Newly Released Drone Records Reveal Extensive Military Flights in US

[unhappycamper]

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/newly-released-drone-records-reveal-extensive-military-flights-us



Newly Released Drone Records Reveal Extensive Military Flights in US
December 5, 2012 | By Jennifer Lynch

Today EFF posted several thousand pages of new drone license records and a new map that tracks the location of drone flights across the United States.

These records, received as a result of EFF’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), come from state and local law enforcement agencies, universities and—for the first time—three branches of the U.S. military: the Air Force, Marine Corps, and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).



While the U.S. military doesn’t need an FAA license to fly drones over its own military bases (these are considered “restricted airspace”), it does need a license to fly in the national airspace (which is almost everywhere else in the US). And, as we’ve learned from these records, the Air Force and Marine Corps regularly fly both large and small drones in the national airspace all around the country. This is problematic, given a recent New York Times report that the Air Force’s drone operators sometimes practice surveillance missions by tracking civilian cars along the highway adjacent to the base.

The records show that the Air Force has been testing out a bunch of different drone types, from the smaller, hand-launched Raven, Puma and Wasp drones designed by Aerovironment in Southern California, to the much larger Predator and Reaper drones responsible for civilian and foreign military deaths abroad. The Marine Corps is also testing drones, though it chose to redact so much of the text from its records that we still don't know much about its programs.

[Sherman A1]

1. Not a good thing at all

that said, there should be some available practice areas available to the operators.

[tama]

2. Why?

That presupposes there should be drones and US military imperialism. Why should there?

[Sherman A1]

3. I don't think that you will put the genie back in the bottle

the technology will not go away. It should not however, be used on US Citizens without warrants and due process.

[tama]

4. The energy sources to power that technocracy are depleting.

So there is a choice, what do we want to do with the energy available to use. For an individual it is a matter of individual preference, which are just drops in the ocean, but the system as a whole is a sea made of water molecules and all the waves individual choices and preferences and beliefs cause.

[Sherman A1]

5. Okay

How do you fix it?

[tama]

6. *I* can't fix

a system that is bigger than me and of which I'm just a small part. What I can do for my small part is to let go, stop holding and let the system correct and rebalance itself.