Homeland Security Now Spying on Americans

Homeland Security Now Spying on Us residents

BY MICHAEL WEBSTER: INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER.  NOV 10, 2008 at nine:00 PM PDT

Utilizing Unmanned Aerial Automobiles (UAV’s) and Area-Based Domestic Spying Surveillance engineering the U.S. Government is now watching American citizens under the guise of catastrophe administration and controlling the U.S. Mexican border. The Reaper/Predator B UAV’s robotic killing machines are presently in operation with the USAF, US Navy and the Royal Air Power. In addition non military consumers of the Predator B consist of: NASA and Homeland safety even though the US Customs and Border Defense agencies.

The Section of Homeland Security’s (DHS) space-based mostly domestic spy program operate by that agency’s National Purposes Company (NAO) is now in full operation.

Certainly in the course of Hurricane Ike, U.S. Customs and Border Protection for the very first time flew the Predator B unmanned aerial vehicle in “assist of the Federal Emergency Administration Agency’s relief efforts,” the insider tech publication noted.

Tom Burghardt in a recent article wrote that the Predator B carries out “targeted assassinations” of “terrorist suspects” across Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. The deployment of the robotic killing devices in the United States for “catastrophe management” is troubling to say the minimum and a harbinger of issues to come.

Despite objections by Congress and civil liberties teams DHS, in shut collaboration with the ultra-spooky Nationwide Reconnaissance Workplace , the agency that develops and maintains America’s fleet of military spy satellites, and the Nationwide Geospatial-Intelligence Agency that analyzes military imagery and generates mapping instruments, are proceeding with the very first phase of the controversial domestic spying program.

NAO will coordinate how domestic legislation enforcement and “disaster relief” businesses such as FEMA will use satellite imagery intelligence (IMINT) produced by military spy satellites. Burghardt wrote   earlier this year, in contrast to industrial satellites, their military cousins are far far more adaptable, have larger resolution and as a result have far more energy to check human action.

Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU’s Technological innovation and Liberty Venture, referred to as for a moratorium on the domestic use of military spy satellites till crucial queries ended up answered. Steinhardt said, the domestic use of spy satellites and UAV’s represents a massive brother monster and we need to place some restraints in area just before it grows into a thing that will trample Americans’ privacy rights.

This system now is delivering federal, state and local officials “with substantial access to spy-satellite imagery.” Steinhardt explained

As we have seen nonetheless, the use of satellite imagery for the duration of “national security occasions” these kinds of as previous summer’s political conventions in Denver and St. Paul may have aided FBI and regional legislation enforcement in their preemptive raids on protest organizers and subsequent squelching of dissent. One particular wonders if this is what DGI refers to when they create that the organization “performs function in the national interest, advancing public basic safety and nationwide safety via modern analysis, evaluation and applied technologies”.

There are real inquiries currently being requested, do these spies in the sky surveillance programs comply with privacy laws and doesn’t violate the Posse Comitatus Act?

The 1878 regulation prohibits the military from enjoying a role in domestic regulation enforcement. Considering that the 1990s nonetheless, Posse Comitatus has been eroded substantially by both Democratic and Republican administrations, mainly in the locations of “drug interdiction,” “border protection” as nicely as “Continuity of Govt” organizing by U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM).

Inside the Department of Homeland Safety (DHS), Customs and Border

Protection (CBP) is the lead agency charged with securing our nation’s borders.

United States Border Patrol (USBP) is charged with detecting and stopping the entry of terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, and unauthorized aliens into the nation, and interdicting drug smugglers and other criminals.

The USBP previously utilizes state-of-the-art technologies to augment its agents’ potential to patrol the border. The technologies utilized contain, but are not constrained to, sensors, light towers,mobile night time vision scopes, remote video surveillance methods, directional listeningdevices, different database methods, and unmanned aerial autos (UAV’s). These so named “force multipliers” allow the USBP to deploy fewer agents in a particular place although maintaining the potential to detect and counter intrusions and are progressively turning out to be a portion of the USBP’s day-to-day operations.  There are two different kinds of UAV’s: drones and remotely piloted cars (RPVs). Both drones and RPVs are pilotless, but drones are programmed for autonomous flight. RPVs are actively flown remotely — by a ground manage operator. UAV’s are defined as a driven aerial car that does not carry a human operator, utilizes aerodynamic forces to present lift, can fly autonomously or be piloted remotely, can be expendable or recoverable, and can carry deadly or nonlethal payloads. UAV’s have played important roles in latest conflicts.

Historically, UAV’s have been employed in numerous military settings exterior of U.S. borders.

UAV’s have provided reconnaissance, surveillance, focus on acquisition, lookup and rescue, and battle hurt assessments. In the latest wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, UAV’s have been utilized for surveillance reasons and to attack enemies. The Predator UAV, for case in point, was armed with anti-tank weapons to assault Taliban and Al Qaeda members.

UAV’s have also been employed in domestic configurations. The NASA-sponsored Environmental Investigation Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) program has produced civilian UAV’s to monitor pollution and measure ozone ranges. The Massachusetts Institute of Technologies (MIT) is involved in establishing Global Positioning Programs (GPS) and video clip camera direction for utilizing UAV’s to locate and determine poisonous substances. Lastly, the Department of Energy not too long ago announced that it will test UAV’s. They can also be outfitted with radiation sensors to detect likely nuclear booms, suite scenario nuke, soiled booms and reactor accidents. Countless numbers of Nationwide Guard troops are deployed alongside with U.S. Border Patrol to protect the US border and are flying unmanned plane technique (UAS), out of bases in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

As reported previously this 12 months in the Laguna Journal that a specific U.S. Military Process Drive has been created to protect our southern border with Mexico. Members of this activity force are planning to protected the border by responding with specifically trained quickly response U.S. Army task drive military models. These forces are previously in place with the heart of the electrical power being concentrated in El Paso and Southern New Mexico with a far reaching obligation from East Texas to Southern California.

USAF Common Victor E. Renuart Jr.

They are being staged and right away accessible as emergency  “on get in touch with” models for use against terrorist threats on the nation’s border and local disasters, explained Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of United States Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Commander.

The Ft. Bliss 1st Armored Division soldiers, as effectively as a new missile protection unit that are currently being designed at Fort Bliss. America’s 1st air defense and considered by Jane’s Intel Internet Report to be the entrepreneurs of the sky exactly where actually they fly. These F-22 Raptors that are stationed at Holloman Air Force Base will be obtainable to defend homeland security, Renuart explained.

Renuart, who visited Joint Task Force-North, which is underneath his command, declined to discuss any particulars of threats uncovered alongside the border with Mexico, but he stated many agencies, such as JTF-North, have created “it a quite difficult border for somebody to get edge of.” That would clarify why there have been current reports of U.S. military being observed on the border.

As beforehand described in the Journal the federal authorities acknowledged that the United States-Mexican border region has been enduring an alarming rise in the stage of criminal cartel action, such as drug and human smuggling, which has put considerable added burdens on Federal, State, and local legislation enforcement companies.

Dozens of U.S. citizens have been kidnapped, held hostage and killed by their captors in Mexico and many circumstances stay unsolved. Moreover, new circumstances of disappearances and kidnap-for-ransom keep on to be documented.  

“It is prudent for us to presume that any of these founded trafficking routes, whether or not it can be human trafficking or medications or arms or dollars, any of all those could be used, and so we want to maintain our eyes and ears on all of all those to ensure that they are not utilized in that regard,” Renuart stated. 

Both the F-22 and the Terminal Higher Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missile — made to destroy brief- and intermediate-assortment ballistic missiles as they re-enter Earth’s environment — are current additions to the nation’s arsenal. A THAAD unit is currently being designed at Fort Bliss.

“Our job at NORTHCOM is to make sure that if there’s a seam or a gap there that we’re contemplating of how we could fill that with some other capacity out of” the Protection Division, he explained. “What that has compelled us to do is feel about, ‘How do you clear up that time/distance issue, even on a small-notice function. And so I have entry to capabilities now that I failed to have a year or two in the past that I can move really speedily to fill that require.

The MQ-nine Reaper will utilize robust sensors to routinely uncover, fix, track and goal vital rising time delicate targets. In the MQ-9 the SAR was replaced with the An/Apy, changing the TESAR with a lot more state-of-the-art high resolution radar-imaging program. The ground control section of the Predator B is typical with all previous Predator systems. The US federal government is creating the potential to operate numerous plane from a single ground station, in impact, multiplying the all round battle usefulness more than the battlefield.

Sources:

Tom Burghardt

U.S. Army Joint Process Drive-North

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Holloman Air Drive Base

Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of United States Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Protection Commander.

U.S. Soldiers on the floor.

Barry Steinhardt

MQ-nine Reaper, Predator B UAV         On the Border: RECON

Researchers from Japan’s Ministry of Protection have formulated an unmanned aerial car with a distinction. It’s a radio-controlled sphere, about 2 times the dimension of a basketball, developed to land in hazardous environments without having breaking. Its developers phone it the “Futuristic Circular Flying Object” and it really is developed to go where humans won’t be able to. The unmanned aerial car has been developed for search and rescue operations. It can fly in and out of buildings weakened by earthquakes or other natural disasters, and use its onboard digital camera to transmit dwell pictures of whichever it sees. It can hover for up to eight minutes and fly at sixty kilometers for every hour…despite the fact that it does slow down for open windows. Stair cases can be simply negotiated by a expert operator. Data provided by cctv.com Thank you www.cctv.com http