A proposed unmanned floating airship surveillance system is being hailed by city officials in Ogden, Utah as one way to fight crime in its neighborhoods...
One person will be able to operate the system but it will also function on its own with programming directives... Officials say the cigar-shaped blimp, powered by electric batteries, can fly for four to six hours before needing to be recharged.
US Customs and Border Protection is using a General Atomics MQ-9 (commonly Predator B or Reaper) unmanned aerial drone to monitor the US-Canada border from Washington to Minnesota. Flying for up to 20 hours at a time, at about 6,000 metres, officials say it used to monitor illicit border crossings related to marijuana and drug trade.
Quan reports that the long-term plan is to have the unmanned drones, now common in Iraq, Afghanistan and along the US-Mexico border, to be flying the entire length of the US-Canada border.
Canadian officials were approached for comment:
Supt. Warren Coons, director of the RCMP Integrated Border Enforcement Team, said Wednesday he has not received information about the surveillance program's effectiveness and declined to offer a personal opinion.
Coons said there are no plans to adopt such technology in Canada, but he wouldn't discount it, either. He noted Canadian authorities use other forms of visible and covert technology — he declined to say what — at points of entry and in remote sections along the border. Improved communication between U.S. and Canadian authorities has helped to identify vulnerable areas, he said.
Progressive-Conservative Manitoba MLA Clifford Grayson said he's not aware of any arrests linked to the Predators. Grayson also added that US state legislators have told him the robots have had mechanical and performance issues, especially in bad weather.
The US military plans to deploy a new intelligence drone in Afghanistan, which military experts say will allow US troops to monitor much larger operational theaters than before, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
The newspaper said the airborne surveillance system is called Gorgon Stare and will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.
The system consists of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, which can can transmit up to 65 live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements, the paper said.
By contrast, current Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a narrow area the size of a building or two, The Post noted.
“Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at,and we can see everything,” the paper quoted [an Air Force spokesperson].“
The imperial sky robots see all: First in Afghanistan, with inevitable deployments for mega-events and everyday use in NATO-bloc cities.
The choice of Gorgonas a moniker is a bit disturbing, which is the intent.
Police in Miami may be the first US police agency to deploy an unmanned aerial robot, increasingly common in the US's overseas offensives, for regular use. A federal grant may have supplied funding for the project, according to this report:
The Miami-Dade Police Department recently finalized a deal to buy a drone, which is an unmanned plane equipped with cameras. Drones have been used for years in Iraq and Afghanistan in the war against terror.
Many residents are concerned that the new technology will violate their privacy.
Residents... questioned whether or not Miami-Dade Police can afford to purchase the drone, especially since the department has recently made a lot of budget cuts. "Nothing happens quickly in the purchasing process, and that's something that really was in place, the funds for that, a couple of years ago," [the Police Director] said...
The purchase of the drone may have been made possible through a federal grant; however, this has not been confirmed.
Honeywell has applied to the FAA for clearance to fly the drone in urban areas. This has never been allowed before, but if it does happen, the Miami-Dade Police Department will be the first police agency in the US to use the technology.
The Harper government is planning a Taj Mahal complex for the Defence Department's spies, complete with a hockey rink, basketball and volleyball courts and a bank in a secure facility on Ogilvie Road, says the head of the department's largest union.
John MacLennan, who obtained the details of the Communications Security Establishment's seven-building campus, says he is concerned that DND has gone overboard as the department is facing budget cuts.
"Do they need the sports field? Do they need the walking paths? Do they need the hockey rink complete with a Zamboni?" asked MacLennan, national president of the Union of National Defence Employees. "It's going to be the Taj Mahal of government buildings in this country. "How do you justify that in the restraint times we are in?" he asked, adding that in the next several years DND is required to cut $1 billion from its budget.
The project, announced last year by Defence Minister Peter MacKay, will cost taxpayers around $880 million. That doesn't include facilities management, which will be added later. MacLennan said an Australian firm, Plenary Group, will be the facilities manager, with a 34-year contract expected to be worth $5.5 billion.
Toronto police want to keep 52 of the 77 surveillance cameras they temporarily purchased for the G20 summit, more than tripling the force’s stock of CCTV equipment.
They would buy them back at half price from the federal government, which is footing the bill for G20 security.
The police also plan to buy back 400 of 5,200 sets of tactical safety gear, including helmets, gas masks and eye shields, as well as the three sound-cannon LRADs police acquired leading up to the summit.
These temporary mega events are commonly exploited to purchase expensive and controversial military weaponry and surveillance equipment that may otherwise not be permitted by the public and local budgets. It is understandable that these groups would be reluctant to return these devices and or dismantle new surveillance networks.
Stephen Graham discusses this in Cities Under Siege, the key book of military urbanism.
The Ontario Ombudsman report has also been released, condemning the the summit's mass civil rights violations. It is available here.
A rather unusual late-2009 ad from Cisco promoting their urban surveillance technologies. Features the Canadian actress Ellen Page in an attempt to humanize and make "ordinary" the military-urban complex.
