specsaregood
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Did Krauthammer seriously say that?/looks outside for flying pigs
keep in mind he also thinks that us citizens should give up their firearms.
Krauthammer: First to Take Down a Domestic Drone will be a FOLK HERO
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keep in mind he also thinks that us citizens should give up their firearms.
GuerrillaXXI
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It's very possible that someone who has acquired the mindset needed to take down a drone has also decided not to let himself be taken alive.
GuerrillaXXI
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Predators will find more use in the US, but they cost millions of dollars apiece, and that doesn't include the costs of operation and maintenance. So they aren't likely to be constantly watching us. But even in the worst-case scenario that they're blanketing the country, simply having aerial footage of a city or town isn't equivalent to actually knowing what's going on in that footage. Someone is going to have to watch ALL that video. Even if analytic software is used to pare down all the footage with no people in it, having someone analyze the remaining footage seems like an impossible task. The more video that's taken, the more video they'll have to sort through.
When it comes to video forensics, I think wide-scale footage won't be of much use. The pigs will have to already know where and when to look with their drone in order to zoom in with it and get any kind of useful footage. They could do pretty much the same thing with a piloted aircraft or spies on the ground. In fact, the latter would probably be more stealthy than a drone.
Consider this. Suppose the pigs have a drone flying at some height above above a 10x10 square km area. If they want a resolution of 1 cm squared on the ground throughout this area at all times, they will need to collect 1,000,000,000,000 pixels (one thousand gigapixels) of data for each single video frame. For comparison, a current military drone, the Hummingbird, carries a 1.8 gigapixel camera, and this is the largest that's even been used for military purposes:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13639_3-57348702-42/hummingbird-robo-drone-gets-1.8-gigapixel-camera/
Just think -- they'd need 1000 gigapixels per frame, and they'd still only have 1 cm2 resolution, which isn't nearly enough to identify a person. I don't think that quantity of data can be transferred in a reasonable amount of time, nor could it be stored very easily for long. Also, think of how many such drones they'd need to cover the US.
So, in order for a drone to provide useful footage, its camera has to zoom in on something. It can't watch everything at once. But how does it know where to zoom, especially in populated areas? Until very advanced artificial intelligence is developed (hopefully not before a freedom-respecting government is restored), it will all have to be done by humans in realtime -- and this is a BIG population to watch over.
Consider also that drones have been used freely in Afghanistan for most of that conflict, and they have hardly provided the US and its puppets with omniscience. The strikes that they've carried out have generally been guided by human intelligence, and these strikes could have been carried out with piloted aircraft just as well.
I'm not saying drones are no threat. Their potential for widespread use in the US has me as pissed off as anyone else. But we shouldn't overestimate their capability, either. That can tempt us into unnecessary defeatism.
That is definitely something citizens should pursue, and some are already doing so.
I also think people should familiarize themselves with ways to evade thermal imaging. Being able to do this amounts to making oneself nearly invisible to drones (and other surveillance cameras) at night. Simply being under reasonably heavy cover (a roof, thick foliage, etc.) will do the trick. In an open area an object as simple as a broad, foliage-covered umbrella might work. There are also special fabrics that can be made to greatly reduce a person's heat signature, and I think it's worth investigating whether it's feasible to make such fabrics at home.
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presence
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IMHO, you're grossly underestimating the abilities of modern analytical software, streaming gigapixel imagery, petaflop processing, bottomless data centers, and vector recognition.
I'm not sure what rock you've been under, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the computers are watching. Advanced AI exists; neural networks and genetic algorithms are evolving as we speak. AI may not be conscious, and have a favorite color; per se, but it is certainly advanced enough to track individuals and groups of individuals at the touch of a button, in real time, and store it, along with anything else, forever.
http://rt.com/news/utah-data-center-spy-789/
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Pericles
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You may find the discussion of this topic to be interesting over on the Green Beret board:
http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37899
http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37899
GuerrillaXXI
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On the contrary, I been studying surveillance capabilities quite intently. I've seen no sign that analytical software is capable of deciding, on its own, which region in a huge area under observation should be zoomed into by a drone's camera. And even if such software existed, how will it be able to make its decisions where to zoom without video resolution vastly better than what is available? Note my example above regarding the difficulties of even getting 1 cm2 resolution over an area of 10x10 km2.
Believe me, I'm well aware of what's out there. I've read technical papers on the subject and have seen demonstration videos of the latest products, such as VideoIQ:
http://www.videoiq.com/
Computers can certainly track people if you point a camera at them, but knowing where to point the camera is another matter entirely. With drones, that is a very problematic issue. You're talking about something way up in the sky. Where does it point its camera? As explained above, if it simply points its camera "everywhere," it doesn't get enough resolution to truly observe much of anything.
I think a greater danger than drones, at least for the foreseeable future, lies in networks of fixed "smart" cameras. Hopefully someday enough people get fed up enough with all this crap that they make it socially acceptable to conceal one's identity in public.
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Austrian Econ Disciple
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Anyone see the irony here when Krauthammer advocated the complete and utter elimination of non-Government ownership of weapons? The guy has advocated for the mass expropriation of all personally held weapons in the US.
Pericles
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That ^ the capabilities are over rated. They are lucky as much as they are good.
Do you have a credible link to support that?
pcosmar
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http://www.grouchyconservativepundits.com/index.php?topic=3573.0;wap2
Fact is,, he is all over the place.. He will say anything for attention.
Wow what a dick! Thanks, I didn't know that about him. I suppose if he had changed his position on that in the past, what, sixteen years then we would have heard something about it huh?
Anti Federalist
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Que?
I was curious myself.
Was this originally in GRC?
Should have posted it in GP.
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