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Comment by urlgrey | Hacker News Reader

I recommend listening to the 'Eye in the Sky' episode of of Radiolab: http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/

It features an interview with Ross McNutt, also interviewed in the Washington Post story. McNutt describes aerial surveillance technology he developed for the US military operations in Iraq & Afghanistan, in use for over 10 years. The primary reason for not introducing it here is the US is opposition from privacy groups, despite having been used successfully abroad to counter terrorism and organized crime.

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> The primary reason for not introducing it here is the US is opposition from privacy groups, despite having been used successfully abroad to counter terrorism and organized crime.

No offence, but do you really think that giving the ability to to mass scans like this to police officers won't be abused? What's our track record on actually punishing police officers that can have provably (and demonstrably) abused their powers?

I'd almost trust the military more with that technology than local police departments and/or the FBI.

Edit: Also, what are the chances that this technology will spend a lot of time in the field at local police departments before there are any meaningful rules/regulations on how they can use it? During that period no one will get punished for "abuses" because without rules and regulations any use is valid.

No offense taken; I too do not trust US law enforcement to use this technology in a manner that respects the privacy and rights of law-abiding citizens.

Nonetheless, it is a fact that this technology has been used to trace the location of people responsible for the placement of roadside bombs in warzones abroad, and has been used to locate the headquarters of an organized crime group in Juarez, Mexico, a place that averaged 8.5 killings per day in 2010.

I highly recommend listening to the Radiolab story, it raises some interesting points.

law-abiding citizens

So it's OK in your book to trample the rights of criminals?

Because I bet we could find a crime you've unintentionally committed in the last week or so...

"successfully abroad to counter terrorism"

What the metric for success? Because the ones I've heard about don't make any sense.

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