More Drones Set To Use US Air Space 223
Dupple writes with a quote from the BBC about more testing of Predator drones in U.S. air space: "Tests have been carried out to see whether military drones can mix safely in the air with passenger planes. The tests involved a Predator B drone fitted with radio location systems found on domestic aircraft that help them spot and avoid other planes. The tests will help to pave the way for greater use of drones in America's domestic airspace."
Who do I have to salute? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who do I have to salute? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's just another bear in the air
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I don't know why there's all this grousing on the message thread! Can't you see?
The title of the submission tells everything needed to know: America is making drones safer!
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I fly and it scares me that someone, who has little actual flight time, could pilot a drone where he shouldn't and cause a fatality.
I fly, and I'm more concerned with the newly minted sport and recreational pilots who also have little actual flight time and are piloting other people AND heavier, less maneuverable machines.
Re:Speaking of local enforcement drones.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm also a pilot. Yes, sport and rec pilots may not have a lot of time (at least not those with new certificates) but they do have "skin" in it, unlike the drone pilots. A drone pilot probably isnt faced with injury or death if he crashes.
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Re:Who do I have to salute? (Score:4, Informative)
The lawyers will make sure this has no more appearance of domestic military action than the AR-15 in the trunk of your local squad car.
The persistent surveillance concerns are as much a concern with camera towers and balloons as powered vehicles. Most people don't seem to mind the Wal-Mart Panopticon despite its much greater persistence than a lithium polymer powered flying machine.
Abuse potential:
-Weaponized drones getting hacked or abused by corrupt/human cops(jealous husband).
-Fishing expeditions under vague/broad mission profiles such as "missing child search" leading to search warrants.
-Low-cost enabling more aggressive swarm behavior ala Half-Life 2.
-encrypted/obscurificated video surveillance without a warrant(any application which requires covert video should be based on execution of a warrant). Transparency to consumer wireless video standards greatly reduces abuse potential in a similar way to police scanners.
Bottom line, the general public takes no issue with drones used for first responder & public safety applications. They take issue with surveillance, investigation, and man-hunts.
The first 2 are resolved by making drone video/picture evidence inadmissible in court. Man-hunts are greatly solved by technological limitations(ATM), and prohibiting the use of weapons.
Bottom line, so long as the Supreme Court's don't make any dumb decisions involving the fourth amendment, most fruit from the poison tree will be useless in court. This means we primarily need to resist attempts to make progress down the slippery slope of search without a warrant, and paramilitary police tactics.
Drones were predicted by Orson Wells because they are the inevitable march of technological progress. Drones offer the potential for less violent resolution to conflict which we should all hope would reduce the need for heavy handed tactics. Many cases of police brutality result from an officer's fear for their personal safety. The ability to determine the nature of a threat without infringing on civil liberties will prevent them from assuming the worst case scenerio and over-reacting because of what might-have been.
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Drones were predicted by Orson Wells because they are the inevitable march of technological progress. .
H G Wells?
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Re:Who do I have to salute? (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the "drug war", they didn't much carry automatic weapons, either, at least since the '20s. Now they do.
The increasing militarization of local police forces is not something to be ignored.
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Re:Who do I have to salute? (Score:5, Informative)
Posse comitatus does not prohibit the use of the military against civilians. It only states that congress must authorize it, meaning the local sheriff, mayor, or governor can't call in federal troops. Only congress and the president can do that. So it's still wide open.
Re:Who do I have to salute? (Score:5, Insightful)
Say farewell forever to even the concept of posse comitatus, limited as it was. Now it is just a Latin phrase you never heard of.
Oh, don't you worry your pretty little head about that. The military won't technically do any law enforcement(though it may prove necessary to engage in certain 'domestic Force Protection' activities in order to safeguard DoD assets and personel...), they'll just fire-sale off military hardware under the Law Enforcement Support Office [dla.mil](unless you trust DoD certs, you'll probably get an SSL warning here) program to various police SWAT teams who will then use it for them.
See, absolutely nothing to worry about. Yes, the police may be logistically indistinguishable from your average upper-developing-world mechanized infantry; but the org chart says they aren't military, so it's all good.
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Yes, the police may be logistically indistinguishable from your average upper-developing-world mechanized infantry; but the org chart says they aren't military, so it's all good.
You do realize that the reason for posse commitatus is not to keep the local police from having effective and modern weapons, it is to keep the people who are using the effective, modern weapons under the control of the local civilian government, not the federal military command, and not imposing "outsider" rules on a local population? As in, troops can't go in to quash a whiskey rebellion, for example, or used to maintain control in southern states after they rebel again [wikipedia.org]. Except, of course, under order of
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Posse Comitatus Act was intended to limit military use, not enable it. The military can only be used domestically for means explicitly spelled out in the Constitution, or by Congressional legislation. The President has literally nothing to do with it, other than allowing or vetoing said Congressional legislation.
Re:Who do I have to salute? (Score:4, Interesting)
Srsly. It is easily within casual hobbyist technology to bring these things down.
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Exactly my thought. It is just a matter of time until some judge decides that the view from the air is considered reasonable public viewing.
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so having your own tween/kid daughters in your pool would be considered "creation of Child Pornography"?
or better for us draw Federal Charges for the Local Police for Creation/distribution of Child Pornography.
LAWYERS ARE STANDING BY just call 1-888-2SCREWM
Pew pew (Score:3)
Plain View Doctrine (Score:4, Informative)
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Everyone will just need to increase the diameter of their tin foil hats to about 4 to 6 feet, and never leave home without it.
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I think you have your numbers wrong.
You need to increase your hat to 426 feet in radius to cover your property.
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"The Plain View Doctrine (or is it "Plane View"?) probably applies here unfortunately."
Perhaps on a Federal level. But state law here still makes it illegal to "surveil" someone's property from any vantage other than "a plain view from the street" or sidewalk. Meaning that even casual use of cameras in drones, over residential property, is illegal. Yes, even for law enforcement or military.
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Is the drone stopping and frisking you? Is it taking some kind of infrared scan of your home? An overhead drone can't see anything that isn't in plain view. I'm certainly not saying domestic drones are a good idea, but I'm not seeing how their mere usage could be considered unlawful search and seizure.
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same as GPS tracking in my book. was just fine for someone to follow you around, they couldn't do that to everyone due to manpower limits.
Police cannot have 5 planes wandering around just looking and recording. They could have 5 drones.
What is OK for a person to do becomes no so OK when it is automated.
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Re:Pew pew (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people freak out if we send unmanned drones up to surveil things, but if you stick a guy in the plane suddenly it's OK?
Most of the protection of your privacy is economic, rather than legal or technological. A guy in a plane or a helicopter is Not Cheap, per hour, which creates a sort of 'de facto probable cause' requirement, since the cops can only justify sending one up if they think that they'll find something worth finding.
Drones are cheaper(still pretty expensive now, getting less so), which means that the economic disincentives to surveillance fall and people enjoy less actual protection from surveillance(since the strict legal protections are markedly lower than the historical economic ones).
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They've already budgeted for drones for the Cook County Sheriffs Dept (think all of Chicagoland) and have requests in with the FAA to fly them.
What they've been talking about are the smallish ones that fit in the back of a police SUV. They cost less than a car, so they can afford those.
Of course, it's only a matter of time until they start using much larger ones that can linger for a long, long time. They'll just have to coordinate with O'Hare for the high volume of air traffic.
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Repeat: any "surveillance" by any means other than the naked eye and ear is illegal without a warrant. And "surveillance" constitutes any vantage other than a nearby road or public place (like a sidewalk) where a normal passerb
This will be important... (Score:5, Funny)
If you don't think the police already have drones (Score:2)
"Radio location system" (Score:4, Informative)
Interestingly enough, you can listen in on those with a 20$ tv tuner (software defined radio):
http://www.irrational.net/2012/08/06/tracking-planes-for-20-or-less/ [irrational.net]
So I guess the good news is at least that we'll be able to tell when and where the drones are flying... if this is abused enough, once could also imagine taking them done with DIY drones.
Altitude? (Score:2)
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I like your idea. The whole point of a drone is to (quietly) fly low and slow to see stuff. Having a law that requires drones to stay above 30k ft will basically render them useless. Good.
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5 months before the ADS-B detector is added in to every radar detector and police scanner on the market.
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once could also imagine taking them done with DIY drones.
Meant to write "one could also imagine taking them down", of course...
We need Hope & Change now more than ever!! (Score:4, Funny)
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I'm sure Romney will roll this back because the right-wing hates police states.
If you're under the impression that my comment is in support of Romney, you're sadly mistaken. I'm voting for Gary Johnson.
However, it is widely ignored by the left all the bad things Obama has done while in office, even surpassing GWB in many things that the left used to complain about with GWB. Apparently Obama gets a free pass because he has a (D) after his name.
Obama's drone strikes [cnn.com]
Obama's medical marijuana raids. [huffingtonpost.com]
Obama does not deserve the left's support, I would really encourage them to vote
Who didn't see this coming? (Score:3)
They told me if I voted for McCain, we'd see drones blanket our domestic airspace... and they were right.
A good thing (Score:2)
Drones brought democracy to Afghanistan, what's not to like?
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Domestic Drones w/ ADS-B transponders = trackable (Score:5, Interesting)
If domestic drones will be allowed in domestic civilian airspace as long as they carry active ADS-B transponders, then there are a number of receiver+software packages that would enable them to be tracked by anyone with some tech skills.
Google "ADS-B receiver", one example: http://www.scannermaster.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=28-661518 [scannermaster.com]
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Partially, but many if not most aircraft dont implement it yet. Its especially unlikely that any general aviation aircraft (think cessna 172 and similar) will have it, and these are the aircraft that are most likely to be flying in the same airspace as a drone.
ADS_B is part of FAA's Nexgen project. They will only require most aircraft to carry it by 2020.
Personally I think this test will be a foregone conclusion for political reasons regardless of how actually safe it is.
Re:Domestic Drones w/ ADS-B transponders = trackab (Score:4, Interesting)
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I would imagine that if this evolves it will end up having constraints attached to it along the lines of the prohibitions on retransmitting or relaying information from other protected radio frequencies. While there are useful reasons to translate and distribute general flight tracking information, I'd be willing to bet that either these services are forced to omit law enforcement transponders altogether, or there will be automated gag orders on such sites regarding to drones under certain circumstances su
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If I were the military, then I would argue that the drones are able to avoid any aircraft, and therefore do not need to carry a transponder themselves.
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Anyone up for building an anti-drone that homes in on ADS-B transponder signals? Takes a drone to kill a drone!
Secret Bergman Handshakes. (Score:2)
JOE: Ask the cop on the corner...
DC: Ask the cop in the grocery store...
JOE: Ask the cop in the woodpile...
DC: Ask the cop on the rooftop...
JOE: Ask that cop that's knockin' at your back door...
SOUND: Knocking.
DC: Ask him!
--
BMO
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(Ancient Firesign Theater [firesigntheatre.com] for those not so generationally challenged).
Pilots Soon To Go (Score:5, Insightful)
Make no mistake. As soon as the body of safety data gets large enough we will see the elimination of pilots on commercial air craft. Once it is established that the bots drones are safer than human pilots another trade will vanish. Commercial trucking is on the edge of eliminating human drivers already. The safty record looks good and computized drivers do not break rules, speed, or go mental from the boredom.
The purpose of technology has always been to eliminate human labor. The catch is that we have no social structure at hand to take care of the many millions being displaced by job losses due to better technologies.
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I will never get on an airplane that does not have a live pilot in the cockpit who will die with me if the plane goes down
Well there could be a point when the computer gets too smart and crashes upside down or something to save the electronics while sacrificing the passengers, but I imagine that computers can be programmed to find sites to crash land, and I'm not sure that having pilots who can panic about their mortality is an advantage.
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Unless these things were perceived as unsafe, be it through FUD campaigns based on isolated incidents or be it companies maki
Drone Pro/Con (Score:5, Funny)
Pro: A drone could deliver you a pizza from your favorite joint across town during rush hour in five minutes.
Con: It could also deliver hellfire missiles if you don't tip the operator.
What, no "skynet" tag? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It was, but then sky--t censored it. Oops, I forgot to post anonymously, I can hear the drone coming now...
Politics will decide it not safety. (Score:3)
Personally I think this test will be a foregone conclusion for political reasons that drones will be deemed useable (even over cities) regardless of how actually safe it is.
Its especially ironic considering the current air law prohibits pilots flying 'experimental' class aircraft or ultralights over cities or any built-up area.
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Judging from the Google Autonomous Car and some of the contrasting flight path data I've seen, fully autonomous vehicles are frequently less prone to error then their inconsistent, drug using, emotional, fatigued human pilots.
Most commercial UAS(read micro-UAV w/micro price) are not autonomous and are generally just FPV RC vehicles with more redundancy(-optimism), and higher price tags justified by support contracts, warranties, cosmetic improvements, total-cost-of-ownership motivated diminishing-return component-quality improvements. Their most sophisticated autopilot functionalities are usually way-point navigation, GPS Loiter, Return to Base, Altitude Hold, and signal loss/component failure inspired controlled descents.
These can all be lumped in to bidirectional telemetry and what the robotics field calls "localization". The higher level functionality typical of military vehicles & research is what is required for collision avoidance.
Military vehicles like the predator drones aren't usually powered by lithium batteries but instead by petrol engines or turbines(sometimes fuel cells). Their effective range and flight times are usually orders of magnitude higher and their power plant can support the wing area, and hotel energy load required by accessories such as 1000W Radars, pan-tilt heads, FLIR imaging systems, & single board computer based vision processing CPUs.
These vehicles are capable of systems like TERCOM, DSMAC, INS, TCAS, GPWS, GCWS, TAWS, & precision GPS, and can be outfitting to require human pilot intervention exclusively during takeoff/landing or not at all.
This class of vehicle is what is being discussed, and are being considered for applications such as air-freight/cargo transport, border patrol(already in operation with FAA COA), forestry service/BLM, Homeland Security patrols of critical infrastructure.
OK, so all of those acronyms are supposed to make me feel better?
They are flying (Score:2)
Around Lake St. Clair, from SANG
http://www.127wg.ang.af.mil/ [af.mil]
Super! (Score:3)
Because we TOTALLY need drones in domestic airspace to protect us against ______________.
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Legitimate uses of drones (Score:2)
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Aerial photography?
Traffic monitoring and alerting?
Dark Angel (Score:2)
Don't forget civilian drones ! (Score:2)
- Follow the police around and see what they are up to all day
- Follow the local politicians around to see who's working and who's dicking around all day
- Watch fireworks from above
- Drop politically motivated leaflets
- Provide a roving 3g/4g hotspot anywhere I want
Possibilities for this are endless.... Go Forth my Drone Army!!!!!
Re:Protected by Law (Score:2)
Anyone reading your list can see that the Police Protective Guild or some SuperPAC will ensure that our Fearless Leaders will close all the pertinent loopholes in the law so as to felonize any civilian uses.
THERE'S NO SUCH THING (Score:3)
THERE IS NO PREDATOR B!
IT'S AN MQ-9 REAPER!
Calling it "Predator B" just leads to confusion, as the production model of the Predator is the MQ-1B, the follow-on to the prototype RQ-1A.
This causes no end of frustration on an almost daily basis at work...
Besides all this, the aircraft in the article was a Guardian, which makes calling it a "Predator B" even more inane.
Re:Inanity (Score:2)
All pedantry aside, the "Guardian" (...Reminds me of "To Protect and Serve", brilliant connotation!) is an unarmed(?) model of the "MQ-1B".
Anti-personnel drones.... (Score:2)
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Re:hate my country (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:hate my country (Score:5, Funny)
Your country is not the one putting this forth. The current set of "leaders" is. Vote them out next Tuesday.
2008 called, they want their optimism back
Re:hate my country (Score:5, Insightful)
Your country is not the one putting this forth. The current set of "leaders" is. Vote them out next Tuesday.
2008 called, they want their optimism back
Then they too should vote for someone other than the person/group they voted into office back in '08. Because in the past 4 years, we've seen privacy and rights and wealth dwindle to a fraction of what they were prior...
Re:hate my country (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:hate my country (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not a chance if you happen to live in any of the 41 non-contested states. Vote for anyone you want in Georgia or California... The outcome is already conceded by the D's and the R's. Your vote in those places does not matter! If you happen to live in one of the 9 swing states, you've probably tossed your television and radio out the window by now. You've heard how both the D and the R will destroy America as we know it! So don't vote for either one of them.
Go here [isidewith.com] and vote for whomever's platform best matc
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...you have to dismantle the system....
I often see this same thought, that we have to blow up this corrupt system and start afresh. But the new system would be build by those with money and therefore power and will contain few if any of the features - designed to help the system be righted by the people - which the designers of the current system codified.
Will the new system have checks and balances? Will the new system let anyone access a court system with their grievance? Will the new system guarantee freedom of speech, etc.?
Really - you
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Did you warn them about Sandy? Bet you didn't you bastard.
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And what, exactly, do you expect that to accomplish? How will voting for the other party make your wishes on this specific topic known?
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So your solution to fixing things you dislike is to keep voting out whoever is currently in power? I don't even know what you mean by me playing "party politics" exactly, I was just saying that voting for a certain party is an extremely limited way to express your opinion on the whole range of issues that exist in any country. Voting for one of two parties accomplishes almost exactly nothing.
I don't feel an affiliation with any party in any political system (plus I don't even live in the US).
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Voting for one of two parties accomplishes almost exactly nothing.
Actually, voting at all in the US accomplishes exactly nothing, since the two leading parties are nearly indistinguishable, and one of them will always win. A vote for someone other than the leading candidates is a complete waste of time since that vote won't even be noticed. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to vote at all in the US election; it's a rigged, forgone conclusion, with the same mathematical odds as the damn lottery (assuming votes are actually counted at all, which may be a stupid ass
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A vote for someone other than the leading candidates is a complete waste of time since that vote won't even be noticed.
This is not true. Third parties have zero chance of winning, but voting for them can have a big impact on the two major parties. Support for Pat Buchanan of the Reform Party caused the Republican Party to move significantly to the right on social issues. Support for Ralph Nader of the Green Party made the Democrats realize that their "move to the center" was alienating their base. The popularity of the Socialist Party in the early 20th century caused the Democrats under FDR to move significantly to the
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So I should vote for someone who is even worse from my point of view?
That makes no sense.
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So I should vote for someone who is even worse from my point of view?
If you think that either Jill Stein [wikipedia.org] or Gary Johnson [wikipedia.org] is worse on this issue, then you should get a better informed point of view.
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While the green party is closer to my views, a vote for the green party is one less vote for the lesser evil.
Say all you want about voting for the lesser evil, but our voting method forces me to do that. If ~500 had voted for the lesser evil in florida we could have been spared GWB.
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You're laboring under the mistaken assumption that the two major parties have any significant disagreement about civil liberties protections. The proof that they don't is that neither of their presidential candidates has said a word about it.
If you want to protect civil liberties, you're going to have to vote for a minor party candidate. And that means you're going to lose, but at least you won't be voting against constitutional protections.
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Re:hate my country (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming, incorrectly, that the power of elected officials to avoid being treated like everyone else disappears once they leave office. For proof to the contrary, I give you war criminal Dick Cheney.
Specifically, Cheney proudly said on national television that he ordered waterboarding of prisoners, which the US declared to be a crime against humanity in 1945.
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...waterboarding of prisoners, which the US declared to be a crime against humanity in 1945.
citation needed
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From the Encyclopedia Brittanica [britannica.com]:
As a form of torture, waterboarding became illegal under the law of war with the adoption of the third Geneva Convention of 1929, which required that prisoners of war be treated humanely, and the third and fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949, which explicitly prohibited the torture and cruel treatment of prisoners of war and civilians, respectively. On the basis of the 1929 convention the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE; 1946–48) convicted 25 Japanese leaders of responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, specifically including torture by waterboarding (referred to by the IMTFE as the “water treatment”).
I was waterboarded (Score:4, Insightful)
Waterboarding specifically attempts to avoid water entering the nose, mouth, and airways.
Waterboarding can be done without water entering the victims body, but it can also include procedures where a funnel or syringe is used to dribble water into the back of the victims throat.
Many years ago I went through SERE [wikipedia.org] training, and I was waterboarded as part of the training. The instructors used the less severe method of pouring water onto a cloth covering my mouth and nose. We were given two small dumbells, one to hold in each hand, and told that when it became "unbearable" to just drop the weights and the cloth would be removed. We had a mixture of Navy and Marine personnel, and to give us an extra incentive to last as long as possible they did us one-at-a-time in front of the whole class. I didn't care if I held out longer than the other jarheads, but I was determined not to let any of the "squids" outlast me.
I tried to resist as long as I could, but soon it felt like someone was shooting a blowtorch into my lungs. I would have done anything to make it stop. I was single at the time, but today I have two kids. If I the only way to make it stop was a button that would kill my kids, I think I would push that button. It was that bad. It was certainly enough to make me betray my country and comrades, and no one who hasn't been through it should judge that.
Is it torture? I think it depends on your definition. I had no permanent harm or injury. I think the best answer is to ask if we would consider it torture if it was done to a captured American soldier.
Also, torture can and does result in useful information. Its just not reliable information. There is a difference.
Very true. Anyone who says "torture doesn't work" is clueless. The whole point of our training was to show that it works very well, and expecting anyone to "tough it out" is futile. Instead we need to compartmentalize information on a "need-to-know" basis, and assume that when someone is captured, everything they know is compromised.
There are plenty of methods for getting reliable information. If you have partial information, you can check extracted info against that. Some extracted info can be quickly verified against existing intelligence. If you capture three people, separate them, and continue to torture all three until their stories match up. You can use drugs to help break down resistance, and cloud the detainee's mind so it is difficult to keep the lies consistent. Sodium barbital works well, and can be combined with pain enhancers such as naloxone. If you don't have the drugs available, waterboarding a detainee who is severely sleep deprived works almost as well, but takes more time.
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How do you figure? If incumbents were consistently voted out of office then they would have no incentive to try to please their constituents, and even more incentive to please their powerful, unelected sponsors to reap rewards after they've served their single term. To even get in the race as a "credible" candidate you need to have the backing of some powerful "behind the scenes" actors - do you really think backing a new sycophant for every election would be anything but a minor inconvenience?
Or perhaps y
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What a load of succotash. Slip in a "vote the bums out" remark into a thread that had nothing to do with that.
FWIW, this erosion of privacy started long ago, not just four years ago. Both parties are guilty of it. Can you accept that?
The system itself is broken, do you not understand that? It's not the individual players that are broken, it's the whole system. How do you propose we fix that?
Const
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Unmaned Aerial Vehicles?
Pegasus = Maned Aerial Vehicle?