Shortly after the Minneapolis police
killing[ murder -- fixed that foryou ] of George Floyd last year, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) flew a Predator drone over the city in an effort to surveil the ongoing protests against police brutality occurring there. The drone, which took off from Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota and flew in a holding pattern over protests for approximately 90 minutes, recorded video from a height of 20,000 feet. Now, thanks to a recent Freedom of Information Request, you can watch that video. [...]Despite these claims, the CBP has repeatedly been found engaging in this kind of surveillance -- even apparently using Predators to surveil indigenous pipeline activists at their homes on multiple occasions. An investigation found that the Department of Homeland Security (the parent agency for CBP) deployed aerial surveillance in 15 different U.S. cities to watch protesters amidst last year's violent and chaotic nationwide protests.
The video is strangely soothing, though.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Customs and Border Patrol,
flying a predator drone,
to surveil protests,
200 miles from the border.
Yes yes, fuck these guys.
But it's also kinda nice to see a non-civilian drone video that doesn't end with a wedding blowing up, or a factory blowing up, or a pickup truck full of people blowing up, or infrared humanoid figures frantically running for cover and then getting turned into a slurry by automated gun fire.
To think: this footage was meant to be the preamble to a
Trump-authorised (nay, -insisted) use of sci-fi death ray against the protesters.Meanwhile, the postal service were waving their hands saying "Hey! We've been tracking the social media of right-wing shit-heads with weapons; maybe check 'em out before they, I dunno, storm the Capitol or something?"
I'm guessing the main reason the cops released this video is that it has 1h20 of clouds with a few minutes of testing the resolution of the optics, and some shots of the Predator itself. Unless I missed some juicy timestamps?
Pretty little predator clouds.
Definitely missing The Orb music attribution.
I wonder how much cellular/WiFi/Bluetooth traffic and unique identifiers that collected through the clouds?
I'm kinda embarrassed I didn't even consider the wardriving potential. Back to the grim meathook future training for me.
Video has been disappeared...
Of course! Put it on mainstream corporate social media and you might as well throw it in the trash. As Zuckerberg says: "Dumb fucks."