A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State (27 page)

Drone technology has advanced dramatically in the ensuing years, with surveillance drones getting smaller, more sophisticated and more lethal with each evolution. Modeling their prototype for a single-winged rotorcraft on the maple seed's unique design, aerospace engineering students at the University of Maryland have created the world's smallest controllable surveillance drones, capable of hovering to record conversations or movements of citizens.
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Nowhere to Hide

Thus far, the domestic use of drones has been primarily for surveillance purposes. Eventually, however, police departments and intelligence agencies will make drones a routine part of their operations. However, you can be sure they won't limit themselves to just surveillance.

Parrot AR Drone (Micah Green/Dispatch Staff)

Police today use whatever tools are at their disposal in order to anticipate and forestall crime. This means employing technology to attain total control. Technology, which functions without discrimination because it exists without discrimination, tends to be applied everywhere it can be applied. Thus the logical aim of technologically equipped police who operate as technicians must be control, containment, and eventually restriction of freedom. Unfortunately, to a drone, everyone is a suspect because drone technology makes no distinction between the law-abiding individual and the suspect. Everyone gets monitored, photographed, tracked, and targeted.

In this way, under the guise of keeping Americans safe and controlled, airborne drones will have to be equipped with an assortment of lethal and nonlethal weapons in order to effectuate control of citizens on the ground. The arsenal of nonlethal weapons will include LRADs, which are used to break up protests or riots by sending a piercing sound into crowds and can cause serious hearing damage; high-intensity strobe lights, which can cause dizziness, disorientation, and loss of balance and make it virtually impossible to run away; and tasers, which administer a powerful electric shock.

"Also available to police," writes journalist Paul Joseph Watson, "will be a drone that can fire tear gas as well as rubber pellets to disperse anyone still living under the delusion that they were born in a democratic country."
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In fact, the French company Tecknisolar Seni has built a drone armed with a double-barreled 44 mm Flash-Ball gun. The one-kilo Flash-Ball resembles a large caliber handgun and fires so-called non-lethal rounds, including tear gas and rubber impact rounds to bring down a suspect. Despite being labeled a "non-lethal weapon," this, too, is not without its dangers.
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As David Hambling writes for
Wired News
, "Like other impact rounds, the Flash-Ball is meant to be aimed at the body–firing from a remote, flying platform is likely to increase the risk of head injury"
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Drones are also outfitted with infrared cameras and radar
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that can pierce through the darkness, allowing the police to keep track of anyone walking around, regardless of the nature of their business. Police drones are equipped with thermal imaging devices to see through walls.
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There is absolutely nowhere to hide from these machines–even in your home.

As Congressmen Edward Markey and Joe Barton pointed out in a letter to the FAA

[S]tate and local governments, businesses, and private individuals are increasingly using unmanned aircraft in the U.S., including deployments for law enforcement operations. As technology advances and cost decreases-drones are already orders of magnitude less expensive to purchase and operate than piloted aircraft–the market for federal, state, and local government and commercial drones rapidly grows.

Many drones are designed to carry surveillance equipment, including video cameras, infrared thermal imagers, radar, and wireless network "sniffers." The surveillance power of drones is amplified when the information from onboard sensors is used in conjunction with facial recognition, behavior analysis, license plate recognition, or any other system that can identify and track individuals as they go about their daily lives.
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American scientists have also created blueprints for nuclear powered drones which would increase air time from days to months. Potential problems are dire, such as a crashed drone becoming a dirty bomb or a source of nuclear propulsion for any terrorist groups that get their hands on it.
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However, while the lethal capabilities of these drones are troubling, especially when one factors in the possibility of them getting into the wrong hands or malfunctioning, the more pressing concern has to do with the drones' surveillance capabilities. As discussed earlier, with the help of nanotechnology, scientists have been able to create ever-smaller drones that mimic the behavior of birds and insects and are almost undetectable.
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Despite their diminutive size, these drones are capable of capturing and relaying vast amounts of data and high-definition video footage. It's inevitable that as more local police agencies acquire these spy flies, their surveillance efforts will expand to include not only those suspected of criminal activity but anyone within range of the cameras.

Drone Errors, Risks and Vulnerabilities

Drones, however, are not foolproof. In fact, drones have a history of malfunctioning in midair. As David Zucchino reported in the
Los Angeles Times
, "The U.S. military often portrays its drone aircraft as high-tech marvels that can be operated seamlessly from thousands of miles away. But Pentagon accident reports reveal that the pilotless aircraft suffer from frequent system failures, computer glitches, and human error."
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For example, the first drone sent to the Texas-Mexico border in the summer of 2010 experienced a communications failure that led to "pilot deviation."
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Drones had to be temporarily grounded while technicians received more training. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

The U.S. military was on the verge of launching fighter jets and even entertained ideas about a possible shoot-down when an errant Navy drone veered into restricted airspace near Washington, D.C., in August 2010. The incident only served to reinforce concerns about drones let loose in American skies. "Do you let it fly over the national capital region? Let it run out of gas and hopefully crash in a farmer's field? Or do you take action and shoot it down?" said Navy Adm. James Winnefeld Jr., head of Northern Command. "You don't want to shoot it down over a populated area if you can avoid it."
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Even so, Winnefeld is pushing to get more drones into the air, citing the need for a slower and lighter aircraft that could be used to monitor events such as outdoor sports games, political conventions, or inaugural activities.

Apart from the safety concerns, of which there are many, the widespread use of drones domestically also poses certain security and privacy risks. As one blogger notes, "One has to wonder if the cost of these high tech machines would be balanced by their potentially limited uses or if departments would be forced to expand the uses in order to even employ the drones. Like SWAT battering rams and armored vehicles, would departments feel compelled to use the drones more often than necessary simply to justify their cost?"
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There's also the problem of drones being hacked into and potentially hijacked. There have been a handful of high-profile crashes involving American drones abroad, including in Iran, the island nation of Seychelles,
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and most recently in Somalia.
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The Iranian government claimed they brought down the drone flying in their territory via a computer hack. This is two years after Iraqis were able to hack into the live feed of a few spy drones using "$26 off-the-shelf software."
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And back in October 2011, the U.S. military admitted that their drone fleet had been infected by a "mysterious virus."
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One can only imagine what a technically proficient hacker in America might be able to do with the wealth of information he could potentially take from these drones, not to mention what a terrorist could do with a fully-armed, remote-controlled airplane.

If there's one thing you
can
be sure of, it's that these drones
will
be equipped with weapons. In fact, the Pentagon actually wants some drones to be able to carry nuclear weapons.
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The destruction brought about by a midair collision or sudden communications failure with a drone carrying weapons would be devastating.

Here to Stay

There are many constitutional concerns presented by drones recording Americans' daily activities, with the most obvious being what it means for the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures by government agents. While it will certainly give rise to a whole new dialogue about where to draw the line when it comes to the government's ability to monitor one's public versus private life, the courts have been notorious for their inability to keep pace with rapid advances in technology and its impact on our freedoms.

As with just about every freedom-leeching, technology-driven government policy inflicted on us by Congress and the White House in recent years, from whole-body scanners in airports to RFID chips in our passports and drivers licenses, the mass introduction of drones into domestic airspace has one main goal: to empower the corporate state by controlling the populace and enriching the military industrial complex. In the meantime, all you can do is keep your eyes on the skies. As Peter W Singer, a military analyst for the Brookings Institution, recognizes, "There's no stopping this technology. Anybody who thinks they can put this genie back in the box–that's silliness."
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One thing is clear: while the idea of airborne drones policing America's streets may seem far-fetched, like something out of a sci-fi movie, it is now our new reality. It's just a matter of how soon you can expect them to be patrolling your own neighborhood. The crucial question, however, is whether Americans will be able to limit the government's use of such tools of surveillance and compliance or whether we will be caught in an electronic nightmare from which there is no escape.