Author Topic: British Police to Monitor Civilians with UAVs by 2012 (Read 1876 times)

#1 • Jan 29, 2010

Quote from: popsci.com

In a move sure to generate plenty of Orwell name-drops in the Boing Boing comments section, the British police have begun developing UAVs for the surveillance of domestic civilians. The British police hope to have a national UAV system in operation by the 2012 Olympics in London, so they can watch out for any disturbances.

Britain already has far fewer restrictions on government monitoring than the US, with much of London currently covered by CCTV cameras. However, this development would greatly expand how much of the country the police continually monitor. The program, spearheaded by the Kent Police Department, is a spin off of the South Coast Partnership, an effort to us UAVs to monitor England's southern coast.

So far, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Britain's equivalent of the FAA, has not cleared UAVs to fly in the same airspace as manned aircraft. However, the Kent police department has petitioned the CAA to expedite the licensing processes so the police operated UAVs can take to the sky by the time the Olympics starts.

In documents obtained by the British newspaper The Guardian, police officials envisioned using the drones to monitor, "...theft from cash machines, preventing theft of tractors and monitoring antisocial driving."

According the police department, video feeds from UAVs are no more invasive than the feeds from CCTV cameras, which the British government has already approved for police use.

So far, the British police have not purchased any UAVs, and the progress of the program remains a mystery.

Source

Seeing as how some members here are ignorant assholes and tell me to "stay in my own country's business" I'm just going to say this:

I don't mind the police going inside my house without consent. I have noting to hide and it can stop terrorism.

I don't mind I can't talk freely, talking shit usually gets everybody in shit.

I don't mind if the government can kill people without repercussions. The monsters deserve death.

I don't mind curfews, dangerous criminals come out at night and rape people anyways.

I don't mind CCTV's tracking my every move, because I haven't done anything illegal.

I don't mind the police having the right to randomly search me, I got noting illegal.

Wait, I mind them taking away so much of my freedom! Let's Rebe- Oh wait, too late, I'm arrested.

Welcome to 1984.

#2 • Jan 29, 2010

This doesn't bother me, but not for those reasons. It's no different from a police chopper. It's just cheaper and more convenient. The imagery of the book, 1984, does paint a bad picture of it, but it's really nothing more than a technological advance. If it was a person up there rather than a camera people would be getting a lot less antsy. It's the mechanical eye that scares them.