North Dakota police use Air Force Predator drone to locate American citizens
Note: my computer has caught a nasty virus and will be in the hospital for a few days. I will attempt to keep up on current events as well as I can, but mobil blogging is time consuming. Please accept my apology for any errors in formatting in this post, as well as my inability to visit all my friends’ blogs as often as I would like.
Here goes, I hpoe this comes out okay:
Last week I wrote a post about the Congress passing the defense bill with language which was worrisome because it could be interpreted to mean the United States military could be used against citizens who were in the United States without due process, and coupled with the news that Barack Obama’s lawyers have ruled that United States citizens are legitimate military targets the story I am about to write about is doubly troubling.
According to this article the police in North Dakota were looking for three armed men who had chased local law enforcement officials off of their property. The police did have a search warrant and these men’s actions cannot be defended and it is not my intent to do so here.
But that does not excuse what happened next; the police called in reinforcements, including the Highway Patrol, the bomb squad, SWAT, and…..two unmanned Predator drones from the
local Air Force base.
As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator
This story might be a benign example of the usage of a Predator drone on American soil, using a drone on a reconnaissance mission to ensure a situation is safe before the police enter a potentially dangerous situation seems harmless enough, but does anyone not think that their usage will become more commonplace as we move forward if we simply accept this? And as Predator drones flying over American soil becomes more commonplace are we to believe that they will not gain the authority to take more enlarged powers in law enforcement?
I am not talking about a future where Predator drones are called on to fire on American citizens, but rather a future where the drones are routinely flying over American cities and spying on Americans under the justification of stopping potential crimes. I am talking about a future where the military is charged with policing the American people BEFORE a crime has taken place.
We have already seen the unintended consequences of a well intentioned law–the PATRIOT Act–Americans see their 4th amendment protection violated on an hourly basis by the TSA as that organization assumes more and more power, we have the DHS actively encouraging American citizens to spy on each other in the “see something, say something” campaign launched by Janet Napolitano and this seems to ba a natural extension and byproduct of that law.
When are we as Americans going to stand up and declare that enough is enough!? Is this really the America we want to live in?
Trackbacks
- Episode 11 « Week In Review
- The Congress passes a bill which may lead to 30,000 unmanned drones patrolling the skies over American cities « America's Watchtower
- Unmanned drones coming to a city near you in the future « America's Watchtower
- Armed drones could soon be flying over cities in America « America's Watchtower
- New Jersey town using drones to enforce ‘social distancing’ | America's Watchtower
America's Watchtower 
Its the military thing that is chilling. Considering the passage of that last wonder bill that permits locking us up, we don’t need to travel this road. It always starts out this way. Good intentions… just like the Patriot Act.
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Yes, it does always start this way and we can rest assured that we will see more of this in the future. This is just the beginning.
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Wow, you typed all of that out on your phone. Kudos, my friend.
Little by little, our liberties are being stripped away. I can’t help but wonder how far they are willing to go. Better yet is this question. How far are we willing to let them go?
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Yes I did! It took a long time to write typing with two fingers, I hope it won’t be long before I get the computer back.
You are right, we are slowly losing our freedoms. I think the Madison quote below my header image sums it all up.
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These drones would be a great tool in border control. If I know the government though that would never be considered a proper use of them. It’s better to violate the rights of citizens and give rights to non-citizens than to follow the rule of law.
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A good point, if we have enough of these to help local law enforcement weshould have more of them on the border.
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I have to agree. I’d say it’s ironic that they’d use them against citizens, but it’s not. It’s completely predictable.
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Sadly you are right, I wasn’t even surprised when I first read this story.
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Reading this story has completely ruined my day…and I come from an industry that uses Drones all the time to find bad guys, or I mean bad guys that AREN’T American……seriously, I read this article this afternoon at work and I can’t stop thinking about it….In fifty years, will the historians ever realize this is another step towards the complete dismemberment of our rights of Privacy and freedom from domestic military actions?
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It is a sad day indeed when we see a story like this, in 50 years I fear the country will not be recognizable. This is the fundamental change Obama was talking about.
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I’ve got mixed feelings about this.
I think the use of the Predators to pinpoint the fugitives and thus enhance the safety of the law enforcement officers is a good use of advanced technology.
And enlisting the public’s active participation (“see something, say something”) is a pragmatic recognition of the reality that no matter how sophisticated, our resources cannot procure complete security unless we increase taxation to confiscatory levels. The only place I’ve seen that campain in action, by the way, is in the NYC mass transit system, where there’s no suggestion of spying on others. The idea is that if you see something out of the ordinary – and they focus entirely on packages and parcels left unattended in stations and on buses and trains – alert the authorities.
Calling “see something, say something” a campaign of encouraging us to spy on each other is simply disingenuous. As to the TSA roaming Tennessee’s highways, the jury’s still out, but I don’t like the feel of it.
Take good care and may God bless us all!
TGY
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I’m surprised that this is legal what with the The Posse Comitatus Act and all.
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You really don’t know what Posse Comitatus is all about do you? Or, did you read the part about the drones being based at an AFB and ASSUME it was a military operation??
They are based at an Air Force base but belong to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, hence, Posse Comitatus does NOT come into play…
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Personally, I fail to see why it’s an issue… They are a lot cheaper than helicopters and the name *Predator Drone* is only a name, they aren’t armed, and I seriously doubt they would be, unless they were needed to engage a HARD TARGET that was well defended and would possibly result in the death or injury of our LEOs…
And when used in the capacity that this one was used, I seriously see no issue, it’s not a military drone, they are based at an Air Force base but belong to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and I honestly believe it’s a marvelous use of government resources for a change…
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