FBI uses drones inside U.S. for spying, director says

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fbi-mueller-20130620,0,5216531.story

by daegloe • 13 years ago

126 61 13 years ago

InternalRun2• 13 years ago

It is inevitable that they will use drones to spy on us. It is cheap and easy, why send teams of people to track someone 24/7 when you can have a robot do it for you. Unless new laws are brought in this will become regular practice. We have all seen the drones DARPA are working on.

iguana17• 13 years ago

What makes you think we can legislate our way out of this?

InternalRun2• 13 years ago

I think it will take more than legislate alone but I think it would be a step in the right direction. I just really want some transparency. Recording where everyone is going and having a mass database of it and then PRISM collecting all information about who you call and your online activities is a very worrying idea and it is 70% implemented.

nathas• 13 years ago

The technology isn't going away, and public key crypto to protect your identity doesn't exist (visually) so...

iguana17• 13 years ago

Drones, like guns and cars, are just tools, and themselves not inherently evil.

I don't see a problem with the FBI using unmanned aerial vehicles for surveillance, so long as they do it within the confines of the law (and not some preposterous interpretation by a secret court). As long as a they have a specific warrant, this is just a clever application of technology, and a far cheaper alternative to a helicopter with crew.

We already have traffic cameras and satellites, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy outdoors.

Also, it isn't like these devices are able to pilot themselves, they're just remotely controlled aerial vehicles. What if the FBI put a video camera on a weather balloon?

smokeyj2• 13 years ago

Drones .. are just tools, and themselves not inherently evil.

The tools aren't evil, but our authoritarian corporatocracy might be.

iguana17• 13 years ago

Don't ascribe malice to what can be adequately explained by righteous and shortsighted self-preservation.

skwirl• 13 years ago

I agree with you, but the statement "you have no reasonable expectation of privacy outdoors" is interesting. If someone were to fence off their back yards with a high privacy fence, would they really have no reasonable expectation to, say, sunbathe in the nude without a drone (or helicopter for that matter) zooming in on them and snapping pictures?

A quick search shows a lot of case law related to this (especially related to cases of people who were growing marijuana outside, unsurprisingly). But I didn't see a distilled answer.

iguana17• 13 years ago

I've done a bit of googling on this myself, and all I can find is that evidence could be thrown out in a criminal case based entirely on aerial footage, but that is rarely the only evidence provided. You likely don't own the airspace above your property, certainly not above a thousand feet, and technically no one owns outer space, so I would say that in 2013 or beyond, your expectation of privacy in your back yard is likely to dwindle severely over time.

stephengillie3• 13 years ago

If Google Maps used the image, they'd have to blur your sunbathing.

dailyrorschach• 13 years ago

In the US your backyard isn't necessarily considered to have an expectation to privacy.

The principle in question is Curtilage, the relevant holding was United States v Dunn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtilage

The fence argument is interesting, the factors they'd need to consider are outlined in the Wiki article. It's also why a professor of mine who was a lawyer told us in DC that if we ever got a MPD citation for drinking in public on our porch that he'd take the case for free, as he felt the law would clearly be unconstitutional - and said he'd have fun doing it.

adamnemecek3• 13 years ago

Nuclear weapons, like guns and cars, are just tools, and themselves not inherently evil. Ergo, there should be no restrictions on anything related to nuclear weapons.

iguana17• 13 years ago

False equivalence and a slippery slope. How did you get from "big RC helicopter with video camera" to nuclear weapons?

jlgreco• 13 years ago

Nuclear weapons, like guns and cars, are just tools, and themselves not inherently evil.

True!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosions#Sov... / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare

Beyond the obvious (digging big holes fast) there are proposals for using them to extinguish particularly bad oil/gas fires (perhaps Centralia, Pennsylvania could be a use case?), stimulating natural gas production (this one is likely to be unpopular these days), and destroying large amounts of chemical weapons (and while you're at it, a nuke ;)).

joelrunyon• 13 years ago

Also, it isn't like these devices are able to pilot themselves,

If Google can figure out how to make a self-driving car, I think the government can (or has already) figure out a way to make self-flying drones.

skeletonjelly2• 13 years ago

I think from watching all the videos of self navigating quadrocopters that do tricks I can safely assume that a lot of people (including the government) can

iguana17• 13 years ago

We're talking about today's drone use by the FBI. They most certainly don't have fully autonomous drones. Sure, give them a decade or two and they'll have miniature, weaponized drones soon enough.

andy9775• 13 years ago

Yes and the self driving car is operated within some sort of legal framework and for the time being has a driver. The law may likely include, at least for sometime, a provision that forces a human eye on the road before we allow anyone to jump in and go. Ultimately it comes down to operating within a set legal framework and having the appropriate licences and paperwork(warrants) in place. So while drones may be self flying there needs to be someone responsible and it must be done so with reason.

fnordfnordfnord• 13 years ago

Most people don't find it unreasonable to see the FBI using drones for surveillance as sparingly as Mueller claims in his testimony, it's later when they have something like a few thousand ARGUS-like platforms constantly surveying everything all of the time that makes it an egregious violation of privacy. Traffic cameras and license plate scanners are a prime example of the way law enforcement perceives its mandate to advance such things.

digz• 13 years ago

As far as I can tell, Mueller didn't say the FBI uses drones to spy* on us. There may be specific reasons why/where drones are useful... don't really understand why this is news.

Law enforcement has been using airplanes and helicopters for decades for various purposes. What is so odious about unmanned versions of the same thing? As long as the missions are lawful, not sure why this is any different.

iguana17• 13 years ago

I suspect it will become different eventually, when drones are much, much smaller, and weaponized. But the FBI isn't using those yet, so I agree, this is just opportunistic reporting since everyone is talking about the surveillance state. Demonstrates that journalists, for the most part, are clueless and lazy.

justinwr• 13 years ago

Helicopters.

beloch2• 13 years ago

The FBI currently uses Helicopters and people generally don't complain about them violating their privacy. However, this may be because Helicopters are rather hard to miss if one is parked over your back-yard. Drones can be much smaller and quieter than any manned aircraft, and some even have the capability of entering buildings. In the near future we can expect drones the size of insects to enter use.

Suggestions:

1. A drone presence should be legally treated the same way as the presence of an FBI officer. Namely, to enter private premises they should require a warrant.

2. Legally require drones used in public spaces to be equipped with lights/speakers to make their presence as detectable as a helicopter. I'd rather not live in a society where insect-sized drones could be eavesdropping on any conversation or watching everything you do without your knowledge.

stephengillie3• 13 years ago

#2 sounds like suggestions that electric car manufacturers have "fake engine sounds" coming out of speakers, so deaf people can hear the normally-silent car coming.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090921/0141396258.shtml

moskie• 13 years ago

I think you mean blind people.

iguana17• 13 years ago

I strongly agree with #1.

If you really don't want to live in a society with insect-sized drones doing, well, whatever they want, you're not going to have much choice in a couple of decades (at most).

#2 would be nearly impossible to enforce.

sanderjd2• 13 years ago

Enforcing things like #2 is what the press is for. Write a law, try to find instances of the authorities breaking it (or look for whistleblowers!), cause a stink. The difficulty of the second and third parts of that formula shouldn't be a reason to not write the law (presuming it's a good one).

leef• 13 years ago

You just need your own set of insect-sized drones to find and destroy other insect-sized drones.

callmeed2• 13 years ago

Regarding 1, how high, vertically, does my private premises extend?

Is it the 500' described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights ?

chris_mahan• 13 years ago

So the drones should not be able to take picture of anything below 500 feet above ground without a warrant, but they could fly over 500 feet without taking pics/vid. OK?

asynchronous132• 13 years ago

No. Air rights extend only as high as the land owner reasonably uses. A landowner with a 3-story house has a rightful claim to higher airspace than a neighbor with a single story house. The specific height has not been determined in a courtroom, but it's likely to be a short distance (~10ft) above any structures on the property.

francistw2• 13 years ago

According to the FAA, 1 inch. Remember the recent story of some schmuck piloting a quad-copter less than a foot from his neighbor's window? There was much arguing of whether said neighbor would be within rights to shoot the thing out of the air, and the HN consensus was, "nope".

francistw2• 13 years ago

Open question: is this what was chasing LA Times journalist Michael Hastings a few nights ago? Sharyl Attkisson thought she was paranoid, until her employer (CBS News) discovered her computers were indeed being hacked.

FBI uses drones inside U.S. for spying, director says

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