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Drones. The name is enough to make me shudder.
Between the drone strikes the United States military has been running in Pakistan and Yemen — which have killed almost 1,000 civilians, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism — and the Charlottesville City Council recently taking a far-reaching step in banning drones in the city because of privacy, this new technology of unmanned aerial vehicles has become a hot topic and certainly raises concerns for both its domestic and international future use.
However, drones can provide some domestic benefits that have gone unnoticed.
The U.S. has 63 registered domestic drone operators in the country receiving funds from the U.S. Defense Agency; one of these is Virginia Tech’s Unmanned Systems Laboratory.
Kevin Kochersberger, the director of Tech’s Unmanned Systems Laboratory, explained how the idea of drones in the U.S. has been wrongly compared with international uses of drones, using his lab’s work as an example.
“When people refer to drones, they immediately think of weaponized, unmanned vehicles,” Kochersberger said. “That couldn’t be farther from what we do at the lab.”
According to Kochersberger, his lab, as well as other labs throughout the country, is working on building drones for purposes such as search and rescue, tending to crops, monitoring wetlands for climate change and even delivering packages commercially.
As Kochersberger cleared up my perceptions on drone operation in this country, it occurred to me that the current controversy on drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen lies with the illegal war crimes of U.S. Defense rather than the technology itself.
Kochersberger stated that while the agency might ask his lab to build an autonomous vehicle in exchange for grant money, what the U.S. makes the vehicle do is determined exclusively by the Department of Defense.
Drones themselves are not a way to target civilians internationally; rather, they are a tactic susceptible to critique for targeting civilians, especially when depicted by the U.S. Defense’s drone practices abroad.
However, the question remains whether any legitimate concern of drone use exists domestically, as the Charlottesville City Council has clearly expressed in its legislation, if drones themselves are not the problem.
Kochersberger said these concerns deal with extreme hypotheticals.
“There are legitimate concerns of privacy if one conjures up the absolute worst-case extreme examples of how (drones) can be used,” Kochersberger said.
However, there is only so much we can do to predict and prevent issues we might run into with drone use in the future.
For now, though, the benefits drones can provide domestically outweigh any possible risks.
Law enforcement should do their best to establish specific parameters of its drone use, especially when used to investigate crimes, but when used to minimize the harm of legal tasks performed by humans, drones can certainly work themselves into a critical role in our society.
A version of this article appeared in the Feb 20 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssoOASanKao
Published Feb 2013
Emmy-winning journalist, Shad Olson, explores the controversy over U.S. drone policy, both at home and abroad.
While technological sky supremacy gives America strategic superiority on the battlefield, the prospect of drone proliferation over U.S. cities is causing concern about loss of privacy, an end to Habeas Corpus and judicial due process and the destruction of Constitutional rights.
South Dakota U.S. Senator John Thune and former U.S. Senate candidate, Sam Kephart share their views about the consequences of domestic drone deployment in the fight against terrorism.
Originally aired on KNBN-TV, (NBC) NewsCenter1, Rapid City, South Dakota in February 2013.
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Nothing like knowing the government has this kind of power over it's citizens. Didn't Charlottesville become the first U.S. city to ban drones. i don't know if it's the media or Hollywood portrayal glorifying the "War on Terrorism" and the U.S. military and espionage with tv shows like "24", "Alias", "The West Wing" "Chuck", "Covert Affairs" "Burn Notice" or movies such as "Enemy of the State", "War Games", "Mission: Impossible", "The Assignment", "Syriana", "SALT",
The Bourne Trilogy (The Bourne Identity Bourne Supremacy Bourne Ultimatum) make it seem that the CIA and National Security Agency are something they are not.
Oh not to mention when the U.S. Congress had to asked the Obama Administration for the drone records.
So please don't tell me not to be worried.
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Don't forget video games such as Call of Duty.
My personal favorite
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCUQKjA6Ix8&t=11m10s
From Saints Row The Third
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Mukund, how can you say the benefits outweigh the risks without providing supporting evidence? As soon as the government finds that it can get away with enhanced surveillance techniques, it does. Whether it's by steamrolling due process through legislation like the Patriot Act or by leveraging new technologies to extend surveillance.
Private property cannot be trespassed upon, but citizens don't own airspace, nor can they prevent imaging of their property from outside its physical boundaries (to some extent - in Kyllo v. United States, the courts have stated that thermal imaging can't be used without a warrant to determine the thermal signature of private dwellings).
The problem is that enhanced surveillance blurs the lines of due process and probable cause. Speed cameras are one thing: they are just more effective at catching people breaking the law in public. But once we move into the realm of technology that allows monitoring of private activities, it is essential that this technology is allowed only after probable cause and a warrant have been established, not before.
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What stuck out to me
Kochersberger said. “That couldn’t be farther from what we do at the lab.”
As Kochersberger cleared up my perceptions on drone operation in this country, it occurred to me that the current controversy on drone attacks in Pakistan and Yemen lies with the illegal war crimes of U.S. Defense rather than the technology itself.
Kochersberger stated that while the agency might ask his lab to build an autonomous vehicle in exchange for grant money, what the U.S. makes the vehicle do is determined exclusively by the Department of Defense.
Kochersberger said these concerns deal with extreme hypotheticals.
So you [Kochersberger] build and design them but you don't know if one day it could be carrying missiles? Really?
You said that some are used for other reasons but you have no exact way of telling or explaining other than what you said?
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The Virginia General Assembly actually placed a moratorium on drones.
lis.virginia. gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?131+sum+HB2012
lis. virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?131+ful+HB2012H2
lis.virginia. gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?131+ful+HB2012H2+pdf
HB 2012 Drones; moratorium on use of unmanned aircraft systems by state and local law-enforcement, etc
Drones; moratorium. Places a moratorium on the use of unmanned aircraft systems by state and local law enforcement and regulatory entities until July 1, 2015, except in defined emergency situations.
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