
U.S. Watched George Floyd Protests in 15 Cities Using Aerial Surveillance - jbegley
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/us/politics/george-floyd-protests-surveillance.html
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threatofrain
Also relevant, Air Force is investigating the use of military planes during
protests.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/us/politics/investigation...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/us/politics/investigation-
military-surveillance-planes-george-floyd-protests.html)

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koheripbal
If the words "aerial surveillance" was replaced with the word "helicopter",
then this article could have been posted verbatim 40 years ago, and been just
as inconsequential.

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consumer451
They didn’t have stingrays 40 years ago.

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masonic
40 years ago, stingrays weren't necessary to monitor cellular calls.

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consumer451
Yes, but my point is that 40 years ago the intelligence capabilities of an
aerial vehicle were orders of magnitude less useful.

A jet ranger carrying a passenger with binoculars is vastly different than
that same jet ranger with modern optics and RF packages. The only real
commonality between the two is that they are both deployed on aerial
platforms.

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jmpman
Do those drones go through the same FAA certifications as human manned planes?
If not, they shouldn’t be allowed to fly over US civilian populations.

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o-__-o
Yes

[https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/aircraft_certifica...](https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/aircraft_certification/aircraft_registry/ua/)

Further drone operators are required to stay in contact with ATC while a
flight plan is in effect. VFR rules apply while the drone is in eyesight of
the operator.

Assume the government can override these requirements with a flick of a pen.

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rasz
The real question is how many of ICE drone platforms were armed?

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Fjolsvith
Seriously? As in making an airstrike on illegals type of armed?

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wmichelin
Anything without a paywall?

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ethanwillis
I don't get why this comment is being downvoted. This definitely contributes
to the discussion. If the entire or a majority of the front page is paywalled
articles than those of us who can't afford, don't want to support a specific
publication, etc. can't meaningfully contribute to the discussion.

I think this is a BAD thing for the health of the comment section. An even
worse outcome is people commenting based on the headline and maybe a blurb
only. How is that supposed to promote a good community?

If you want paywalled articles being the bulk of the posts on hacker news that
garner discussions then we might as well just go ahead and paywall this site..
because it's slowly becoming a paywalled tech discussion site.. just with more
steps.

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o-__-o
So would I be wrong to post a link to a full movie when link requests you pay
for it?

Piracy is piracy

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ethanwillis
Piracy is a result of a bad business model.

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evgen
Piracy is the result of you wanting something and not wanting to pay anything
towards its creation and the upkeep of the creators. Piracy is the collective
result of personal greed. Don't try to hide it, and don't try to tart it up in
some BS about bad business models.

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ethanwillis
That's not even remotely true across the board.

I won't bother digging into all of the details of bad publishing business
models in academia, but that is a direct counterpoint to the blanket statement
you're trying to make.

With staying on topic re: The costs to the end consumers. It's not personal
greed to not want to pay to access the content when the cost of the content
doesn't reflect the cost to produce it or even a "fair premium" on top of what
it costs to produce it.

You're also discounting the business models themselves and how they work.
Let's say I care to read this one specific article from NYT. Why do I have to
pay to access all of their content? If they want more money they'd allow me to
do a microtransaction to purchase this article. And no, not 20-30% of what a
month long subscription costs.

It is in fact a bad business model. In either case, I don't pirate these
articles and I'm even arguing against using workarounds to view them without
paying. So don't try to paint me as some comically evil person who just
"doesn't want to pay" because my argument is inconvenient to your world view.

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chasd00
and?

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unethical_ban
The federal government had no need to surveil its citizens in addition to the
thousands of police officers and helicopters and drones at a city and state
level.

It also shows such a signal of prioritization: Why isn't the federal
government protecting its citizens from bad police officers? Why did it take
three weeks of peaceful demonstrations (and some violence) to get any
attention to this?

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microcolonel
Are we supposed to be upset? It's easy to play down what's been happening
these past few weeks from a suburb or small city, but we should hope that the
extreme criminal acts that have _destroyed whole neighborhoods_ recently at
least have some chance of being solved.

Much as the sympathizers would like to deflect that insurance is somehow going
to cover all of this (it isn't), anyone who complains about “food deserts” but
cheers on riots in the hood is part of the problem whether they admit it or
not.

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1helloworld1
Nobody in power cared about George Floyd's death until the violent protests.
As Noam Chomksy once said - See, people with power understand exactly one
thing: violence.

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microcolonel
> _Nobody in power cared about George Floyd 's deaths until the violent
> protest_

That is untrue. Well before the executions, arsons, and burglaries, there was
essentially no ambiguity in the public perception of the case. Most people who
watched the video believed they witnessed a murder, and that charge was
already planned for Chauvin, well before the public was aware of riots.

And of course, even if it did work, it would still be wrong, and the people
executing people and shooting senior citizens to death to steal televisions
should be prosecuted.

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xxpor
Executions? Wtf are you talking about?

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microcolonel
Several people have been executed, including a Federal Protective Services
officer.

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newacct583
Anderson was killed a a 2A boogaloo nut, not a BLM protester:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_boogaloo_killings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_boogaloo_killings)

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microcolonel
Nobody is less dead when killed by a person of a different ideology from the
nominal ideology of a gathering.

When you push out the police, it's no wonder that people who would like to get
away with heinous crimes show up.

