Drones on domestic surveillance duties are already deployed by police
and corporations. In time, they will likely be weaponised
| by Naomi Wolf
By 2020, it is estimated that as many as 30,000 drones will be in use in
US domestic airspace. Photograph: US navy/Reuters
( December 23, 2012, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) People often ask me, in
terms of my argument about "ten steps" that mark the descent to a
police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that
with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones,
by both US
military and by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a
specific mandate to engage in surveillance
and with the capacity for weaponization – which is due to begin in earnest at
the start of the new year – it means that the police state is now officially
here.
In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with
its provision to deploy fleets of drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an
attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that this followed a
major lobbying effort, "a huge push by […] the defense sector" to
promote the use of drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be
in use by 2020, some as small as hummingbirds – meaning that you won't
necessarily see them, tracking your meeting with your fellow-activists, with
your accountant or your congressman, or filming your cruising the bars or
your assignation with your lover, as its video-gathering whirs.
Others will be as big as passenger planes. Business-friendly media stress their planned abundant use by
corporations: police in Seattle have already deployed them.
An unclassified US air force document reported by CBS (pdf)
news expands on this unprecedented and unconstitutional step – one that
formally brings the military into the role of controlling domestic populations
on US soil, which is the bright line that separates a democracy from a military
oligarchy. (The US constitution allows for the deployment of National Guard
units by governors, who are answerable to the people; but this system is
intended, as is posse comitatus, to prevent the military from
taking action aimed at US citizens domestically.)
The air force document explains that the air force will be
overseeing the deployment of its own military surveillance drones within the borders
of the US; that it may keep video and other data it collects with these drones
for 90 days without a warrant – and will then, retroactively, determine if the
material can be retained – which does away for good with the fourth amendment
in these cases. While the drones are not supposed to specifically "conduct
non-consensual surveillance on on specifically identified US persons",
according to the document, the wording allows for domestic military
surveillance of non-"specifically identified" people (that is, a
group of activists or protesters) and it comes with the important caveat,
also seemingly wholly unconstitutional, that it may not target individuals
"unless expressly approved by the secretary of Defense".
In other words, the Pentagon can now send a domestic drone to
hover outside your apartment window, collecting footage of you and your
family, if the secretary of Defense approves it. Or it may track you and your
friends and pick up audio of your conversations, on your way, say, to protest
or vote or talk to your representative, if you are not "specifically
identified", a determination that is so vague as to be meaningless.
What happens to those images, that audio? "Distribution of domestic
imagery" can go to various other government agencies without your consent,
and that imagery can, in that case, be distributed to various government
agencies; it may also include your most private moments and most personal
activities. The authorized "collected information may incidentally
include US persons or private property without consent". Jennifer Lynch of
the Electronic Frontier Foundation told CBS:
"In some records that were released by the air force recently …
under their rules, they are allowed to fly drones in public areas and record
information on domestic situations."
This document accompanies a major federal push for drone deployment this
year in the United
States, accompanied by federal policies to encourage law enforcement
agencies to obtain and use them locally, as well as by federal support for
their commercial deployment. That is to say: now HSBC, Chase, Halliburton etc
can have their very own fleets of domestic surveillance drones. The FAA
recently established a more efficient process for local police departments to
get permits for their own squadrons of drones.
Given the Department of Homeland Security militarization of police
departments, once the circle is completed with San Francisco or New York or
Chicago local cops having their own drone fleet – and with Chase, HSBC and
other banks having hired local police, as I reported here last week – the meshing of
military, domestic law enforcement, and commercial interests is absolute. You
don't need a messy, distressing declaration of martial law.
And drone fleets owned by private corporations means that a first
amendment right of assembly is now over: if Occupy is massing outside of a
bank, send the drone fleet to surveil, track and harass them. If citizens rally
outside the local Capitol? Same thing. As one of my readers put it, the scary
thing about this new arrangement is deniability: bad things done to citizens by
drones can be denied by private interests – "Oh, that must have been an
LAPD drone" – and LAPD can insist that it must have been a private
industry drone. For where, of course, will be the accountability from citizens
buzzed or worse by these things?
Domestic drone use is here, and the meshing has begun: local cops in Grand Forks, North Dakota called in a DHS Predator
drone – the same make that has caused hundreds of civilian
casualties in Pakistan – over a dispute involving a herd of cattle. The military
rollout in process and planned, within the US, is massive: the Christian Science Monitor reports that a total of
110 military sites for drone activity are either built or will be built, in 39
states. That covers America.
We don't need a military takeover: with these capabilities on US soil
and this air force white paper authorization for data collection, the military
will be effectively in control of the private lives of American citizens. And
these drones are not yet weaponized.
"I don't think it's crazy to worry about weaponized drones. There
is a real consensus that has emerged against allowing weaponized drones
domestically. The International Association of Chiefs of Police has recommended
against it," warns Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the ACLU,
noting that there is already political pressure in favor of weaponization:
"At the same time, it is inevitable that we will see [increased]
pressure to allow weaponized drones. The way that it will unfold is probably
this: somebody will want to put a relatively 'soft' nonlethal weapon on a drone
for crowd control. And then things will ratchet up from there."
And the risk of that? The New America Foundation's report on drone use in Pakistan
noted that the Guardian had confirmed 193 children's deaths from
drone attacks in seven years. It noted that for the deaths of ten militants,
1,400 civilians with no involvement in terrorism also died. Not surprisingly,
everyone in that region is traumatized: children scream when they hear drones.
An NYU and Stanford Law School report notes that drones "terrorize citizens
24 hours a day".
If US drones may first be weaponized with crowd-control features, not
lethal force features, but with no risk to military or to police departments or
DHS, the playing field for freedom of assembly is changed forever. So is our
private life, as the ACLU's Stanley explains:
"Our biggest concerns about the deployment of drones domestically
is that they will be used to create pervasive surveillance networks. The danger
would be that an ordinary individual once they step out of their house will be
monitored by a drone everywhere they walk or drive. They may not be aware of
it. They might monitored or tracked by some silent invisible drone everywhere
they walk or drive."
"So what? Why should they worry?" I asked.
"Your comings and goings can be very revealing of who you
are and what you are doing and reveal very intrusive things about you –
what houses of worship you are going to, political meetings, particular
doctors, your friends' and lovers' houses."
I mentioned the air force white paper. "Isn't the military not
supposed to be spying on Americans?" I asked.
"Yes, the posse comitatus act passed in the 19th century forbids a
military role in law enforcement among Americans."
What can we do if we want to oppose this? I wondered. According to Stanley,
many states are passing legislation banning domestic drone use. Once again, in
the fight to keep America a republic, grassroots activism is pitched in an
unequal contest against a militarized federal government.
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