Army Sees 11,000% Increase in US Army Drone Arsenal Over Last 10 Years Since: New Legislation Paves Way for 30,000 More Above the USA
Brian Romanoff Nor Cal Truth Feb 20, 2012
Never let it be said that the military industrial complex does not heavily rely on 9/11 to continue and thrive.
In October of 2001 the US Army had about 54 drones in its arsenal, however that would change soon after the attacks of 9/11. Some numbers are noted by the Scientific American:
The U.S. Army’s drone armada alone has expanded from 54 drones in October 2001, when U.S. combat operations began in Afghanistan, to more than 4,000 drones performing surveillance, reconnaissance and attack missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan (pdf).
There are more than 6,000 of them throughout the U.S. military as a whole, and continued developments promise to make these controversial aircraft—blamed for the deaths of militants as well as citizens—far more intelligent and nimble.
From 54 drones in 2001 to the current 6,000 in-stock, within 10 years of 9/11 the US Army saw a net increase of their drone arsenal by 11,000%.
The legislation would order the FAA, before the end of the year, to expedite the process through which it authorizes the use of drones by federal, state and local police and other agencies.
Section 332 of the new FAA legislation also orders the agency to develop a system for licensing commercial drone flights as part of the nation’s air traffic control system by 2015.
The provision in the legislation is the fruit of “a huge push by lawmakers and the defense sector to expand the use of drones” in American airspace, she added.
The agency projects that 30,000 drones could be in the nation’s skies by 2020.
This new bill follows up the Army’s January directive to use drone fleets in the U.S. for training missions and “domestic operations.”
And both of these initiatives are mandated in the NDAA (section 1097) that calls for six drone test ranges to be operational within six months of that bills signing December 31.
The commercial drone market would be worth hundreds of millions more if the bill passes.
Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and many other ‘Corporate Partners‘ are poised to profit heavily from the legislation. They are the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International or AUVSI, a conglomerate of ‘defense’ companies that essentially lobbied for and drafted HR 658.
Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has written permission to collectand retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”
According to DHS, the definition of personal identifiable information can consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.”
Previously established guidelines within the administration say that data could only be collected under authorization set forth by written code, but the new provisions in the NOC’s write-up means that any reporter, whether someone along the lines of Walter Cronkite or a budding blogger, can be victimized by the agency.
Also included in the roster of those subjected to the spying are government officials, domestic or not, who make public statements, private sector employees that do the same and “persons known to have been involved in major crimes of Homeland Security interest,” which to itself opens up the possibilities even wider.
The department says that they will only scour publically-made info available while retaining data, but it doesn’t help but raise suspicion as to why the government is going out of their way to spend time, money and resources on watching over those that helped bring news to the masses.
As a novelist, Carolyn Jewel never knows where her research will take her.
She’s studied the power of rail guns, war in Europe, and the history of Syria. And all along she corresponds with readers throughout the world, including from Islamic countries like Indonesia.
And she doesn’t want to worry how all that might look to an official peering over her shoulder, which is why the Petaluma author is taking on the government’s largest espionage service.
The single mother is lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the National Security Agency, claiming it scooped up copies of her calls and internet records and those of millions of others in violation of their Constitutional rights.
“We are supposed to be able to live our lives without worry that the government is looking in,” she said. “If they are, that’s wrong.”
SpyTown.com cites research reporting an increase of 30 million security cameras installed in post 9/11 America, with the cameras populating both public and private areas.
Security cameras, once reserved for airports, Fortune 500 corporations, and retail stores, are now speckled throughout all areas of life – from public parks to elementary schools and the sidewalks our kids play on. SpyTown.com, home security cameraexperts, cites data from IMS Research that 30 million security cameras have been sold in just the last decade following the footprint of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“SpyTown is based in Long Island, so we saw front and center the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. It made us all aware of how vulnerable we are, and security cameras help give us some peace of mind. They may not be able to fight terror, but they are a tool in preventing it,” reflects Howard Geschwind, SpyTown.com Sales Director.
So much is not included in this article, I just want to remind you of the decision by Santa Rosa last year to relpace its parking meter-maids with 7-camera equipped SUV’s.
On September 11, 1773, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “There never was a good war or bad peace.”
More than 200 years later, on September 11, 2001, the United States lost its sense of peace as an undetermined enemy declared “unofficial war” on the U.S. when terrorists overtook passenger planes,
crashing them into the New York World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.
In the days that followed, the streets around San Jose were eerily vacant. I remember people seemed afraid to go out in public for weeks after. The events that took place thousands of miles away from the Bay Area reached all corners of our society, wreaking havoc on our lives – precisely the goal of terrorism.
The Bay Area’s means of surveillance continues to grow at a pace that would cause George Orwell to turn in his grave.
What is Bay Area security and surveillance like in the wake of 9/11?
- As of 2010, Bay Area residents are using social media to watch for and report criminal activity in San Jose.
- Fremont’s Logitech reports installing a private Alert Digital Video Security Camera in a neighborhood or home allows you to “register the camera with the new ‘Neighborhood Central’ crime prevention service.”
- The Proposition 1B bond affords San Jose more real-time cameras planned for local highways.
- According to SF Gate, San Francisco will install state-of-the-art real-time video surveillance cameras on 358 Muni buses.
by Kristen Breitweiser source: Huffington Post July 22, 2011
Breathlessly, six members of Congress have requested that the FBI investigate the “outrageous” allegations that News Corp might have hacked into the cell phones of 9/11 victims and their families. Lickety split, the Justice Department has done so.
First off, does it surprise me that a corporation like News Corp. might try to hack into the information of private citizens for their own financial gain? Nope.
Much like it wouldn’t surprise me if my own government hacked into the private information of its citizens for political gain or… er, I mean, “reasons of national security.” Just ask Dick Cheney and Karl Rove about that.
The digital rights advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced Thursday it had discovered violations stemming from the FBI’s use of expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act.
Documents obtained by the group as the result of pending Freedom of Information Act litigation suggest that abuses of surveillance powers granted by the PATRIOT Act had been flagged by the FBI.
In a 45-page opinion, Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled that the government had violated a 1978 federal statute requiring court approval for domestic surveillance when it intercepted phone calls of Al Haramain, a now-defunct Islamic charity in Oregon, and of two lawyers representing it in 2004. Declaring that the plaintiffs had been “subjected to unlawful surveillance,” the judge said the government was liable to pay them damages.
The ruling delivered a blow to the Bush administration’s claims that its surveillance program, which Mr. Bush secretly authorized shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was lawful. Under the program, the National Security Agency monitored Americans’ international e-mail messages and phone calls without court approval, even though the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, required warrants.
The Justice Department said it was reviewing the decision and had made no decision about whether to appeal.
When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.” Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006.
Late in the evening on June 9 that year, three prisoners at Guantánamo died suddenly and violently. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and had been imprisoned at Guantánamo since he was captured at the age of seventeen. None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners.
As news of the deaths emerged the following day, the camp quickly went into lockdown. The authorities ordered nearly all the reporters at Guantánamo to leave and those en route to turn back. The commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, then declared the deaths “suicides.” In an unusual move, he also used the announcement to attack the dead men. “I believe this was not an act of desperation,” he said, “but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” Reporters accepted the official account, and even lawyers for the prisoners appeared to believe that they had killed themselves. Only the prisoners’ families in Saudi Arabia and Yemen rejected the notion.
Eleven boys from Edsel Ford High School’s graduating class of 2011 in Dearborn, Mich., wore hooded sweatshirts to school Monday depicting the numeral 11 with windows drawn on each digit, so they looked like towers. Alongside the towers is a thunderbird, the school’s mascot, flying towards them. The text below the images read “You can’t bring us down.”
“The whole design gave prominence to the 9/11 tragedy, and of course was very upsetting to staff and students,” said Principal Hassane Jaafar in a statement.
School officials said the boys intended the shirts to be displays of class pride and did not understand that they would be perceived as offensive.
KPRC news in Houston recently filmed a secret experiment by law enforcement agencies including the Dept. of Homeland Security of a drone intended to spy on Americans.
The drone uncovered during this investigation are not like the large, expensive models used by the military for targeted strikes on militants half a world away. These are manufactured by Insitu out of Bingen, Washington (corporate offices located in Australia), only weigh about 40 pounds (18.1 kg) before monitoring equipment is installed. This model has the capacity to stay airborne for up to a day.
Forget that the government’s spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here).
Forget that the draconian Patriot Act was written before 9/11.
Forget that the Bush administration used its heightened powers granted under the state of emergency declared in 2001 (and continuing to the present day) to harass those who disagreed with its policies. See this, this and this.
We are fighting illegal preemptive wars against three countries. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. The resulting wars have caused well over 1,000,000 casualties. Preemptive war is illegal according to the Nuremberg Charter, and the United Nations charter. These wars are destabilizing the entire Middle East, and causing anti-American sentiment throughout the world.
In America, the Constitution is being forgotten with the passage of bills like the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act. Americans are forced to wonder if their conversations are being monitored through the use of illegal wiretapping. The freedom of the press, and the right to peacefully assemble is being discarded.
Executive Power within the United States is being expanded to the point of near-dictatorship, and accountability for the actions of the Executive, and other members of Government is non-existent.
A constant state of fear is the norm.
Billions upon billions are being spent on the previously mentioned wars, and things that are needed for the people are being forgotten about.
Soldiers are dying, are being subjected to multiple tours of duty, are being exposed to depleted uranium and chemical weapons, are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, are committing suicide at an astounding rate, are being fed propaganda in order to murder innocents, and are having their families destroyed.
Posted by Brian 
