Border Patrol Flies Anti-Terrorism Drone Over Minneapolis Protestors (arstechnica.com) 251
U.S. Customs and Border Protection flew a drone over Minneapolis to keep a careful eye on the unfolding unrest following the death of George Floyd, a local black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck during an arrest. Ars Technica reports: The drone, using the tracking signal CBP104, took off from Grand Forks Airforce Base at 9:08 am Central Daylight Time and shortly afterward headed directly to Minneapolis, this feed from live flight tracking service FlightAware showed. The drone then circled the city six times from about 10:45 until noon. The aircraft maintained an altitude of about 20,000 feet. Grand Forks AFB is the home of the Air Force's 319th Reconnaissance Wing. It is also a site Customs and Border Patrol personnel use for takeoff and landing of the Predator B unmanned aircraft system. CPB uses the drone in anti-terrorism operations by helping to identify and intercept potential terrorists and illegal cross-border activity.
THIS is bothersome (Score:3, Insightful)
This feels like what the FBI did to Americans back in the 60s.
Re:THIS is bothersome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:THIS is bothersome (Score:5, Informative)
> The USAF needs to be brought in for a series of Reaper assisted airstrikes against the looters.
I know the "rule of law" is a difficult concept, but try this link. It's written for a lay person with no knowledge and should work well to explain things:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In simple terms, the military in the US isn't allowed to enforce criminal law. So... no, the USAF does not need to be "brought in" nor use their UAVs... but good on you for thinking outside the box... of the rule of law.
There is the MSP, there is the National Guard, and those ARE within the rule of law... and they are out there. Unfortunately, LEOs like to kill Black People, and that doesn't sit well with the protesters of MN -- nor should it. The National Guard is there to... protect the citizens. I think that means the police, but I'm no diviner. You can read more about their activation order here:
https://minnesota.cbslocal.com... [cbslocal.com]
In short, no to USAF, not to USMC, not to the US Army, no to the Coast Guard, Space Force, or Serenity or the NCC-1701. It's the police and the NG.
Happy Saturday to you, and you can go right back under that bridge and wait for other people to come by.
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Woah, hey, come on. All that heavy-duty "thinking" won't get me Likes, and that "perspective" is a total snoozer. Look, Kim Kardashian Elon Musk!
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Unfortunately, LEOs like to kill Black People
Stop race baiting.
LEOs on the whole do their utmost to avoid killing anybody, and particularly 'Black People'.
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> LEOs kill a lot more white people but don't let that interrupt your bullshit narrative.
Per capita US LEOs kill a lot more black and brown people but don't let that interrupt your insults based on nothing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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Here are the real numbers, not Wapo's spin:
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Re:THIS is bothersome (Score:5, Informative)
What it says about deaths of people with Asian ethnicities will surprise you.
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Killed by LEO (per million, your source) [theguardian.com]:
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Deaths per interaction doesn't really work, either (Score:3)
Social science research has shown for many years that blacks are subject to more and harsher law enforcement effort than whites. I suspect this indicates that LEOs are more likely to initiate interactions with innocent blacks, inflating the denominator and thus hiding the bias.
Disclosure yada yada, I'm a convicted felon, I've read a lot of black guys' cases, I believe that in aggregate American law enforcement displays a violent bias against African Americans. Um, also I'm a white guy living in the South
Re: THIS is bothersome (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather have numbers generated by dice rolls than trust anything the guardian generates.
Which is precisely the point. Every. Single. Death. is documented clearly and separately. If you disagree with their numbers for a good reason then you would be able to point to where they were lying, misleading or wrong. Your view that the Guardian is wrong says more that you are selecting your facts to avoid the truth which you find disturbing and so suggests that you would benefit from seriously revising your views all around this if you want to get to the truth.
Re: THIS is bothersome (Score:5, Insightful)
The right is just trying to make the Guardian into a meme like Fox News is, like they did with CNN. Always wrong, always biased, if someone even mentions them they automatically lose the argument because everyone ignores what they are actually saying or the quality of the statistics and instead piles in to bash their source.
They do that because the Guardian is one of the most reliable and neutral sources of information out there. No perfect of course, no org is, but damn good and that's a huge threat to anyone whose politics are built on untruths.
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No need to worry, religion has been successful with the concept for millennia.
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Statista is a useless source because it's paywalled. You might be right (you aren't) but we can't tell unless we pay, so I suggest next time you look for some publicly available information.
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Erh... I don't know about your country, in mine, interacting with LEOs is usually not something that's decided on your end.
Or in other words, if a LEO stops you, you better stop and don't just flip him off as you walk by.
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Statistics doesn't care about your skin color when it comes to whether you agree with it, only when it comes to whether you get shot.
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> Tell us the difference between a "black and brown" person, racist.
A Black person is anyone who identifies as Black.
I used the term "brown" to refer to anyone else that cops think "might be Black".
I apologize openly, as no offence was intended. I merely think LEOs target people of color (better phrasing?) and people of color are disproportionately not only targeted... but hassled... harassed... attacked... and killed. All of that is wrong.
I apologize if I didn't use the best phrasing or even applied t
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I'm a statistician, may I still answer?
There ain't one. Statistically speaking.
Re: THIS is bothersome (Score:2)
You are correct, in 2019 there were 370 recorded White people recorded killed by LEO, vs 235 black people. But it your response is a bit misleading (dishonest?) as there are about five times as many whites as blacks in the US. So very disproportionately more black deaths.
If you donâ(TM)t realize that there is a problem here, especially after the focus that it has been over the last four years, then you are probably willfully ignorant.
Your reasoning is wrong. (Score:2)
It does not matter how little blacks are there compared to whites in the population if likelihood of a black making a crime is different from a white making a crime. Trying to divide it by a simple citizen count of a given race is dishonest as well.
You need to count kills by LEOs per arrest (of corresponding race member) which led to a successful conviction. This will account for different crime rates between races and also for possibly racial bias of LEOs (that is the reason for limiting it to successful c
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And if these numbers only had one free variable, you'd actually have a point.
In this case you will, and probably even rightfully so, get to hear that whether someone is arrested and convicted depends on people more than on cold facts, which in turn means that people and their biases play heavily into the numbers you get at the end.
It's like trying to find out which car is worldwide the best and trying to use sales numbers are a base. One should assume that the best cars sell best because, well, that's what
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Hmm... 6e+06 uid, obvious troll...
The USAF needs to be brought in for a series of Reaper assisted airstrikes against the looters.
Da Ivan. That is what your Tsar Putin would do. But you were too obvious so on roubles for you.
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Do they even have jurisdiction to operate there?
They do not have the authority to arrest or detain.
Whether they have the authority to observe and report is not clear.
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If I remember correctly, the BP has jurisdiction out to 100 miles from any "border", which can include some hazy interpretations of our water borders.
Agents can enter private property, set up highway checkpoints, have wide discretion to stop, question, and detain individuals they suspect to have committed immigration violations—and can even use race and ethnicity as factors to do so.
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The cops have started shooting at journalists, after arresting them yesterday. This is really serious, this is your democracy on the line.
https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/... [twitter.com]
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Re:THIS is bothersome (Score:4, Insightful)
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Wow, your total lack of perspective is dually-noted.
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No. But crossing guards aren't in charge of securing the border.
You do realize, don't you, that the Predator drone is a surveillance platform [wikipedia.org] and was only later modified to carry weapons. The CBP version [cbp.gov] is not armed.
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When did Minneapolis become the broder?
It's over 200 miles to the nearest border, as the crow flies.
Re:THIS is bothersome (Score:4, Informative)
The CBP can patrol and enforce within 100 miles of an external border. International airports - where you can enter from a foreign flight, and are subject to CBP control - are considered an external border. MSP is an International airport. And the entire Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan region is well within 100 miles of MSP.
Is it right? I don't think so. But that's the reality of the law, and that's why the can enforce immigration actions in places like Las Vegas, NV - which is more than 200 miles from the Mexico border.
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Whether I believe it or whether you believe it is immaterial, what is material is whether it's actually true and I defy you to provide evidence of it.
I googled for a while, I found a lot of news outlets you'd undoubtedly claim are fake news which reported on the results of studies that showed the number was closer to 'none' than thousands. Maybe it was one of those caravans that they were embedded in, but that can't be right because Trump said they weren't there:
https://time.com/5432702/presi... [time.com]
So I ca
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In this case they're flying over the Canadian border. Watching the people of middle eastern origin flee north, I guess.
Re: safe border (Score:3)
have been caught coming across the Mexican border, so yes, BP has anti-terrorism tools.
Wow! I'm glad to hear they are keeping the Mexican border with Minnesota safe!
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Huh? Already?
Jeesh, those new sleeping pills must have made me miss 25 years or so...
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Actually no, there haven't been. Here are the actual numbers, a wee bit short of "thousands".
https://qz.com/1436131/the-act... [qz.com]
Country 2016 2017 2018
Syria 18 4 5
Iraq 15 7 3
Iran 5 13 9
Israel 3 11 –
Saudi Arabia 3 1 1
Yemen 1 30 43
Palestine 1 3 –
Egypt 1 3 4
Lebanon 1 1 1
Algeria 1 1 2
Libya 1 – –
Morocco – 1 4
It's a Fed drone (Score:2)
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I have no issue with say DOJ/FBI stepping in, BUT when trump can use an group in any fashion, then we have serious problems. ICE/BP were created to handle a certain situation. NONE of it deals with terrorism or riot control.
This is as stupid as our using American troops to quell protest/riots in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. Basically, troops were NOT TRAINED FOR IT.
Re:It's a Fed drone (Score:5, Insightful)
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Was it a predator drone? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article suggests but doesn't say that. There is all the difference in the world between flying a surveillance drone and flying an armed drone. The article is written in a way that suggests the latter, and shows a picture of a predator - but it doesn't actually say that.
An unarmed surveillance drone doesn't seem any more concerning than police surveillance helicopters as far as technology goes.
A separate but important question is whether it was a US military as opposed too national guard drone, and whether that constitutes use of the US military inside the US borders. Again the article hints it might be military, but states it was CBP which can legally operate inside of the US.
So if I just go with what the article claims happened, its not clear there is anything bad / surprising here.
Re:Was it a predator drone? (Score:5, Informative)
An unarmed surveillance drone doesn't seem any more concerning than police surveillance helicopters as far as technology goes.
Maybe not a big deal from a technology perspective, but it does show that infrastructure that was created for defending the border can easily be repurposed for domestic use.
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Any technology that can point outward can be repurposed to point inward and vice versa.
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Re:Was it a predator drone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good point. The use of armed predator drones is widely publicized, but I see you are right that their initial primary mission was surveillance.
A lot is about spin:
"High altitude camera drones are being used to monitor the situation"
sounds very different from
"The government is deploying Predator anti-terrorism drones out of Grand Forks air force base".
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Those drones are designed to hang around in the sky for long periods of time, providing imagery from a great distance and over a wide area.
Police helicopter are deployed for specific reasons and have to get in relatively close to get imagery or shine a spotlight.
In other words drones are a major escalation of mass surveillance by the police. Unlike a helicopter which you can hear and see you probably wouldn't know that a drone was observing you.
Jammable? (Score:2)
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Lame.
The correct answer is "with a door jamb".
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GPS signals are weak and the frequencies are known but I doubt you could jam GPS from the ground. The drone antennas are pointing at the sky.
A Shutdown Fuse Lit (Score:2, Interesting)
In reality those involved do no even care about the person murdered by the grossly incompetent and racist officer and his equally ignorant and thuggish compatriots at the scene. This was a shit down powder keg waiting to explode and that act of brutal public violence, the murdering of someone with causual disinterest, kneeling on their neck to cut of blood flow to the brain until the person dies, totally indifferent to what they are doing, murdering someone, publicly (stupidity when you a placed in a positi
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Or, we have a grossly incompetent and dumb-ass officer, who would have done the same to any ethnicity. The failure on the dumb-ass's part could be that he failed to realize that there was an OD victim who needed help. His crime could be not rendering aid to someone in his custody, who then died.
Re:A Shutdown Fuse Lit (Score:4, Informative)
What 'TB inoculation route'? There is no vaccine yet, which is why the shutdown is not bullshit. Ending the shutdown without allowing another exponential increase of infections is going to be difficult.
Is it cheaper than flying a helicopter? (Score:2)
Minneapolis is how far from the border? (Score:2)
Seems the CBP is extending its range again. "Show me your papers. "
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You two can settle the argument easily. It's called links to news articles. Or in popular internet meme fashion: Pics or it didn't happen.
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By police yes. Not by the border patrol.
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But this is not the jurisdiction of the border patrol. The border patrol is not just some random federal police agency that can be used to police for any random federal crime anywhere in the country.
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You seem to think that this nation operates by the rule of law. That's not how it works, especially not in the time of Trump.
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Nevermind, rhetorical question, of course you use circular logic like that all the time. Racist piece of shit that you are. FOAD. Sick of you people and your shit.
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You should lurk. Seriously.
Re:Protesters or Rioters? (Score:5, Insightful)
For a guy with the sig "The government is not your friend." You sure do seem eager to have 1) Federal Agencies monitoring domestic activities. 2) Using Anti-Terrorism equipment to do it. 3) Charging accused (likely misdeamor) rioters with a federal crime. 4) Despite the fact that there is almost no way to prove that a person came from out of state with the intent of rioting (what is the penal code section for that, anyway?)
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It's the classic right wing position on law and freedom:it's all states rights and small government when it comes to harming people unlike themselves but as soon as it looks like teh libruls might benefit from a lack of government interference, the tune changes completely.
Re:Protesters or Rioters? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The community let the wheels of justice turn and reach a conclusion. Curious how that case - as egregious as the Floyd case - didn't result in a single injury, a single burned car or building, and no looting...
White people haven't been oppressed and discriminated against for over 400 years.
White people aren't disproportionately and unjustifiably subjected to police violence like black people are.
There's a great disparity in how black people are treated by the justice system vs white people. The way the criminal justice system operates is systematically disadvantageous to black people.
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Re:Protesters or Rioters? (Score:5, Insightful)
So if someone is black, they have a right to riot and burn things down.
Got it.
Does that apply to other races too, or only blacks? What about first-generation immigrant blacks - are those treated differently than American blacks? How about those of us of Irish descent, who were essentially serfs and slaves and suffered racism at the hands of the English - and then the Americans [wikipedia.org], when they arrived here? Do they have a right to loot, riot, and attack other people?
I remember by Irish-immigrant grandfather telling me about the "No Irish Need Apply" for all jobs when he arrived, and ended up digging latrines and ditches in Kansas in order to make money - because he couldn't even get jobs that blacks typically worked (Irish were considered the lowest of the low). Does that mean I have a right to riot now, because of historical injustice done to my family?
I see what you did there. (Score:2)
I read this thread...and you totally just argued in bad faith. Your conclusion "if someone is black, they have a right to riot" is not what phalse phase said. Nor is it what they implied. The post explained where all the rage is coming from. It explained the motivation for the riots, not a justification for them.
And you knew this. It is obvious from your own posts that you have no reading comprehension deficit. You deliberately misrepresented the parent post as something it was not. And the real iron
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Then I'm sure we'll all join in and condemn the riots. Right? Anyone rioting should be locked up and charged with rioting.
There is NEVER an excuse to attack and damage other people's private property, or injure other people, because you're frustrated over your own perceived slights. Real or imaginary slights, there is no excuse for a riot. Ever.
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Famously, there was the New York City draft riots of 1863 [wikipedia.org]....just sayin'.
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The issue is racist white cops killing blacks.
Stop race baiting. There is no evidence that this was a racist killing. There is evidence that the two men had previously worked together.
There is no evidence that white cops disproportionately kill black people. This is a myth perpetuated by people seeking a race war because they're racist shits.
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And what about racist black cops killing whites? Noor shot Demond, and it was EIGHT MONTHS before he was arrested. Here, the sicko who knelt on Mr. Floyd was arrested in 3 days. No riots in the first case - riots and looting in the second.
For the most part, the US does NOT have a massive race problem - in fact, it pretty much has none, except where race-baiting is used for political gain. If America is such a racist society, why do black immigrants and their kids succeed academically at a level equal to [qz.com]
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White people haven't been oppressed and discriminated against for over 400 years.
Tell that to the Irish.
White people aren't disproportionately and unjustifiably subjected to police violence like black people are.
No. White people are disproportionately and unjustifiably subjected to police violence when compared to how the police treat black people.
Anyway, men are significantly more likely to be shot by the police than women. Why no noise on this clearly sexist discrepancy?
There's a great disparity in how men are treated by the justice system vs women. Should men all start rioting?
The way the criminal justice system operates is systematically disadvantageous to men. Should men have carte blanc
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I wonder what would have happened if there had been a video of the cops doing something similar to that woman. Kneeling on her neck until she died, or maybe beating her to death. I don't think protests would be that unlikely.
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Yeah, it wasn't the same. He just reached over his partner and shot her flat-out, in cold blood, for no reason. That's totally much more excusable and means no reason to riot.
I mean, Noor wasn't charged for nearly 8 months, and we have the police officer accused of killing Floyd charged in just 3 days. Totally understandable that the riots over Demond's death happened, because of that delayed justice.
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Wow, now the police are shooting at journalists on live TV. They really don't give a fuck, do they?
https://twitter.com/ChrisBisho... [twitter.com]
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Riots aren't about one thing.
Indeed. For instance the Minneapolis riots are about the opportunity to acquire a 60" television for free, or about attacking the Government because you're a member of antifa and want to promote fascism.
It's possible to protest without rioting. For instance the mostly white local militia have been out in Minneapolis openly carrying rifles and attending premises that have been threatened by looters. They're supporting the protests and using the threat of arms to prevent looting.
How is it that they can differ
Re: Protesters or Rioters? (Score:3)
It's possible to protest without rioting. For instance the mostly white local militia have been out in Minneapolis openly carrying rifles and attending premises that have been threatened by looters. They're supporting the protests and using the threat of arms to prevent looting.
You see how that shit makes the left ree though? Some republicans go out for a peaceful walk while open-carrying rifles and the left loses their mind, but democrats and their useful-POCs burn down entire cities and it's all "well, you have to understand the context ..."
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Likewise if racist asshole cops didn't murder innocent white women [wikipedia.org] there would be no need for riots.
Wow! Looks like the Minnesota police need better training, and to get rid of some bad police.
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I know you're obnoxious but not actually this dumb. There isn't a long history of cops killing....pretty white women minding their own business and then getting away with it.
Because he was arrested within five days, tried and sente
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This is more like the Boston Tea Party. Long term problems, complaints ignored by a largely unaccountable authority, no prospect of it getting better, eventually it reaches a point where this happens.
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The community let the wheels of justice turn and reach a conclusion.
And what was the result? Oh right a guy was arrested and the case disappeared in the history books for people to hold up as some kind of way of vilifying the actions of future black rioters.
Now maybe if people had rioted back then and and said "we've enough of this shit". The police force may fundamentally change. But no instead we have black people dying at the hands of police thugs (AGAIN), and somehow everyone should just be okay with it because at some point a white woman called the police for help and