DHS Domestic Drones Designed To Snoop on Guns, Communications

Not that Big Brother robots
will ever come swooping across the sky, sniffing out people
carrying guns and locating people by their mobile devices, but just
in case there was ever a need for such a thing, the Department of
Homeland Security is building such capabilities into its
domestically deployed drones. For now, drones that can identify
people toting rifles, sniff out cell phone conversations and
(potentially) launch weapons are primarily deployed at the border,
but they’re getting quite a workout in the heartland, too, reports
CNet’s Declan McCullagh.

Writes McCullagh:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has customized its
Predator drones, originally built for overseas military operations,
to carry out at-home surveillance tasks that have civil
libertarians worried: identifying civilians carrying guns and
tracking their cell phones, government documents show.

The documents provide more details about the surveillance
capabilities of the department’s unmanned Predator B drones,
which are primarily used to patrol the United States’ northern and
southern borders but have been pressed into service on behalf of a
growing number of law enforcement agencies including the FBI, the
Secret Service, the Texas Rangers, and local police.

CNet links to
unredacted DHS requirements for domestic Predator drones, which
provide some interesting details on the device’s abilities and
their potential uses.

Of interest to Second Amendment fans, of course, is the idea of
robots in the sky spotting and marking the location of anybody
carrying a rifle or a shotgun (a holstered pistol would seem to be
a stretch for the technology — at least, so far). That’s not an
uncommon activity in much of the country, and the idea of eager
Homeland Security goons bouncing across forest and desert in
pursuit of some poor SOB out to bag a rabbit or plink a few tin
cans is less than assuring to many people.

3.5.3.1.7 Shall be capable of identifying a standing human being
at night as likely armed or not (based on position of arms) at a
slant range of one and a half times the specified Operating
Altitude.

The requirements also lay out the wish list for the drones’
abilities to intercept communications and target the source of
signals. The abilities are specified by bandwidth, and a quick
cross-check with what devices use which parts of the spectrum
reveal that, yes, indeed, pretty much any widget you may care to
carry and talk, text or email through is covered.

3.5.5 Signals Interception
3.5.5.1.1 Shall (T) provide 360-degree coverage in azimuth of the
spectrum from 30 MHz to 3 GHz unblocked.

3.5.5.1.2 The payload shall provide 2 degree (T) 1 degree (O)
root mean square (RMS) direction finding (DF) accuracy from 30 MHz
to 150 MHz and provide 1 degree (T) 1/2 degree (O) root mean square
(RMS) direction finding (DF) accuracy from 150 MHz to 3000 MHz.

DHS originally acquired the drones for border patrol purposes,
but a
2012 report (PDF) from the DHS Office of the Inspector General
revealed that Customs and Border Protection has been loaning its
toys to agencies including:

• Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies, including
  Office of Border Patrol, United States Secret Service, Federal
  Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Immigration and Customs
  Enforcement (ICE);
• Bureau of Land Management;
• Federal Bureau of Investigation;
• Department of Defense;
• Texas Rangers;
• United States Forest Service; and
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Those loans take place with sufficient frequency that the report
frets that CBP “does not have agreements with exterior stakeholders
for reimbursement of mission costs.”

Oh, yeah. I guess those Big Brother robots are swooping
across the sky, after all.

2013-03-04 14:00:21

Source: http://reason.com/blog/2013/03/04/dhs-drones-designed-to-snoop-on-guns-com