TexasCHLforum.com

JALLEN wrote:

VMI77 wrote:
Blue: Seems to me you just admitted violating both federal law Texas law in a public forum. In any case, what you did or didn't do has no relevance to whether the Feds should be using drones with this capability.

This used to be quite common with cheap radio Shack scanners that covered cell phone frequencies and a bunch more. I used to listen to cell phone conversations just about every night, 35 years ago when cell phone first started becoming ubiquitous. The most common conversations heard were (1) between drug dealers, and (2) married men sneaking out to buy cigarettes and calling their girlfriends.

AFAIK, that is impossible, or at least many times more difficult these days as the cell phones have gone digital, and are encrypted, unless you have the unlock codes.

I believe it is unlawful to reveal radio transmissions not intended for you, but not to hear them. If that is what they want, let them keep them out of my backyard.

MadMonkey wrote:ETA: VM177, statute of limitations

The rest of my statement explains the point I'm trying to get across... the requirements are simply calling for a quality camera system. A surveillance UAV is pointless if you can't tell what you're looking at.

Don't forget that Border Patrol is a child agency of DHS and that B-model Predators are already patrolling the border... personally, I don't have an issue with the aircraft having good enough cameras to let the agents on the ground know if they'll be dealing with armed folks.

The Annoyed Man wrote:

MadMonkey wrote:

RottenApple wrote:what's the big deal here?

Fear of the unknown.

I was actually hoping you would see this and chime in. My interest isn't the existence of the technology itself. It isn't even primarily that the technology might be used here in the U.S. I've posted before, even recently, that I can see lots of legitimate uses for drones in the U.S.—forestry and forest fire monitoring, crop analysis, traffic monitoring, and yes, even police work in the same way police departments already are using helicopters. My problem has less to do with what is going into the drones than in who is buying them.

We've all seen the threads about DHS purchasing billions of rounds of ammo (when the rest of us can't get any at all), and I've even seen logical explanations for why it might be justifiable in training terms, given me by a friend of mine who is an LEO with a strong libertarian bent. But there's another thread posted this morning about DHS acquiring 2700 MRAPS—anti-RPG bars and firing ports included? Now, I ask you in all seriousness, why does DHS think that people are going to be firing RPGs at their vehicles? Why do they need rows of firing ports in 2700 vehicles were are essentially urban tanks? What are they gearing up for?

And to put the ammunition purchases in perspective: that 1.2 billion rounds DHS purchased consists of 750 million rounds of .40 S&W pistol/SMG ammo, and 450 million of it is 5.56 NATO. Lake City Arsenal produces approximately 1.6 billion combined rounds of 5.56 NATO, 7.62 NATO, and .50 BMG ammo per year, and I am going to step out on a limb and say that the vast majority of it is 5.56 NATO—simply because the other two are harder to find on the civilian market, even in normal times, and because it stands to reason that the weapons of individual personnel would be fired more frequently than squad/platoon/company level and up weapons, necessitating higher ammo production numbers for those personal weapons.

So, what does that have to do with DHS? Well, there's different ways of looking at it, but remember that 5.56 NATO is an anti-personnel round...... 450 million rounds of 5.56 NATO can mean a few shooters training to and then maintaining a Special Forces level of operational readiness. It can mean a LOT of shooters training to a minimum level. It can mean that they do not intend to expend it at all, but rather to store it against the day they feel they need to use it. All three are troubling, and asked in order of the previous three sentences.....why would DHS need its own "special forces?" Why would DHS need its own "army?" Why would DHS anticipate the future need of 450 million rounds of anti-personnel ammunition?

We already have a national military, and its charter is well known: national defense against invasion, or prosecution of foreign wars. We already have federal domestic "spec ops" programs like the FBI's HRT. DHS's mandate is not to repel foreign invaders (in fact, by refusing to protect the nation's borders, they are proactively NOT repelling foreign invaders). Why do they need shooters whose mission would duplicate HRT's? What other need could there be? A national police force to operate where state and local police refuse to cooperate with federal crackdowns on gun rights, for instance? Those are the kinds of questions that trouble me. It's not the items themselves being purchased, it is who is doing the buying.

So regarding drones: I can see a perfectly legitimate use of a drone equipped with technology enabling the operator to discern whether a human on the ground is carrying a stick or a rifle........IF that drone belongs to U.S. Forest Service and is used in monitoring hunting on federal lands. And if that degree of sensor resolution is also what it takes for a drone operator to determine if the guy on the ground in a forest is carrying a flashlight instead of a road flare, I'm OK with that. If those sensors are used to determine if the underbrush down below is natural vegetation or an illicit marijuana crop, I'm OK with that. But none of those things are part of DHS's charter.

So it's not WHAT is being purchased (within reasonable limitations) that bothers me, it's WHO is buying it—particularly when it is troubling to consider WHY they would need it. So when a department like DHS, who's primary mission appears to be the strangulation of our travel without harassment, begins buying billions of rounds of ammunition, 2700 MRAPS, thousands of "personal defense rifles" (select-fire M4s), the most sophisticated drones equipped with the same technologies being used in the prosecution of foreign wars to track down and kill terrorists overseas, the OVERALL picture ought to be troubling to any sentient observer.

Alex Jones is a buffoon, and I don't bother reading his website. But I do give thought to DHS, which is a poisonous agency run by a woman with a proven track record of indifference to the rights of the people she allegedly "serves." She's a toad, and toads should not have such resources at their disposal. NO GOOD IS GOING TO COME OF THESE PURCHASES, not because of what they are, but because of who's buying them in apparent contradiction to their agency mandate.

RottenApple wrote:One question. I've read that DHS organizes bulk purchases that are then distributed to other agencies. Ostensibly this is to get a better price per unit. Could that be the case here? DHS makes the purchase for items going to the Forrestry Service, FBI, etc, etc?

MadMonkey wrote:Those specifications only mean that they wanted a camera with high enough resolution to see if someone was carrying a long gun... that's a critical part of a wartime mission (for just about any UAS, not just Predators or Reapers... we always report any weapon we see).

As for listening in on cell phones, well, I did that once with a scanner bought on EBay. Cell tracking with a UAS is essentially the same as using towers, only slower, using triangulation.

The article (to me) is a little paranoid. They can't automatically "detect" a weapon, that's up to a trained payload operator and analyst to verify. They also can't see a concealed weapon.