Predator drones shift from border patrol to protest surveillance(latimes.com)
latimes.com
Predator drones shift from border patrol to protest surveillance
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-09-22/predator-drones-shift-from-border-patrol-to-protest-surveillance
27 comments
Well people who salivate over military tech tend not to attend protests. There are many people who (probably correctly) believe the tech won’t be used on them because they would never do anything against the status quo and belong to an economic strata + dominant ethnic / religious group.
I’m not disagreeing but I am saying that unfortunately I think many voters are completely fine with the boomerang effect.
I’m not disagreeing but I am saying that unfortunately I think many voters are completely fine with the boomerang effect.
A lot of the people who were attending protests against COVID measures (or otherwise engaged in civil disobedience in public) when the President was a Democrat are very excited about measures that would have been very effective against them and will be again.
This is why we need to teach critical thinking o everyone. Not to help those people but to stop them from harming us by making stupid decisions.
I dunno, seemed to be an awful lot of them “protesting” on January 6th.
>believe the tech won’t be used on them because they would never do anything against the status quo and belong to an economic strata + dominant ethnic / religious group.
More or less identical thought pattern as when someone on HN is gushing about punitive fines for petty civil nuisance behavior or noncompliance with bureaucratic stuff, something everyone here should be familiar with.
Different issues, same evil.
More or less identical thought pattern as when someone on HN is gushing about punitive fines for petty civil nuisance behavior or noncompliance with bureaucratic stuff, something everyone here should be familiar with.
Different issues, same evil.
I guess what happens after the boomerang effect is the leopards-eating-people's-faces effect.
The thing is if things turn so far south that the milquetoast WASP suburbanite is now in some real danger, the cellphone networks being tapped is the least of their worries. Kangaroo courts don't need real evidence. Neither do militias conducting their own frontier justice.
That's usually a second (or more) order effect. It won't matter much.
>>many voters are completely fine with the boomerang effect
They know liberal governments won't engage in similar activities.
They know liberal governments won't engage in similar activities.
They might not be so fine with it when their kids start getting arrested.
A lot of these people are actually fine with their family being affected.
They are operating under a parasocial delusion that the president knows about their problem, cares about their problem, and will fix their problem so any issues are transitory and don’t require them to update their beliefs
They are operating under a parasocial delusion that the president knows about their problem, cares about their problem, and will fix their problem so any issues are transitory and don’t require them to update their beliefs
Everybody used to believe in gods, some people still do, the predisposition to beliefs in illusory protective father figures is still present in our genomes.
Uhh, there is no used to (past tense). Its important to have a faith-based belief system you can fall back on when you are subjected to torture.
I'm with the greeks on this, which is what they try to communicate in and through their stories.
TL;DR
The gods exist, they walk among us, they are powerful, they look just like humans, they are intelligent cruel deceptive and capricious. They are not there for your benefit.
You survive your encounters with them by being observant and measured, and follow a framework based in objective reality which could be intelligence and a fair bit of luck; or you don't.
Not all religions have all powerful protective father figures that will shield you from everything stunting and coddling you. Most in fact don't if you pay attention.
This gem is littered throughout greek mythology especially heavily in the Odyssey.
I'm with the greeks on this, which is what they try to communicate in and through their stories.
TL;DR
The gods exist, they walk among us, they are powerful, they look just like humans, they are intelligent cruel deceptive and capricious. They are not there for your benefit.
You survive your encounters with them by being observant and measured, and follow a framework based in objective reality which could be intelligence and a fair bit of luck; or you don't.
Not all religions have all powerful protective father figures that will shield you from everything stunting and coddling you. Most in fact don't if you pay attention.
This gem is littered throughout greek mythology especially heavily in the Odyssey.
The funny thing is, the iPhones are also weapon and surveillance platforms that are used against us.
Predator drones can monitor protests, but so can the phone company, only in greater detail, with knowledge of exactly who everyone in the crowd is, how long they've been there, where they came from, where they went when they left, who their friends are
Predator drones can monitor protests, but so can the phone company, only in greater detail, with knowledge of exactly who everyone in the crowd is, how long they've been there, where they came from, where they went when they left, who their friends are
What is interesting is that this system basically exists to catch the most petty criminals, since the actual baddies do not use it at all. Bin Laden didn't have a cellphone. FBI only cracked the sinaloa cartel cellphone network by managing to flip its architect, not by their own technical expertise, their partnerships with telecoms, or any surveillance technology.
In fairness, almost all of this is pure conjecture aside from Bin Laden which has had documents and accounts on record released/declassified.
We don't actually know how these entities do certain things because they don't have credibility, and it is well known that they lie to protect tradecraft.
We don't actually know how these entities do certain things because they don't have credibility, and it is well known that they lie to protect tradecraft.
>could
More like WILL. It's the nature of all empires, first to grow, and then to shrink. But, the empire's mechanism of repression won't suddenly become humane and forget all its tools and tactics for torture, rape, extralegal imprisonment, etc. As the shrinking empire causes friction at home, those same techniques will be unleashed to suppress dissenters.
Schmitt's friend-enemy distinction doesn't save you from this either, because you can still group your red-blooded countrymen into those brackets arbitrarily once you have plenary powers.
More like WILL. It's the nature of all empires, first to grow, and then to shrink. But, the empire's mechanism of repression won't suddenly become humane and forget all its tools and tactics for torture, rape, extralegal imprisonment, etc. As the shrinking empire causes friction at home, those same techniques will be unleashed to suppress dissenters.
Schmitt's friend-enemy distinction doesn't save you from this either, because you can still group your red-blooded countrymen into those brackets arbitrarily once you have plenary powers.
Fascism occurs when imperial tendencies point inward. And if there are imperial tendencies, it's only a matter of time until they point inward.
I have nothing to add so I'll go on a tangent.
Urban sprawl is an effective defense against protests. You tax buildings and convince everyone that single-family living is the best, and do some rent controls that won't actually help rent, so that people think dense housing and rentals are inherently bad. Then they'll spread out thin across acres of land in single-story detached houses.
Even though this costs more in infrastructure and requires everyone to maintain a car, and car insurance, people seem to be okay with it.
But then, with everyone spread out, public spaces hostile to any kind of sitting, and no public toilets (America doesn't pay to piss! Because we have no public toilets at all!), it's difficult to find parking for a big protest, it's difficult to carpool with the strangers you live miles away from.
In any city that's too small to be walkable, it's hard to consistently show up to protests even when you want to, because the car dependency adds a lot of friction.
Urban sprawl is an effective defense against protests. You tax buildings and convince everyone that single-family living is the best, and do some rent controls that won't actually help rent, so that people think dense housing and rentals are inherently bad. Then they'll spread out thin across acres of land in single-story detached houses.
Even though this costs more in infrastructure and requires everyone to maintain a car, and car insurance, people seem to be okay with it.
But then, with everyone spread out, public spaces hostile to any kind of sitting, and no public toilets (America doesn't pay to piss! Because we have no public toilets at all!), it's difficult to find parking for a big protest, it's difficult to carpool with the strangers you live miles away from.
In any city that's too small to be walkable, it's hard to consistently show up to protests even when you want to, because the car dependency adds a lot of friction.
I'm not sure you need to defend against protests. Free speech and all that.
Note that a conspicuous capability of a Predator drone is to track people's heat signatures, with limited capability into buildings.
More than likely that conjectured capability is the yesteryear Predator.
Seems tech may have received some upgrades:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/27/238884/the-penta...
There was also a hot-air balloon program that would persist at stationary at high altitude and track all moving targets over a metropolitan area for up to a month without maintenance.
The news article which said the project was called "Basilisk Stare", seems to have vanished now though from all search results. Edit: Maybe I'm misremembering and its actually Gorgon Stare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare
Seems tech may have received some upgrades:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/27/238884/the-penta...
There was also a hot-air balloon program that would persist at stationary at high altitude and track all moving targets over a metropolitan area for up to a month without maintenance.
The news article which said the project was called "Basilisk Stare", seems to have vanished now though from all search results. Edit: Maybe I'm misremembering and its actually Gorgon Stare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare
>There was also a hot-air balloon program that would persist at stationary at high altitude and track all moving targets over a metropolitan area for up to a month without maintenance.
They could do this with a single (bajillion dollar) military radar slung from the bottom of a plane over Iraq 15yr ago.
The current tech is probably cheaper and better.
They could do this with a single (bajillion dollar) military radar slung from the bottom of a plane over Iraq 15yr ago.
The current tech is probably cheaper and better.
DHS has these and is already using them. There is an aerostat that flies in South Padre whenever SpaceX is launching starship doing exactly what you suggest.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang