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"In Iraq" - they did it over US cities as well [0]. To be fair, I read that link a long time ago and don't remember the specifics of how long it ran and if it r

by avh02 6y ago

"In Iraq" - they did it over US cities as well [0]. To be fair, I read that link a long time ago and don't remember the specifics of how long it ran and if it ran in more cities. [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-surveillance/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-sur...

threeio 6y ago
Still going on... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveillance-midwest https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-bal...
coldpie 6y ago
Yes, such drones have been flying over US cities with unrest this year as well[1]. It's likely surveillance in the form of ARGUS-IS[2], as it was reported to be on the platform used by the Gorgon Stare project[3]. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2020/05/29/cbp-predator-drone-minneapolis-george-floyd-aclu/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2020/05/29/cbp-predato... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare
AviationAtom 6y ago
Can I just say that while the tech is no doubt a privacy concern, it was insanely incredible. They literally could track down where a person from any crime scene went to.
jcrawfordor 6y ago
Use over US soil had been surprisingly limited, the only vendor really pushing for it is PSS and they proved to not be especially effective in selling the system after the Baltimore demonstration. It is possible that military equivalents (e.g. GORGON STARE) are being used over the US just recently but there's not a lot of evidence to that effect---but it's completely possible, the right kind of aircraft (MQ-9) has been used, it's just that the vast majority of MQ-9s are not so equipped so there's no smoking gun. The TARS system is somewhat similar and has been used over the US but relies on a tethered balloon so it's not very mobile, I believe there are two of them, one in the DC area and one in southern NM. For a long time they were sort of infamously inoperational most of the time due to technical issues, and ten the DC one came loose and briefly terrorized Delaware, so I'm not sure how much of the time they're actually active right now. Every time I've gone by the southern NM TARS (not that often but probably several times a year) it's been down. These overhead persistent surveillance systems are both technically interesting and extremely alarming from a privacy and civil liberties perspective, but it is surprising how little use they've seen in the US. Part of that owes to controversy over their use but honestly a larger part of it seems to just be ongoing technical difficulties in getting them to perform well. Also to be a little snarky I wonder if PSS's weirdly geocities-era website is a factor... when I was doing research papers on these a year or two ago I had a solid ten minutes of disbelief that that was really their actual website. It seems to actually be a very small company.

by avh02 6y ago

threeio 6y ago

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

coldpie 6y ago

Yes, such drones have been flying over US cities with unrest this year as well[1]. It's likely surveillance in the form of ARGUS-IS[2], as it was reported to be on the platform used by the Gorgon Stare project[3]. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2020/05/29/cbp-predator-drone-minneapolis-george-floyd-aclu/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2020/05/29/cbp-predato... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare

AviationAtom 6y ago

Can I just say that while the tech is no doubt a privacy concern, it was insanely incredible. They literally could track down where a person from any crime scene went to.

jcrawfordor 6y ago

Use over US soil had been surprisingly limited, the only vendor really pushing for it is PSS and they proved to not be especially effective in selling the system after the Baltimore demonstration. It is possible that military equivalents (e.g. GORGON STARE) are being used over the US just recently but there's not a lot of evidence to that effect---but it's completely possible, the right kind of aircraft (MQ-9) has been used, it's just that the vast majority of MQ-9s are not so equipped so there's no smoking gun. The TARS system is somewhat similar and has been used over the US but relies on a tethered balloon so it's not very mobile, I believe there are two of them, one in the DC area and one in southern NM. For a long time they were sort of infamously inoperational most of the time due to technical issues, and ten the DC one came loose and briefly terrorized Delaware, so I'm not sure how much of the time they're actually active right now. Every time I've gone by the southern NM TARS (not that often but probably several times a year) it's been down. These overhead persistent surveillance systems are both technically interesting and extremely alarming from a privacy and civil liberties perspective, but it is surprising how little use they've seen in the US. Part of that owes to controversy over their use but honestly a larger part of it seems to just be ongoing technical difficulties in getting them to perform well. Also to be a little snarky I wonder if PSS's weirdly geocities-era website is a factor... when I was doing research papers on these a year or two ago I had a solid ten minutes of disbelief that that was really their actual website. It seems to actually be a very small company.