The End of 4th/A Liberty: Police Attack Drones Have Landed

We all knew that drones would be a big thing sooner or later on the domestic front. Amazon is talking about delivering books with them, and real estate people use them for fantastic marketing pictures. Even beer can be delivered to ice fisherman on remote lakes by drone.

But all of these end uses must first be cleared both by local statute and FAA for approval, mostly for safety and privacy concerns.

It’s one thing to have all your radio controlled aircraft flying in a designated recreational area, where the occasional crash still can cause injury. But to have them buzzing around everywhere, especially directly over private property and people’s backyards, is something else of serious concern.

So the process will take some time, at least a couple more years for the FAA and other oversight agencies to work out details and rules for approval for commercial and personal use.

But a Police State Can, and Will Use Drones Now!

It’s a critical societal fact that we already know by now that far too many police are not psychologically adjusted or physically trained properly to be trusted too much with firearms. There are more police killing unarmed civilians than terrorists. What in the name of liberty and justice for all do you think they’re going to do with something like an ‘armed’ drone? This is stark naked social insanity!

But North Dakota, no less! Which is (was?) one of the top prepper/retreatist states just tipped over the point of no return from the Terminator ‘SkyNet’ prophecies by becoming the first state of the Union to authorize police usage of ‘armed drones’ for surveillance and apprehension of citizens, with a new HB1328 that was just passed.

I won’t elaborate now but the passage of the bill smacked of questionable collusion between corporatist drone manufacturer lobbyists and police unions and, of course, corrupt anti-Constitutional legislators. (Wonder how much Bloomberg and Soros kicked in on the capital influence part of the deal?)

If you didn’t really think the Bilderberg corporatists were here and now, you don’t have to ruminate about it. Just open your eyes. The egregious slap of insult to the people’s faces was that there was no prior public discussion, forum, or debate about it– considering such a monumentally important change in the mechanics of law enforcement–which is the classic exemplary of dirty back door politics as usual.

However, when some of them paused even momentarily in their minimalist mentalities, there was some serious consternation and resistance from a couple of the ND legislators about the slippery slope. Or should I say rapid climb and ascent of the grossly inherent abuse potential of these devices in the hands of authorities, especially police, where constant abuse of excessive initiatory force prevails on a daily basis.

They didn’t like the idea of any type of weaponizing of police state drones but like the other obvious privacy intrusion that are now routinely integrating in their 4th/A violating patrol duties without public disclosure, the police unions muscled their speciously proprietary agenda that “extreme crime prevention” measures are absolutely necessary for the deceitful lie of public safety.

So any ND legislators who may have been reluctant to go with any type of drone mounted devices, even so called less than lethal ones caved when it got down to the vote wire and the Police State union lobbyists got their evil way.

It will come up that these ND hack politicians made a grievous mistake in judgment after the first massacre by a police SWAT team. Law abiding citizens had the shit scared out of them when an ugly menacing machine came swooping down to see who legally was sitting on their deck drinking beer and shooting cans, and frightening their animals.

For fear of their life, the people immediately blasted it out of the air, which then–of course, in the natural procedure of excessive and unnecessary police force–immediately precipitated the Swat team’s retaliatory launch of a blood bath.

Which would be the fault of the stupid feckless North Dakota Reps who voted to pass this ridiculous deadly bill in the first place.

Video first seen on Complex.

How Bad Is It?

There are last straws and there are ‘enough is enough’ limits to what the American Free Citizen will take. This law will be enough of a last straw to break the people’s backs. Already there are several cases of people sitting in their private homes and property who took their shotguns and knocked a nosey drone out of the sky. These were just private hobby drones flying around the neighborhood checking things out. But it appears that at this point, there is justification for the defending property owner.

What does anyone think will happen when people see something that looks like a scaled down UFO type Apache Helicopter gunship approaching them on their own land? I’m sure these secret police drones don’t have flashing blue and white lights, badges, and sound recordings announcing their office.

Supposedly these ND lawmakers denied the provision to allow firearms mounted–yes, unbelievably the police wanted that too–and conceded only to non-lethal armament and devices.

That nit wit logic shows how stupid many of these politicians are on top of being corrupt. There’s no such thing as non-lethal armaments: even a police flashlight can be lethal when misused. And we trust these people with making laws? At least 39 people so far have been killed this year by tasers! Rubber shotgun bullets, bean bags, flares, and high powered paintballs of hard rubber or pepper loads, high pressure pepper spray, and flying tear gas canisters have maimed and killed and continue to do so on too many occasions to be considered truly “less than lethal”.

I can’t imagine–but I know it will be coming as soon as they get more tax dollar funding with police drones–a full load of cluster bomb type non-lethal flash bang canisters which are very harmful and can be smart bombed on somebody’s house and yard, or shot from a drone mounted 40mm tube, right through your bathroom window, followed up by the latest “non-lethal” sound wave weapons!

And the ease of using these so-called less than lethal weapons will likely be increased as the officer leaves from the immediate action, and the military drone pilots and the decision making becomes more depersonalized, to a point of facilitating the initiatory ‘non-lethal’ force. “Yeah, the video screen went fuzz ball a bit and…it looked like they had a gun…”

Where’s the ACLU on this? Even only camera equipped drones should be challenged on private property especially when used without warrants. They were hell bent on the gay marriage issue but not a peep out of their chicken beaks when it comes to our most important liberties.

There should be an immediate class action lawsuit with a restraining clause until the 4th/A violation is adjudicated. Maybe a Marxist judge did rule that you don’t own the airspace over your private property, so technically anybody can fly around over your house. But you sure own your material sovereign privacy of your domicile, and compound use and you are supposed to have a constitutionally guaranteed reasonable expectation of freedom from intentional arbitrary visual intrusion. They may be able to fly over, but not SPY and search on you, especially without a warrant!

A prowling peeping tom gets arrested (or shot, in a Castle Doctrine State) if he’s intentionally invading and snooping around your private property. So how does a prowling police drone get away with it? Amazingly, too many police state cops just don’t care because they take it for granted they are above the law and can circumvent the Constitution when they feel like it!

Grand Forks County Sheriff Bob Rost apparently made the incredibly frightening statement to the Daily Beast–with a straight face no doubt– that his department is only equipped with camera drones and he does not think he should need a warrant just to go snooping! And outrageously worse yet, Rost said, that he needs drones for surveillance in order to obtain a warrant in the first place.

There are good cops and bad ones, but this Rost is not just sliding on the slippery slop of Police statist tyranny, this guy’s speed skating it down! And of course, Rost threw in the obligatory absurdity that some of these officers of the law regularly insult us with in justification: “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear?”

Really? Are we that far into the death spiral of totalitarianism to now become a criminal and having our privacy rights violated for wanting to hide things from others? I can’t believe this county Sheriff isn’t arrested for violating the 1st and 4th/A, or at least fired by vote next term. Supposedly he also had been conducting these sneak and snoop warrantless searches over private property for some time without public or official disclosure? Reminds me of the ‘stingray’ cell tower replicators to intercept private calls, or the license plate scanners on taxpayer’s funded buses and garbage trucks.

But it gets worse. Rost isn’t the only municipal or county law enforcement agency to immediately capitalize on drones for surreptitious police surveillance without probable cause or due process. Or necessarily bothering to even running drone usage by the citizens before actually acquiring them.

Video first seen on FPSRusia.

They justify it by saying they will just use these to search for missing children and such police situation where normal police observation can be deployed. Which is a big lie: a normal police patrol car does not have the technical ability to hover over your balcony and peer into your window. Facilitating asset forfeiture seizures is one of the true reasons.

Recently in around the rural area of Plover Wisconsin police were using a drone to search for a person they were in a vehicle chase with who crashed and bailed into the woods. They didn’t find him. I wonder why they didn’t use the abundant K-9 resources that have in these counties. They had a fresh scent of him from the vehicle, they sure would have had a better chance if they did. Maybe they really wanted to really use the drone for snoop/searching for something else they were interested in along the way and play it off under the guise of a fugitive search.

After all, the Western border states’ Sheriff’s offices seem to have no Posse Comitatus issues with requesting to “borrow” the border patrol’s highly sophisticated Predator Drones to search a person’s private ranch land recently, with enhanced radar clothes penetrating firearms detecting equipment looking for a few supposedly stolen cows! This amounts to illegal blanket body searches of anybody/property in a grid area without a warrant. This is the nascent courtship of the Orwellian municipal-federal shotgun wedding planning. This is fearfully bad, folks.

What “WE THE PEOPLE” Must Do Now?

We need to reign in and mandate, by people’s nullification power if necessary–aka referendum recall–these totalitarian politicians before it literally becomes too late. There must be mandated firewalls on all new anti-constitutional bills presented by special interest groups, aka unions, theocrats, corporatist lobbyists, and any others who don’t care about the rest of us without a serious mandatory public evaluation.

Start attending your local town or city council meetings to find out what they really are spending your tax dollars on. Ask questions, demand answers because it’s your money and your duty to know where it’s spent and why it’s needed. Town boards used to be literal dictatorships, but more citizens are now becoming interested and starting to at least get some transparency, which is a start.

We can do this by joining with our friends and neighbors to pay physical visits, even picnics and camp-outs at our representative’s offices and municipal government buildings, until they agree to let us ask them up front and personal about reasoning and justification of these outlaw law enforcement tactics, and prove why we need the police to have them.

Join and donate to groups like the 2nd Amendment foundation, and other pro Constitution activists and anti-police state freedom organizations. And do everything you can to spread the word to warn people. This goes way beyond partisan politics, my friends. Way, WAY beyond. If we ALL don’t come together as Free Americans and get this police Stasi state under control soon…there definitely will be blood.

Stay thirsty and prepared, my friends!

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 This article has been written by Mahatma Muhjesbude for Survivopedia.

Sources:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/08/28/police-taser-drones-authorized–north-dakota/71319668/

http://www.npr.org/2015/08/31/436377494/north-dakota-law-aims-to-set-parameters-for-police-use-of-drones

http://www.engadget.com/2015/08/27/north-dakota-cops-will-be-first-in-nation-to-use-weaponized-dron/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/26/first-state-legalizes-armed-drones-for-cops-thanks-to-a-lobbyist.html

Written by

Mahatma Muhjesbude is a former Spec-ops combat Vet, LEO, international security consultant, and private contractor. He has instructor level credentials and skills in various survival disciplines. He is a dedicated advocate of Liberty and Justice for all and a proactive defender of our Constitutional rights. He strongly believes that the best value you can give back in life is vital knowledge through experience, and that's why he's writing for Survivopedia, using a pen name to protect his real identity. You can send Mahatma a message at editor [at] survivopedia.com

Latest comments
  • ACLU is concerned about domestic police using drones and has a policy statement about this process. https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/domestic-drones

  • Quite over the top, sir. What we are talking about here, if only cameras are on board, is performing police work in two dimensions: eyes on the ground, and now eyes in the sky. The basic laws protecting our rights have not changed. FYI, while there is found in the 4th Amendment a law against government “search and seizure” – one phrase – of our “person, papers and possessions” without a warrant and proper compensation, there is no constitutional right or amendment guaranteeing our privacy. The constitution codifies into law what the people owned before there was any law, and the law requires the government to protect what preexisted our country: our God-given rights. But again, there is no constitutionally-protected right to privacy because where the law is concerned a person who is breaking the law has no right to shield themselves from a police investigation on the ground, in the air, in their home, or elsewhere.
    And, really, what difference is there between a “real” chopper and a drone with a camera, save for the former having a brain behind the eyes of a man in the sky? If I see a police chopper, and it is rare to see one in my area, I would not wave to him as I would a cop on the beat in his car or on foot. In as much as I have no idea why he is up there, I am not going to interfere in a law enforcement matter by distracting him from whatever he is doing. If I am behaving myself and a drone is showing unusual interest in me, I am not going to grab my shotgun and use it like anti-aircraft artillery. I would certainly not do that when a police vehicle is following me. I am calmly going to go into my house, call the police, and ask them what is going on and can I be of any assistance? And if the police inform me that they do not have a drone operating in my neighborhood, I am certainly going to consider taking my shotgun outside, pointing it at the device, and rack a shell into the chamber. If the drone operator does not get the message and leave the area, too bad, so sad. The bragging rights, like the trophy, are mine.
    One point missing from your rant: what source of information or national intelligence might have caused ND to do this? The Bakken Oil Field is a strategic asset. You know or should know that the ND State Police are, therefore, kept well-informed about potential threats to the oil industry in ND and are no doubt working with the RCMPs, the FBI, the DHS, oil field security services, and whatever other agencies have a mandate to get involved.
    Me thinks there is more going on here than is able to meet the public eye.
    I completely understand the psychological paranoia that occurs when a person knows they are being watched. Again, though, if you are behaving, and the drone operator is staying within the laws governing the operation of his or her flying machine, I have no right to shoot him down.

    • You are absolutely correct, sir. And perhaps the author was over the top. What is scary is what is absolutely legal for police to do with impunity. They do not practice gun control, i.e. hitting your target, they can only be fired for faulty paper work, i.e. reporting you were in fear for your life when the video shows you standing over the subdued suspect and shooting him in anger. As laws are passed giving police powers they shouldn’t have, a little bit more of the constitution becomes toilet paper. As the ‘War on Drugs’ and the ‘War on Terrorism’ already show, they (we) only want the bad guys. And we don’t care who gets hurt or ‘inconvenienced’.

    • Sorry, Curry, the only thing ‘over the top’ in your convoluted reasoning is the drone that will soon be routinely spying on you just because it ‘can’, to fish for something only a police state drone can pick up to ‘justify’ some abuse of ‘reasonable suspicion’ to obtain a no-knock warrant from a rubber stamp judge for a paramilitary Swat raid before the cock crows three times. This article was written in 2015 with perspicacious foresight based on esoteric knowledge, at the time, of what’s really going on under people’s stuffy noses. And all of it has come true. Now many counties across the country–and growing fast– are equipped with Drones they never asked the taxpayers for permission to purchase, along with ALP readers, and every other type of camera and surveillance to further their anti-Constitutional War on Drugs for police state profit, At the expense, of course, of your liberty and privacy.

      As far as your interest as to ‘Why’ ND Law Enforcement was ramping up its surveillance policing, it ws Not for any far out national security risk for the pipline, These pipllines have their own built in security infrastructure. The reason was simply that because of the ‘Boom Town’ wild west style economic boost the area received from the pipeline project, the area also had the proportionate increase in crime and disorder in certain areas. So the local ‘G’ saw the profitable opportunity to do a little expoitation of the Drug War effort by ‘good’ aggressive police work.

      Welcome to 2021, with a new super dystopian State run society. As predicted, by many like myself for years. We, the people, simply didn’t stop it from happening in time. Now we have a surging totalitarian socialist government not at all concerned about your American liberties anymore.

      We have one last chance to take it back before it’s all over for the ‘American Way of Life’. We must all become political activists to save our Constituion and Bill of Rights. We need to vote out the Communists in this next midterm next year and continue the push back through 2024. That’s it. Anything else is unthinkable.

  • Most here are smart enough to directly blame the community leaders for whatever happens. They might not be responsible for rouge incidents, but they sure are responsible for law enforcement policy.

    • Catherine, the problem is ‘We, the People’. We’re just too lazy, busy, apathetic, uninterested because of our own little world’s, to care much or even notice the government tyranny creep. That’s how they get away with it. We then elect morons to supposedly do what we want and need, but instead hope we aren’t watching so they can steal our tax dollars for their own corrupt proprietary agendas.

      Nobody to blame but outselves.

  • For those of you who think this information was ‘over the top’, I’ve got breaking news for those of you who still are trapped in your government induced mind prisons of abject normalcy bias as you float around like dopey little flatulants in the winds of a serious war on liberty in the fragile comfort zone your little solitary confinement world, I will gladly wager any amount that the that you’ll be singing a different Swan Song when that ‘armed’ drone is coming ‘over the top’ of your home’s back yard and when it’s finished ‘eyeballing’ your wife, or teen aged daughter sunbathing on your rear private deck and slips down a bit closer to peep and snoop through your bathroom or bedroom window with it’s telephoto NVD/Flir devices, and in the prurient delight of the operator, he ‘inadvertently’ twitches a flash bang or gas grenade (non lethal of course) on your family.

    And Curry, before you again make that common igno-imbecilic mistakes (several in your comment) of imagining something that’s not true, I suggest you do the research diligence from now, or at least peruse the article, before confirming without a doubt what may have previously been only an assumption of your stupidity. As far as you pitiful ignorance and indifference to your Constitutional Privacy Protections, (are you employed by the NSA?) your ‘factual’ error in stating here that “there is no Constitutional right or Amendment guaranteeing our privacy”, is only exacerbated by your obvious Police State sychophance.

    FYI the 4th/A states…”the right of the people to be secure in their persons, HOUSES, papers, and effects against unreasonable search and seizures shall NOT be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probably cause, Supported by Oath or Affirmation{this is a big one the police abuse even when they actually attempt to get a warrant} AND Particularly describing the places to be searched and the things to be seized”

    PERIOD! If that isn’t enough check out the 3rd and 5th and 14th Amendments.

    That’s why we have peeping tom laws and tresspassing on private property violations. Otherwise your stupidity would be correct, we wouldn’t have a Constitutional right to privacy anywhere, which thankfully, we do, and fortunately proves your dumb ass notion is wrong. In fact we have even more individual State sanctioned property privacy in ‘Castle Doctrine’ law states.

    A police drone has no right ‘snooping’ and fishing for probable cause like this ND Sheriff illegally does, in places where a reasonable expectation of privacy–like your own land, especially ‘expressed’ if you encircle it with a ‘privacy fence’ (and he didn’t bother to tell anybody -even the taxpayers? ) eyeball view, or not. You simply cannot Constitutionally ‘snoop’ on private property without a warrant. Period.

    If you use that ridiculous logic of ‘eyeballing’ which has wide inherent ‘accuracy/verification/perception’ problems, as in “…I ‘thought’ I saw he had a gun, and ‘thought’ my life was in danger, so that’s why i opened fire…” Even though it was only a cell phone… as ‘in view’ to justify privacy violations, then next it will be okay to hang over the roof and use the wall penetrating radar? That amounts to the same as having a patrolman or detective coming up on your porch to peep in your windows to see what you are doing inside… FOR NO GOOD REASON BUT JUST BECAUSE HE IS NOSEY?

    And if you also exist in the mental prison of denial and extreme normalcy bias and still thank that police don’t have an inherent propensity for abuse of their office and procedures which is bordering on national chaos, i realize you don’t have the instant access to real time info feeds like i do but even in the ‘sanitized’ MSN, like yesterday/today’s incidents of 2000 arrestees in Baltimore likely to have challenges to their cases by illegal disclosure practices by police by using secret cell phone evesdropping StingRay technology without a warrant to entrap people. Secret because the FBI requires the police NOT TO Disclose the use! Or the one yesterday where 80 some shots were fired in all directions at one fleeing perpetrator and after literally shooting up the neighborhood, only one bullet finally hit him, (quite a common dangerous to the public situation in police shoot outs lately, by the way due to their lack of training). Or the other one where the police pruriently searched a young female victim under the influence, and so on and so on…

    EVERYTHING DONE BY THE POLICE IS ABUSED SOONER OR LATER. I can prove that anytime someone wants to bet cash money? So these drones are a massacre waiting to happen. The difference between a police chopper is that they are actually patrol and emergency response vehicles. They are NOT supposed to be randomly ‘snooping’ on private property. And last I checked they are not supposed to be armed with rubber bullets, gas, tasers, flash bangs, or anything else that could make the city shell out millions in suit settlements?

    They can’t do that arbitrarily and capriciously spy on people even while on duty patrol unless they are in active (hot pursuit) of a criminal which is defined as having had visual contact with the perpetrator while in foot or vehicle chase and observed the direction he was heading. Then, if the perp jumps in your private backyard or tries to hide in your garage, the police can check it out without a warrant. But they better obviously Identify themselves fast to the resident/owner of the property asap.

    The problem is that people like you, Curry, simply don’t understand the difference between public and private domain. There is much case law on this, and i suggest you study it more. There are changes coming as police continue to push the envelope of privacy intrusion. I absolutely don’t recommend shooting down a unknown drone hovering over your home but many will as the intrusions escalate; especially if it is making their animals go wild, scaring their children, and it might crash and injure or damage someone. Like the one that just crashed in the stadium the other day.

    And surely as you are a poster child for the absence of intelligence, the psychos and terrorists will get around to using these drones to actually do random violence on unsuspecting innocent people just minding their own private business on their own private property. That’s why private drones are NOT allowed to fly directly over your neighbor’s property.

    But you think it’s A-Okay to have an armed police spy drone sneak and snoop around your property intentionally recording you, WITHOUT a Warrant that is signed and affirmed, and Not just an ‘eyeballed’ view or a ‘confidential informant’?

    Flying a video mounted drone over your house to ‘snoop’ for any and all ‘probable cause’ is not legal.

    The tenuous moot point of ‘eyeball’ observation which the police state loves to exploit to max privacy violation will next ‘evolve’ -if there are no challenges to this practice–to hanging their drones over your roof top because it will be then ‘okay’ to mount wall penetrating radar on them to ‘eyeball’ what you are doing inside your house?

    So Curry, if you think i’m over the top on this, it’s too bad you and so many others still can’t get it yet…or will only have the shocking epiphany when it’s too late. Otherwise if we all were ‘over the top’ and right now on this, we could head it off and they wouldn’t be still getting away with so much totalitarianism, aided and abetted by people like you.

    But saying something so abjectly absurd, like we ‘don’t have a Constituional Guarantee of secured privacy in a Free Nation of Liberty and Justice exemplifies one sad fact. That you, sir, are part of the problem, not the badly needed solution.

  • Over the top? Too many cops are gung-ho youngsters who have just graduated the police academy training, hit the streets and are sure everything they see is a crime in progress. I had one of these Doofuses come up to me, hand on gun, as I was unloading groceries into my house and demanded to see an ID to be sure I lived there since he saw me going in and out through the garage door. I would think if he had any common sense he would know that someone robbing a home would be carrying things out of the house, not carrying them into the house.

    If I lived in ND I could have had the opportunity to be zapped from the sky because a doofus flying the drone would be just as bright as the one who walked up in person.

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