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US customs and border protection is flying a surveillance drone over Minneapolis

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Re: US customs and border protection is flying a surveillance drone over Minneapolis

#351
post #9
post #3

Native Minnesotan here — living in Minneapolis — that has lived on both coasts: With all that's happening the last few days, please don't generally associate Minnesotans with the violent riots that have captured the attention of everyone. The peacefulness of the protests and gatherings has been overshadowed by the violence. There are countless examples of Minnesotans standing up to those who choose to loot and destro…

> With all that's happening the last few days, please don't associate Minnesotans with the riots that have captured the attention of everyone. I understand what you're going for, but this is a bad approach. People aren't rioting because they want to destroy things, they're rioting because they don't feel like they're being heard. What you're saying here reads as "don't listen to them, they don't represent us" which i…

Like we didn't hear this message about how violent the police is to black people. We heard it enough, I am not convinced and all this looting doesn't help to convince me.

I am convinced that the police in the US is extra violent comparing to other countries but I am not at all convinced they are specifically violent against blacks, if anything I can see why they should be considering this behaviour. I also understand that they must be more strict because of all the guns and weapons going around comparing to other countries.

I haven't seen such riots when police in the US killed white people with no justification so I don't understand the point of all of this, it is just senseless violence, even more senseless than the regular violence among black communities, at least in those cases there is some criminal motives like someone invaded a drug selling territory and get shot for that.

I am not American but my only conclusion from all of this is that we should strive for homogenous society as much as possible, mixing different populations with each other will always cause problems. Diversity is a disaster everywhere and will never work.

Did I "hear" the message correctly? If not maybe they should try a different method.

Re: US customs and border protection is flying a surveillance drone over Minneapolis

#352
post #248
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you draw the distinction between a drone (presumably unarmed) vs a police helicopter?

I think we first need to determine what is upsetting about this, specifically. Is it that they are flying a UAV that was originally designed for military use? Or is it that they are flying a UAV period? What if it was a new UAV, designed just for law enforcement? No problems then? Presumably this UAV has no weapons on it, so I'm unsure what the problem could be unless we just flat oppose former military equipment bei…

>So, what specifically is it that we don't like about this situation?

The ongoing militarization of state level police forces without the democratic consent of the governed for a start?

Re: US customs and border protection is flying a surveillance drone over Minneapolis

#353
post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if it was a new UAV, designed just for law enforcement? No problems then? > So, what specifically is it that we don't like about this situation? What potential "mission-appropriate" use is a Customs and Border Protection drone performing 300 miles away from the border in a domestic unrest scenario?

What specifically do you think this CBP UAV is equipped with that should preclude it from flying over a city? Cameras?

What part of _Customs and Border Protection_ do you think should NOT preclude it from monitoring domestic unrest 300 miles from the nearest border?

Re: US customs and border protection is flying a surveillance drone over Minneapolis

#354
post #22

This was very predictable. Tools invented for military operations abroad eventually, predictably find their way back domestically. Despite that, its a dangerous thing to happen. I am aware of how unlikely it is for the current US Government to use the drone offensively, but once you have a massive fleet of drones flying over the US, patrolling "troubling" neighborhoods constantly, the temptation to use those abilitie…

People will just make the argument that a drone patrolling is no worse than a police officer in his vehicle patrolling or a helicopter patrolling, both of which are incredibly common.

Re: US customs and border protection is flying a surveillance drone over Minneapolis

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blue Thunder was 37 years ago. Not seeing why drones will be so much more easily weaponized than manned helicopters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Thunder

There are a couple of major differences. My understanding is that helicopters can’t typically reach and maintain the altitude that unmanned drones can, making drones more effective to be used in less conspicuous ways. There’s also the difference in the baseline level of security between the two. Helicopters do go down from time to time, thus creating a human risk that isn’t present in drones. I feel that since drones…

>thus creating a human risk that isn’t present in drones.

most unmanned drones used today have a far higher history of 'unintended forced landings' than most other military craft -- when you use planes that have a high risk of crash over metropolitan and suburban areas, the human risk multiplies.

The US military has 'lost' about 400 'large' drones between 2001 and 2014.

To put that 400 number into perspective, the US had 5 or 6 major airliner crashes between 2001-2013, and about 400 accidents (including non-crashes and minor incidents) over the period of 2004-2013.

I'd rather have any fighter jet in production right now over me than anything General Atomics had designed.

Here's an older WaPo article from 2016. From 2001-2016 400 military drone crashes occured. Military incidents are harder to find out about, otherwise I would have used that number.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/drone-crash...

>I feel that since drones pose less risk to the lives of their operators, the desire to use them will be greater.

absolutely true -- but don't let that make you think that loss-of-personnel is the most important metric for whether or not a mission flies.

Re: US customs and border protection is flying a surveillance drone over Minneapolis

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah just to be clear I completely agree with both of those points. But that's only adding even more reasons why it's completely unacceptable for the riot response here to be anything but completely law-abiding. The police already have no moral high ground here IMO.

Why would you expect people to protest peacefully anymore? This was tried for years. Remember Colin Kapernick and kneeling?

I'm not sure what part of my post you're responding to, but I don't expect people to protest peacefully anymore. I fully support Kapernick and think criticism of him was ignorant and wrong.

Maybe "riot response" is an ambiguous term, but I'm saying the response to the riot has to be completely legal, responding to a parent poster who was saying that it's okay for police the break the law in their response, which I strongly disagree with.

Re: US customs and border protection is flying a surveillance drone over Minneapolis

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unsupported by evidence. Drone operators have a high incidence of PTSD. > Studies have found similar levels of depression and PTSD among drone pilots working behind a bank of computers as among military personnel deployed to the battlefield. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/life-as-a-dron...

This is for ATTACK drones, where they are actually killing people or coordinating fire. We are talking here about SURVEILLANCE drones.

> The police helicopter has a human element to/in it so the pilot would feel more responsibility for the destruction they caused if it were right in front of their eyes.

This comment sounds like it's about attack drones. I concede that it's not necessarily about attack drones; a surveillance drone operator might facilitate and witness a lethal attack, and in that sense "cause" the destruction.

Re: US customs and border protection is flying a surveillance drone over Minneapolis

#358
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even longer - I remember seeing one circle over the 2009 Fargo flood while we were sand bagging.

Question -- what is 'sand bagging'?

https://i.imgur.com/BlUJxIj.jpg

Was my parent's home. We were south of Fargo, outside of the city dike. Fargo is very, very flat farmland. Our house was 40' above the river. The top of the city dike was around 43'. We melted down the ice, put down a sheet of plastic, and then built a wall of sandbags. Bonus, it was very cold, so you essentially had to bag and place the sandbag before the sand froze. We put around 10k sacks around the house -- and saved it. Nothing like paddling a canoe to my brothers to resupply fuel for the generators powering the sump-pumps that handled the water that seeps in.

We got very, very lucky. The weather froze the ice a few inches thick and it stopped rising. Had water reached that last bag, Fargo would have been a giant swimming pool.

Re: US customs and border protection is flying a surveillance drone over Minneapolis

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also nuts that CBP is the one doing it.

> Also nuts that CBP is the one doing it. Maybe they extended the 100 mile constitution-exempt border zone: https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

In r/law someone said they are using the int'l airport as a border, which is apparently legal.

Re: US customs and border protection is flying a surveillance drone over Minneapolis

#360
post #17

I see that there’s a plausible connection, but the phrase “predator drone“ is a bit of a loaded phrase. While Minneapolis is embroiled in riots, I think this article may be Stokes paranoia a little bit.

iirc it's the equally poorly named Reaper drone that is armed and the one to be worried about. The predator drone is basically an R/C police helicopter. However, people have been freaked out about aerial surveillance for decades. It gets the clicks.

The MQ-9 Reaper is a larger counterpart to the MQ-1 Predator. They are both designed for military use, both capable of carrying weapons, and both appropriately named given their original intended purpose.

They're also both airplanes. Neither of them resemble a helicopter in any way.

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