Not fake.
Regardless of whether one was actually being flown around Chicago, (I have no doubt they are, although the video posted may not be actually showing it) they
are being flown in numerous places all around the country, and will be flown extensively in the coming years, with full grid surveillance of everything and everybody.
Now, can we at least agree on that, and further agree on the fact that, you can call living under these conditions many things, but what you can no longer call it is freedom in any sense of the word.
4 On Your Side asks: Are drones spying on you?
http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S2621368.shtml?cat=504
On February 12, 2012, President Barack Obama signed the Federal Aviation Administration authorization bill to a tune of $63.6 billion. Among other things, it paves the way for drones to be flown domestically.
The plan calls for law enforcement to be allowed to fly drones by mid-May. That has already happened. By 2015- civilians.
Unmanned drones are being flown around the clock over Iraq and Afghanistan. They are used to monitor activity and kill terrorists.
Seventy-six hundred miles away, three drones sit inside an unmarked hangar at the Las Cruces Airport. The 500-pound drones belong to the research division of the Physical Science Lab at New Mexico State University. They are flying the drones in Southwest New Mexico for research and development. However, their payload test flights have helped our military fly drones overseas. They have also perfected the use of cameras that can see through clouds and even pick up body heat.
On the subject of domestic drones, Director of NMSU's Physical Science Lab, Phil Copeland says, “One of the main applications going forward is law enforcement, sheriff's and hostage situations."
Law enforcement is one thing, but what about mass surveillance of entire cities by our military? 4 On Your Side investigative team got its hands on a government document (attached at the bottom of the story) that shows how drones will be allowed to spy on Americans on U.S soil. Albuquerque resident Bert Williams says, "That's an invasion of privacy," to the idea of drones spying on us.
In the Air Force intelligence memo, it states the United Sates Air Force can legally spy on Americans using unmanned drones. Now a law recently passed by Congress requires the FAA to streamline the process for law enforcement agencies to fly drones less than 4.4 pounds. So far, no New Mexico law enforcement agencies 4OYS contacted have applied to fly a drone.
Down south, drones are being flown by the military, researchers and the border patrol.
“The White Sands Missile Range is flying predators, they're flying other UAVs in Clovis,” says Copeland with NMSU.
New Mexico Tech also has a waiver to fly drones. Copeland goes on to say, “Sandia Labs and AFRL have applications for them, but don't routinely fly them.”
The Electronic Information Foundation states the FAA estimates that we could see 30,000 drones in the air by 2020, which raises a slew of concerns. The biggest concern is safety. Some of these drones weigh more than a commercial lawn mower and will be used to fly over heavily populated areas.
"We need rules, we needs laws that specifically limit how these technologies will be deployed so they don't wind up harming people," says Peter Simonson, director of the ACLU of New Mexico.
In December, the ACLU released a 16-page report on drones. Its number one concern is privacy.
“We're not saying these drone surveillance technologies shouldn't be used, but they should be used to forward an investigation of a particular crime. Not sort of indiscriminately surveying the public and see what people are up to,” Simonson goes on to say.
Even members of the drone crew have some of the same concerns when it comes to unmanned aerial vehicles humming in U.S. Airspace.
Copeland ends that last part of the interview by saying, “I think it's a legitimate concern, to address privacy. We're concerned about it, it's not just with unmanned…you can put cameras on everything.”