points should tell you everything you need to know about the power of the modern vote at this level.

aaronbrethorst• 7 years ago

Or your city council. I got a personal reply from one of my council members this morning in response to an email I sent based on this: https://www.seattleindivisible.com/daily-actions/2019/8/1/no...

She promised to investigate and follow up on a policy front. Good use of two minutes of my time.

anigbrowl7• 7 years ago

The most important thing you can do is put your body in the way of the machine. Sure, writing persuasive letters is good, but what actually moves the needle is showing up at public meetings, making noise, engaging in civil disobedience, and risking arrest or worse. Reasoned argument is unfortunately not an effective political lever unless you have some sort of power (eg political, financial, military) with which to bear down upon it.

craftyguy• 7 years ago

The vast majority of the comments on 'hacker' 'news' are either anecdotes based on the title or nitpicking the title. Since no one has any anecdotes to argue about and the title is pretty straight forward, there are very few comments here.

sam0x17• 7 years ago

I agree, but all of that said, the surveillance state is much much worse right now in Britain, so I'm told.

davidw• 7 years ago

There is no way to opt-out of this. I can't believe how stupid the "Hacker" "News" community is--commenting on things that don't matter, then shutting up for matters of grave importance.

There are a lot of people here who take these concerns extremely seriously, and are working to fix things.

But they may not post much about it on Hacker news, because not every site needs to be political, even if it's far, far more important right now than most of the content here.

jimktrains2• 7 years ago

Surveillance isn't a political issue, or maybe rather, like drinking water standards, it need or should not be a toxic political issue.

sambull2• 7 years ago

Technically we tested them on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Guess it's our turn.

tlb• 7 years ago

The fact that people haven't commented "this is bad" doesn't mean lots of people don't think it's bad. But such comments don't change anything, and the site guidelines specifically discourage them because they just add noise.

Insulting people, however, tends to derail any useful discussion.

state_less• 7 years ago

I've said the obvious before, but technology is going to make mass surveillance relatively easy. Natural protections are no more. We have to reaffirm our liberties and not tolerate unreasonable search.

Also, let's cut out the criminality when it comes to drugs. The rationality this rests on can be chopped out from under it if we just regulate the drug industry better. Give drug users the drugs with limitations, which is better than having them served via some barbarous criminal enterprise.

almostdeadguy• 7 years ago

The site guidelines and moderation policies are intended to steer the comments towards as prissy, non-critical, de-politicized conversations as possible. Anger is a perfectly reasonable part of political discourse, and political discourse and thought is an important part of being a person in the world w/ agency. I think most would agree that there's a "beating a dead horse" point in comment sections, but the amount of preemptive moderation of anything mildly heated about politics is goofy, and not actually conducive to the goal of making a place for conversation that's "intellectually curious" or whatever. There is no topic that can be discussed in a political vacuum, and there's no conversation that's politically honest if there's not a little bit of struggle, but the mods on this site treat that like its a 5-alarm emergency.

Waterluvian• 7 years ago

It's even worse for us non Americans. American public is generally more okay letting us get tested on. And we don't get to vote against it.

Tharkun7• 7 years ago

Yup. Apparently it's fine to spy on everyone else, everywhere else. Just not on US soil. Wiretapping everyone's communications, forcing SWIFT to forward details of everyone's bank transactions to the NSA. Because apparently the 7 billion non-Americans are all potential terrorists or some such nonsense.

imglorp• 7 years ago

Dayton OH tried this crap with Persistent Surveillance Systems equipment that's basically a time machine: a high altitude camera that photographs the whole city and lets you follow a vehicle forward or backward in time, inferring meeting places, routes, etc. The outcry that arose cancelled the project. So yes, protest works!

https://www.acluohio.org/archives/issue-information/warrantl...

The one over Baltimore is JLENS by Raytheon: that didn't get struck down because it was never put to a vote; it was privately funded.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/15/baltimore-surv...

https://technical.ly/baltimore/2015/08/19/another-surveillan...

jcims2• 7 years ago

There’s an excellent RadioLab episode about Persistent Surveillance. The anti-crime powers it brings to a city are compelling, only overshadowed by the powers for abuse.

Worth a listen IMHO: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/eye-sky

aero142• 7 years ago

The tech here is so good I don’t believe it went away. I just think it will exist in secret and only used when they really need to. We will get a snowden style leak about it in 10 years.

uponcoffee• 7 years ago

There are other people that aren't Americans on the net.

That aside, what are you doing to oppose this? People may not be commenting because they dont know how to go about stopping it or simply don't think it can be stopped; leading by example is more powerful than an appeal to pathos.

deelowe• 7 years ago

Wtf are you doing about it? Commenting on hackernews ain't solving anything.

m3kw92• 7 years ago

You only complain when you notice something? Satilite with cameras has been around forever

aeneasmackenzie• 7 years ago

testing

It's been tested, look up gorgon stare.

foobarbecue• 7 years ago

"I don't comment much but you lot are going to hell because you don't comment"...?

cmroanirgo• 7 years ago

Comment more

resters• 7 years ago

I can't believe how stupid the "Hacker" "News" community is--commenting on things that don't matter, then shutting up for matters of grave importance.

Topics like mass surveillance are considered by HN moderators to be "political" and any commentary about them is considered the equivalent of graffiti that defaces the site for everyone else.

As hackers we have a social responsibility to participate in important political issues that we have insight about.

People's political beliefs are typically quite different when the issue is something they actually know about. Most HN content is technology focused and so there is (in my opinion) a desirable kind of political discussion that is backed up by experience and knowledge.

Surely one of the mods will chime in that my comment is a flame, which is their special word for comments that discuss content they wish to censor. My comments are always polite and respectful, so obviously the issue is content and not tone.

... this currently has a 36:1 vote-to-comment ratio.

HN is becoming the sort of benign, bland environment the mods want it to be.

rashkov• 7 years ago

I would guess that surveillance gets discussed here almost daily, and most readers are probably familiar with why it’s bad and that we should oppose it and write our legislators and etc. Parent poster’s comment - a call to arms - is almost free of novel content, and we can find similar comments at the top of our newsfeeds on every other social network and forum.

The next highest post in this comments section, written by Apo about the dynamics of the falling costs of surveillance and the tendency for states to slide towards authoritarianism, is an example of the kind of insightful and thought provoking comment that I come to hacker news for. This thread that we’re all commenting on is a red blooded, knee jerk reaction fest by comparison.

Of course it’s important that we get angry about surveillance and inspire others to be activists about it, I just don’t think that it makes for an interesting or unique discussion. We can get that on any news site and social network. By contrast, hacker news’ moderated discussion can shift your worldview and provide useful points of debate, and a wide perspective that you can bring back to the world.

With that in hand we can get a lot further by fighting smarter and more strategically. I’ll take hacker news’ gentle discussion guidelines over red blooded calls to action any day, because honestly the internet is already full of those, and there aren’t enough discussion spaces like hacker news.

auslander• 7 years ago

then shutting up for matters of grave importance. You all deserve the tyranny that is coming.

Rather than whining online about surveillance, it is more effective to build your personal defences and do your research on OPSEC. It is perpetual cat and mouse game.

cmurf• 7 years ago

The guidelines literally consider politics contrary to intellectual curiosity, and in the category of cat photos and disaster videos. As someone who studied political science in school, it's an abomination of a guideline. The mixing of ideology, politics, and technology is obvious, and the ensuing conflicts are inevitable, and HN guidelines say take it elsewhere, this is not the place for those conversations. Meanwhile, objective trash ends up on the front page all the time, and stories involving technology used to subvert human freedom routinely gets rank demoted contrary to the HN community's votes.

So I think it's possible your complaint is really not with the community but with the guidelines. If people don't care for an article, they don't have to vote for it. If people don't like heated debates, they don't have to participate in them. But the guidelines make that decision for the community.

root_axis• 7 years ago

lol, suggesting that people are worthy of tyranny based on comment ratios is about as quintessential HN filter-bubble as I can imagine. Comment ratios mean absolutely nothing, especially a single cherry-picked example in a swamp of front-page posts.

tehjoker3• 7 years ago

Maybe you already are, but if that's how you feel... organize! People must speak to each other about their problems in person, debate what is to be done, and work towards implementing it. That's politics away from the spectacle of television and social media.

i_am_proteus• 7 years ago

There's a bit of scaremongering in the headline; these are being tested domestically by the DOD use outside of the US. The DOD isn't allowed to conduct domestic surveillance.

cheeze• 7 years ago

Kind of ironic that they are testing them by performing domestic surveillance then, huh?

RaptorJ• 7 years ago

well if "fascism can best be understood as bringing the methods of imperial rule in the colonies into the metropole." Then aside from the obvious imperial attitude of 'its ok since the DOD is developing this for non-americans,' americans themselves might be worried about the future implications of this technology.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27/074.html

Spooky23• 7 years ago

Sure.

They parked a visible radar blimp over I95 outside of Baltimore and operated it for a couple of years. What’s the difference between “test” and “really using it” when the tests last that long?

There are many loopholes for domestic stuff too. A National Guard member controlling the thing for example.

kevin_thibedeau• 7 years ago

Full season durability testing. Developing operational procedures to deal with routine issues. These could easily take a few years.

cco• 7 years ago

I can't fathom this level of good will afforded to the DOD, the history of the US govt's intelligence services _must_ earn them zero presumption of innocence by now right?

fkdo• 7 years ago

I bet there is a direct correlation between how much good will someone extends DOD and how much they believe their history books.

chocolatebunny• 7 years ago

Once the technology is proven out they could sell the equipment to law enforcement.

killjoywashere• 7 years ago

And they'll probably sell them "very lightly used" at steep discounts.

lonelappde5• 7 years ago

The FBI and state governments are allowed to conduct domesticated surveillance, and they inherit military tech.

Broken_Hippo2• 7 years ago

They've been slowly giving police departments "surplus" military equipment for some time now. I can easily imagine a similar fate for this, just as I can easily see the FBI, ATF, or other such government agency using this.

cherrypicker001• 7 years ago

I saw a BBC short video while in Europe last summer. It was surreal. The video was basically showing how awesome these aerial surveillance platforms were. At one point the reporter walked out of the control center and started dancing outside. It looked like he was having a lot of fun watching himself from a few thousand feet up. If anyone manages to find it please post it. There was no talk about the privacy implications. Just a puff piece to acclimatize people into thinking this was normal.

If you don't yet know what these balloons are from articles on Afghanistan, they provide very cheap ubiquitous physical surveillance on very large areas. If one of these things have LOS on you or your home, you no longer have any physical privacy.

If this doesn't piss you off you need to look up what a panopticon is.

lonelappde5• 7 years ago

Hey the good news for us is the ones in the US don't have self-guided missiles attached, right?

20after42• 7 years ago

Are you sure? If not yet, soon.

eitland• 7 years ago

FWIW "Kill Decision" describes one scenario where they do have missiles attached.

vaguesortof• 7 years ago

Anti hypersonic missile satelittes in low earth orbit will soon tho

goliatone• 7 years ago

Fu-Go [1] were armed balloons sent over the jet stream during wwII.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb

qserasera2• 7 years ago

Good thing Belgium already sold this NATO spec technology to China...

Tharkun7• 7 years ago

Got a link for that?

qserasera2• 7 years ago

https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/belgian-firm-sells-advanced-...

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/2173593/chi...

andrerm• 7 years ago

“Obviously, there are laws to protect people’s privacy and we are respectful of all those laws,” Hartman said. “We also understand the importance of operating in an ethical way as it relates to further protecting people’s privacy.”

Sure /s

blattimwind• 7 years ago

I can practically hear the "xD" at the end of that statement.

jlgaddis2• 7 years ago

It's very carefully worded.

They understand the importance of operating ethically. They didn't say that they do.

tru3_power• 7 years ago

This is disturbing

snazz• 7 years ago

Are things flying at that altitude required to have a ADS-B transponder or something like that to prevent collisions with other aircraft? I wonder if you could track the balloons tracking you.

i_am_nomad• 7 years ago

Yes. Google Loon balloons do show up on FlightRadar24, and if you’re close enough you can detect them with a $8 RTS-SDR.

Aaronn• 7 years ago

At 65,000 ft (the altitude mentioned in the article), no ADS-B will not be required because it would be above Class A airspace.

Law enforcement and intelligence flights are not required to have ADS-B turned on anyway.

(f) Each person operating an aircraft equipped with ADS-B Out must operate this equipment in the transmit mode at all times unless—

(1) Otherwise authorized by the FAA when the aircraft is performing a sensitive government mission for national defense, homeland security, intelligence or law enforcement purposes and transmitting would compromise the operations security of the mission or pose a safety risk to the aircraft, crew, or people and property in the air or on the ground; or

§91.225 https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=b7f6514979a4014c17...

MiroF3• 7 years ago

At what point do we just start a non violent movement of taping over cameras wherever we see them?

Krasnol• 7 years ago

It's hacker news.

How about hacking them?

LeoPanthera• 7 years ago

We could have a discussion about the definition of the word Hacker vs Cracker - but people have been arguing about that since the 90s.

somebodythere• 7 years ago

Duct tape is a hack.

Low-tech hack, but a hack nonetheless.

dpau• 7 years ago

Hong Kong has just gotten to that point.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/technology/hong-kong-prot... https://gizmodo.com/how-hong-kong-s-protestors-are-hindering...

throwaway94232• 7 years ago

I already do this with the cameras that are in an increasing number of airplane seat backs.

lonelappde5• 7 years ago

Oh, charming: airplanes now have cameras installed against the will of the airlines operating the planes.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3022742002

jackvalentine2• 7 years ago

I have a roll of black circle stickers in my bag and I regularly put them over small cameras in public (such as the ones hidden in video advertising screens).

They're purposefully non-destructive and I've even made the effort to select a sticker type where the adhesive doesn't leave a residue when peeled off.

Tharkun7• 7 years ago

Got a link for those? I'm liking this!

Tharkun7• 7 years ago

There was a camera-spotting movement in Belgium some years ago. Basically people started marking all known cameras on a map. I think people gave up once they realized the sheer impossible scope of it.

Most cameras are too high up to reach anyway. A can of spray paint on a stick might be more effective, but that will almost certainly lead to vandalism charges.

MiroF3• 7 years ago

Do it at night with a mask? Basically 0 chance they would catch you

m3kw92• 7 years ago

To those that are profound, the US has mass surveillance since the first satellite with camera was in orbit

lonelappde5• 7 years ago

The new balloon cameras have much higher resolution.

brokenmachine3• 7 years ago

I found it really interesting when that link came up on HN recently of a spy telescope taken by an amateur. Can't find the story now unfortunately.

I knew the Hubble was cool, but on that page it mentioned that this telescope was one of ten that the military had pointed at the Earth that are now deprecated.

Imagine what they have now that is even better than ten Hubbles.

brokenmachine3• 7 years ago

Found the link: https://www.universetoday.com/65458/spying-on-a-hubble-teles...

thereare5lights• 7 years ago

Kinda weird that there isn’t more backlash to this

apo• 7 years ago

The new balloons promise a cheap surveillance platform that could follow multiple cars and boats for extended periods. And because winds often travel in different directions at different altitudes, the balloons can usually hover over a given area simply by ascending or descending.

Stepping back from the details of this story reveals a striking pattern that most public discussions on mass surveillance miss entirely.

Cost has protected citizens of the world's liberal democracies from sliding into totalitarianism for a long time. Now the brakes are off. Surveillance technology costs are plunging across at the board and capabilities are skyrocketing.

Regardless of size or jurisdiction, there isn't a law enforcement agency out there that doesn't want to (or actively seek to) increase its observational capability.

Tumbling prices allow these organizations to indulge these urges.

Suddenly, basic assumptions about what governments can and can't do go out the window. The equipment is bought and put into production. Better to ask forgiveness than permission and all that.

There is no limit to the appetite for greater visibility into the private lives of citizens. Today it's the war on drugs and terror. Tomorrow it's something else. The justifications change, but these are just thin veneers over the ugly truth. Every government tends toward totalitarianism unless kept in check by something pretty damn powerful.

This train has one destination, and it's not even clear if there will be any stops along the way. To understand where we're headed, try reading the Bill of Rights with the assumption that your government knows everything there is to know about you, and where those who attempt to reveal the extent of these capabilities are imprisoned or executed.

im3w1l• 7 years ago

government, law enforcement

The thing is when it gets cheap enough, other players start enter the game too. Companies. Criminal gangs. Or even private individuals.

A situation of "if surveillance is outlawed, only outlaws will have surveillance" should be taken into account.

mgamache8• 7 years ago

Not really. The FAA might have something to say about what floats around the sky. At least in the USA.

WarOnPrivacy• 7 years ago

The thing is when it gets cheap enough, other players start enter the game too. Companies. Criminal gangs. Or even private individuals.

This last is the worthwhile part. The problem isn't surveillance, it's disproportional surveillance.

That is, people in power can only control the public while they retain a monopoly on power.

Since bulk surveillance is coming, the best outcome is equal surveillance and equal access.

Postscript: Privacy laws tend to lock you and I away from data, not powerful people who ruin lives.

bob78342• 7 years ago

I’ve maintained for a long time that the only reason we have a “war on terror” is that the ability of the “war on drugs” to strip us of our civil liberties had mostly run its course by 2001. These are the political issues I care most about. I really hoped Obama would curtail the surveillance state. For 8 years I thought “soon, he will try to rollback the patriot act.” That never happened.

Instead, we got assisinated citizens.

It was just more of the same power mongering bullshit. By the time his presidency ended, I had lumped all politicians, nay, public officials into the same cauldron of corrupt blight. In my eyes, Trump, Obama and Bush are the same. When will a statesman/women/person have the metaphorical balls to put an end to this madness?

Law enforcement (and Hollywood [1]) can go fuck itself. I would rather fear a criminal/terrorist/crack pipe than my own putative government. I’m white. I can’t even imagine how minorities feel about these incessant overreaches.

[1] For some “bizarre” reason, Hollywood leans strongly toward lionizing rogue cops/gestapo agents who trample civil rights.

lonelappde5• 7 years ago

Hollywood leans strongly toward lionizing rogue cops/gestapo agents who trample civil rights.

Hollywood, like Legislatures, are giving the majority of the public what they want.

vtkacenko• 7 years ago

There was JFK..

paganel2• 7 years ago

Reguarding Hollywood and the show business generally speaking, there are two exceptions (that I know of) that reinforce the rule: the TV series “Person of Interest” [1] which started airing in 2011 and of which I’m reminded every time when I read articles like these (they stopped it in 2016, probably what had started out as an almost SF show had gotten too close to real life) and the excellent “Enemy of the State” [2], by Tony Scott, filmed in 1998, just about as the dot-com craze was beginning to take shape and when the Western governments didn’t know exactly what to do about this Internet world.

But ignoring these exceptions you’re totally right, of course.

[1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/

[2] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/

mc32• 7 years ago

This is reminiscent of some technology and technique learned and developed for operations in Iraq to go after IED planters. Basically once an event is alerted (ex truck stolen; someone abducted, etc) they backtrack or fwdtrack movements and see where perps came from or went to.

throwawaycanada2• 7 years ago

Now imagine what happens when they can look at a city, or the whole country, or world, and select one individual and backtrack their entire lives. With audio, recorded from all the devices that surround us.

t-a4550• 7 years ago

“Today it's the war on drugs and terror. Tomorrow it's something else.”
“This train has one destination, and it's not even clear if there will be any stops along the way. To understand where we're headed, try reading the Bill of Rights with the assumption that your government knows everything there is to know about you, and where those who attempt to reveal the extent of these capabilities are imprisoned or executed.”

Devil’s advocate here. Who’s to say they won’t use it strictly to deter drug trafficking and terrorism? Couldn’t they take steps to be transparent about what data is collected, and where it goes?

The point is, discussions on governmental surveillance usually jump to the conclusion that society is becoming like George Orwell’s 1984.

Could someone explain why these surveillance balloons are bad news for ordinary citizens without using the slippery slope fallacy?

whatshisface• 7 years ago

Can anyone really justify why dictators are bad without resorting to "and they do something bad?" I mean, you couldn't even explain to me why you wouldn't want me as a cosigner on your bank account without resorting to something like, "and then whatshisface does something bad." I think it's reasonable to believe in a slippery slope between "gun is pointed" and "gun is fired." I mean, just to play devil's advocate, you could make me a cosigner and I could help you manage your finances.

You can't prove that dictatorial powers won't be used to perfectly simulate democracy, after all absolute power means the power to hold elections. Likewise, I can't prove that after the surveillance system is completed the government won't put black paper over all their computer screens and never look at anything. But, somehow, that doesn't really change my outlook.

ctrl-j• 7 years ago

Devil’s advocate here. Who’s to say they won’t use it strictly to deter drug trafficking and terrorism? Couldn’t they take steps to be transparent about what data is collected, and where it goes?

What systems would you put into place to prevent abuse?

What about bad cops who would misappropriate the intel?

What would prevent them from tracking non-terrorist/drug related individuals?

How do you prevent citizens from being followed and tracked without a warrant?

And if misuse or abuse does happen, how is that transparently shared with the victim?

This is a weak place to argue that slippery slope doesn't apply, since the government has already had a lot of incidents in the recent past where they said they weren't doing certain surveillance - and then it was leaked that they actually were...

If you could say 100% that these balloons will only ever capture data based on legal warrants - we might have something to discuss. However, I can't think of a system that would guarantee that.

NhanH• 7 years ago

It's about the priori. The common slippery slope you mention comes from people who believe that historically government abuses power to the extend that they can get away it, and whoever claims otherwise are the one that needs to provide evidence. Of course if you have the opposite priori, then you will ask for the opposite kind of evidence.

I tend to go with the former, since liberal democracies are rarer than totalitarianism and the like.

wskinner• 7 years ago

The people in power today aren’t the people in power tomorrow. Even if you trust those in power today, do you trust the next 10 administrations to have sufficient restraint not to abuse their power?

jononor• 7 years ago

Existing surveillance technology, as per the Snowden revelations, has not been deployed with 'transparency about what data is collected, and where it goes'. Even today it is very unclear what data exactly is being captured, and how it is being used. I do not see any reason why this proposed new technology will be any better.

Broken_Hippo2• 7 years ago

These points would be much better argued if there were a history of people being able to trust the US government overall. But there isn't. It is prudent to think that the government, in general, will head down the same avenues they have in the recent and not-so-recent past.

There is a history of the government using it disproportionately against minorities and folks that want to change the status quo. There is a history of putting some groups in jail more than others. And so on. This lack of trust and history of power abuses and such things seriously dampens any hopes of responsible use. I'll add that some of their "drug trafficking" is to check to see if folks are selling small bits of weed. Terrorism seems like an obvious farce at this point considering they are keen to ignore terrorism from right-wing folks and instead, look to condemn Muslims and to condemn folks that look like they might be "Muslim" or "Mexican".

The government - at least in the us - needs trust first.

njharman• 7 years ago

Who’s to say they won’t use it strictly

Them. Laws passed for one reason have already routinely been applied more broadly, data collected for national security has been passed to domestic law enforcement under parallel construction.

We don’t have to worry if government will abuse its power, we know they are doing it now.

inflatableDodo7• 7 years ago

Devil’s advocate here. Who’s to say they won’t use it strictly to deter drug trafficking and terrorism?

Anyone paying reasonable attention to either current events or history?

JudgeWapner• 7 years ago

People act differently when they know they're being watched. The government does not have the right to alter my behavior that way.

Next reason is that their laws aren't enforced equally. This tech is more likely to be used for small time crooks (and disproportionately, minorities) than used to stop CEOs or Epstein's, or cops that strangle handcuffed suspects of nonviolent offenses

taurath2• 7 years ago

We need a new deal here. If everyone with power is allowed to just follow their incentives, we end up with an awful place for everyone. What is the contract between people, government and corporations that we can make that allows for the freedom in society that we value? It seems like both the corps and gov are teaming up against team people here.

jgtrosh• 7 years ago

In France we have a contract: if people are unhappy they rise against. If there's no risk of revolting, the fox is fearless in the chicken hen.

rscho• 7 years ago

What gov? You mean the corp customer inquiries office?

metta2uall2• 7 years ago

I'd like to raise that:

- If a future administration ever has the political power to implement totalitarianism, we're stuffed. The lack of an existing mass surveillance system will not stop them as they will build one.

- Most people's political leanings are already very easy to detect due to social media, social networks, financial donations, etc. So balloons don't seem to make it much worse.

- We can expect severe security threats in the future as WMDs become cheaper, more accessible and more powerful.. The police are not magicians - they need effective tools..

skummetmaelk• 7 years ago

Just imagine the East German STASI with todays technology.

davesmith19837• 7 years ago

Go to China? You don't have to imagine.

Well the UK isn't much better now.

kokowawa393• 7 years ago

No need to imagine anything. It's happening right now in your country.

Joeri• 7 years ago

The novelty here is a further reduction in cost by mounting it on balloons, but gorgon stare platforms for total surveillance have been rolled out in cities in the U.S. for several years now with plane-mounted camera arrays. Baltimore’s PD deployed it in secret in 2016 with money from a private donor without even informing the mayor.

The cost is rapidly falling to the point of inevitability for government actors and possibility for private players. Amazon balloons could track your physical shopping behavior to better target you with ads. Criminals could observe people and car movements in entire neighborhoods to better target burglaries and carjackings. The genie is pretty much out of the bottle.

soulofmischief• 7 years ago

Criminals could observe people and car movements in entire neighborhoods to better target burglaries and carjackings. The genie is pretty much out of the bottle.

It can't be understated how much impact this, and drones, will have on home invasion crimes. And they will have surveillance ops on standby to help them successfully navigate out of police chases when the need arises.

mr_overalls• 7 years ago

Criminals could observe people and car movements in entire neighborhoods

Isn't deploying an airborne surveillance platform (if it has sufficient altitude to survey a useful area) an incredibly conspicuous thing to do?

tandem_bike• 7 years ago

"Cost has protected citizens of the world's liberal democracies from sliding into totalitarianism for a long time. Now the brakes are off. Surveillance technology costs are plunging across at the board and capabilities are skyrocketing."

That is false. The collective political will and desire to maintain Democratic institutions, not some prohibitive cost of surveillance capabilities, is what has saved us from totalitarianism.

You are putting the cart before the horse. Totalitarian states establish or use surveillance capabilities to maintain their own power, but many liberal democracies today have more expansive and effective surveillance than the Nazis or the Soviets could have come up with in even their wildest fever dreams.

vinceguidry• 7 years ago

One thing I recall reading about actual totalitarian police states is that, sure, there's a cost imposed by the existence of the state itself, but that the lion's share of the problems caused by the system were due to bad actors, of which there were legion, but all of them had top-down supervision, meaning they couldn't just run around causing problems, the integrity of the system had to be preserved.

The people had no power, but the actual people with power had an interest in maintaining order. Things mostly sucked, but at least the 'trains ran on time', i.e. people could learn to understand and operate within the system.

Rule of law and liberal democracy ultimately means that the bad actors in society have bottom-up supervision to go along with the top-down. Bad actors aren't just watched by the police anymore, and it's not just the police that has the capacity to watch or decide who a bad actor is. And the federalism of power means that power bases spring up that are ultimately more powerful than the government when they pool their weight.

It was never about rights or privacy. It was always about who gets to decide what rules a society lives by. If the police are acquiring more power, then the people can acquire surveillance tools themselves so they can watch the watchers.

Bad cops think that body cameras are harshing their mellow? Just think what happens when some froggy judge decides to rule that it's nigh time police departments need to make their every official act available and searchable.

I bet they'll be jumping at the bit to start wanting to properly define universal privacy rights then.

otakucode• 7 years ago

Another good bit of reading material is the book 'It Can't Happen Here' by Sinclair Lewis. Bit of a warning, though, it might hit way too close to home for comfort for American readers. It was written in 1935 but still quite relevant if not prescient.

I think it is good for people to be interested in and discussing the nature of oppression and its consequences. As I see it, oppression is incremental, with people as a group generally responding fairly predictably as it increases. I think this is biologically rooted, stemming from fundamental drives toward autonomy. Any time autonomy is violated, regardless of intent, it is a small bit of harm. Sometimes, that harm is justified. If you pull someone out of the way of a speeding car, you have saved their life by violating their autonomy, but the tiny harm still exists and has consequences. These harms accumulate (though I am sure it is a complicated process where the harms are alleviated by other acts of autonomy, so not purely inevitably accumulative).

Just looking at history and at various situations in which oppression occurs (workplaces, prisons, schools, etc, not just nations) it seems to me there are broad patterns. When peoples autonomy is heavily infringed, they concentrate more on the forms of autonomy which are more difficult or impossible for whatever authority is in play to prevent. They express themselves through their dress, through body modification (piercings, tattoos, branding, scarification, etc), through their language with development of new slang or codes, and can even engage in self-harm (cutting, anorexic starvation, bulimia, binge drinking or eating, harmful drug abuse, etc) to exemplify that they still control something.

If the untouchable authority continues to increase the control it exerts, the people begin seeking to establish an alternative sense of a power hierarchy they can influence. They engage in interpersonal conflict, seeking to establish that they are stronger, better, more well-liked, more pious, more loyal, etc, than those around them.

As the oppression increases, those power hierarchies become more formalized and gangs (or cliques, brotherhoods, clubs, etc) form, with members adopting the gangs norms and moral codes as the authority they respect and are loyal to. They cling to their tribal identity, and see the actions of the group as expressions of their own desires, increasing their sense of autonomy.

As it gets more oppressive, the gangs begin to vie for turf or control or influence. Gang wars emerge. These aren't always literal guns-in-the-street or shivs-in-the-exercise-yard wars and can be done through proxy competitions of all sorts. Anything which the participants mutually agree to can be an analog, but in situations with such a high degree of oppression, violence is often the only thing left. A couple warring prison gangs can't really organize peaceful means of establishing dominance as no one has enough autonomy to do so and the overarching authority has a vested interest in not acknowledging the gangs as legitimate organizations.

In the final stage, the gangs dissolve/join and emerge as an army. They rise and destroy the oppressive authority through the only means the authority has made possible - brute violence. Democracy was revolutionary in its provision of a peaceful means of destroying the controlling authority through electing those who can change things. Every oppressive state that I am aware of has gone through these different phases. There has never been a happy, prosperous police state and I don't think that is a matter of just not getting it right. I think the basic human drive to autonomy would make such a state unlivable even if run by infinitely beneficent people and with every restriction being made in the honest best interests of those being controlled.

The 'inefficiencies' in law enforcement where not everyone is surveilled at all times, which enables some laws to be broken, is not a flaw. It's a feature of the system. And a valuable one. Every ratchet click towards catching every single infraction squeezes people tighter. We've seen in schools what happens when you load the place with cameras, have cops roaming the halls arresting kids for insubordination, requiring ID badges be carried at all times, restricting dress, speech, affectionate contact, etc. Some people will snap and be made to feel so desperate that they are willing to die just to do some damage. What happens when that sort of infrastructure comes to every workplace and every public place including the sidewalk?

mirimir6• 7 years ago

Somehow I didn't think that it was OK for the US military to operate domestically. According to the Posse Comitatus Act.

But I see that there's an exception for surveillance.

Charming.

ptero4• 7 years ago

I think you are spot on and I am pretty sure Pentagon bureaucrats take PC very seriously. That is why I suspect it is either a test for eventual use overseas (not operational deployment), or DHS is ready to take over

mgamache8• 7 years ago

I am not advocating this in the US or anywhere, but how would one disable a surveillance balloon as an act of civil disobedience if necessary (without ending up in jail)?

wmeredith• 7 years ago

IANAL but acts of civil disobedience usually mean that you refuse to do something peacefully. I’m not sure that there’s a way to passively disarm something.

mgamache8• 7 years ago

You are correct. What's the term for a minimally violent act?

quickthrower2• 7 years ago

With umbrellas and parasols. Everyone should walk around with an umbrella to make the surveillance useless. Parasols on your balcony or in your garden.

anigbrowl7• 7 years ago

High power laser on a technical vehicle.

mirimir6• 7 years ago

Lasers are the only workable option, I think. But locating a small object at some km altitude would be nontrivial. And hitting one with a laser would be ~impossible.

Also, it would see scattered light long before you hit it directly. And even if it had an autonomous targeting system, there'd be a record of its movements. So it would be very hard so stay anonymous.

anigbrowl7• 7 years ago

Atmospheric scattering seems like a big problem, but not location or targeting.

People find satellites by doing long exposures (ideally in the infrared) and then looking for movement that doesn't match the rotation of the earth - indeed, I think it's quasi-automated by now. It's rather astonishing what you can pick up with modern glass - there's videos on YouTube of the space station shot from the ground, and while it just looks like a little squiggly letter H, it's the freaking space station, in space, being imaged on relatively affordable prosumer technology.

I know nothing about the power side of lasers and imagine you'd need a decent size truck to hold one capable of setting something on fire at distance and its power supply, but it doesn't seem beyond the bounds of feasibility.

Of course, it would be 'easier' to hijack the balloon's guidance system but I assume that about 5 minutes after you started broadcasting on restricted radio frequencies people would be looking for you.

craftinator• 7 years ago

High velocity, heavy caliber hunting right with accentuated rifling, attached to a heavy servo gimble or robotic arm, telescopic lens, laser range finder. Should be able to shoot these down all day long.

raxxorrax2• 7 years ago

It is easier to find the control room and drop the pants of operators.

dredmorbius6• 7 years ago

Blinding sensors, disabling transmitters (beamed energy / emp burst?), disrupting transmissions, or disabling the platform itself (balloon) would be the most obvious choices.

Legal challenges.

ptero4• 7 years ago

Location and targeting are trivial (as others said balloons will likely have ADS-B or similar transponders). But your laser (prep and action) will be super easy to detect, too.

mgamache8• 7 years ago

Total novice here, but a drone locked onto the balloon transponder? You could pre-program the drone hours or days in advance. Use all 3D printed parts with reclaimed batteries? Assembled in a clean room? (just a thought experiment)

maze-le• 7 years ago

Unless it is a jet-powered drone, it won't reach the altitude. Rotors stop creating uplift at some height, because the air to create uplift is far too thin. And if you are able to build a jet-engine -- well you could basically call it a guided missile system. You'd need a launch facility, lots and lots of fuel and you'd be detected by ATC once you launch (if you haven't already been detected procuring resources to build the thing).

jlgaddis2• 7 years ago

At 65,000 feet, I don't think you do.

ip26• 7 years ago

The point of civil disobedience (often) is to wind up in jail. Civil disobedience doesn't mean "no consequences", it means enduring the consequences as a form of protest to illustrate how absurd they are.

Tharkun7• 7 years ago

That might be a consequence of civil disobedience, but it's certainly not the point of it. The point is to expose, condem & ultimately change a wayward government's shitty behaviour.

slim3• 7 years ago

civil disobedience would be to down a max of balloons before getting caught, preferably never get caught

debatem13• 7 years ago

This reminds me a bit of the "Harriet Tubman Sarah Connor brigade" (actual name). They were opposed to GPS satellites and knew they couldn't get them after they went up... so they successfully attacked them while they were on the ground (prelaunch) with wood axes. Did quite a bit of damage too.

https://theatlantic.com/article/386656/

mgamache8• 7 years ago

Are you comparing the surveillance balloons to GPS or are you saying it's best to disable before launch?

inflatableDodo7• 7 years ago

Given their flight ceiling is up to 65,000ft, they are quite a bit lower than Felix Baumgartner's record breaking jump, so I guess you could try skydiving into one.

slim3• 7 years ago

maybe concentrated solar light could burn them

slim3• 7 years ago

nah, that's stupid given the distance

Nec28• 7 years ago

Using drones could work I guess?

rasz2• 7 years ago

Movies Contact and Arrival had few good ideas.

ashton314• 7 years ago

Cheesy, but this reminds me of Captain America: Winter Soldier with the massive gunships that target anyone considered to be a “threat”.

The government seems to make the case that this is “necessary” to stopping crime. Is it? I’m sure it makes it really easy to catch criminals—but what’s wrong with increasing the police force/improving non-technological techniques/etc.?

maxheadroom3• 7 years ago

...but what’s wrong with increasing the police force/improving non-technological techniques/etc.?

You mean actual work? We can't be having any of that! Plus, think of the <insert some banally unimportant reason here>!

salawat• 7 years ago

Well, this is extremely disturbing.

We're reaching a point where we're going to have to start realizing we cannot systematically apply our own laws due to the ramifications of total awareness.

The availability of information will quickly outstrip the capacity of the system to crank through it.

Just today I was discussing with colleagues that it's positively mortifying the way people have trivialized their own children's privacy through things like smartphones with tracking software, and hidden camera's everywhere.

I don't understand how much our societal fabric has decayed that anyone could be even remotely comfortable with the magnitude of advancement in and propagation of surveillance technology, and the relative lack of progress in other verticals, or other facets of civil life.

To what end? Why do this? Why enable such avenues capable of completely undermining society's capability to evolve? Once you have the capacity to track minority faction movements perfectly, the stage is set for violent suppression of politically disruptive movements.

It is one thing to not have the capability to do so; it is completely another to have the capability to do so and to not use it. One can survive the overly ambitious being in a position of power. The other can't.

I don't know as the path our society is going down will be even remotely feasible to course correct. One can only hope.

m0zg• 7 years ago

So this is basically Google's Project Loon but with more spying? How do they deal with cloud cover? It's not much of an issue for Loon, but I suppose it would be problematic for anyone doing anything in the visual range.

throwawaycanada2• 7 years ago

This is a documentary clip from 2013 that shows what the cameras and systems in these blimps can do. Apparently the biggest breakthrough is their high bandwidth laser data communication system.

The government should not have this much information asymmetry relative to the citizenry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGxNyaXfJsA

Tharkun7• 7 years ago

To quote Simone Weil out of context (she was talking about political parties):

If one were to entrust the organisation of public life to the devil, he could not invent a more clever device.

wjn02• 7 years ago

Is anyone else extremely bothered by the false equivalence of narcotics trafficking and the need for homeland security?

This blurring of the lines between a multi-billion dollar _business_ (probably around 1% of the world's GDP) that in fact relies on the success of the state, and purported threats to the state itself strikes me as extremely dangerous.

I'm contrasting this to American intelligence involvement in central America in the 1980s. During that time, the same organizations involved in cocaine trafficking and production were also extremely political, and crucial to the CIA carrying out their (in my opinion neoimperialist) "responsibilities" in the region.

My point is: I am aware of absolutely no evidence that modern drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) operating within the borders of the US are political whatsoever, so can we really view them as a threat to homeland security? Is there evidence that there is some risk of groups which pose a threat to our security have infiltrated these DTOs, or are piggybacking off their operations somehow?

wool_gather2• 7 years ago

There seems to be a certain amount of violence that comes with the territory of illegal drug trafficking; that might not be national security per se, but it's certainly something within the government's purview. It's also not that much of a stretch to say that a public health crisis of drug addiction would be a kind of threat to national security. Of course, if that were the real thing, DHS should be going after the opioid peddlers, so...

wjn02• 7 years ago

Well of course it's within the government's purview, but we have to draw a line between law enforcement and military-run surveillance somewhere, and it seems to me drug enforcement (violent or not) falls staunchly within the former's purview. The blurring of that line or its movement altogether strikes me as dangerous (cf. the mosaic theory of the 4th amendment [1]).

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2032821

Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

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