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Border Patrol flies anti-terrorism drone over Minneapolis protestors
Thousands of people took to the streets of Minneapolis on Friday to protest the death of George Floyd, a local black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck during an arrest. All the while, a Customs and Border Patrol drone kept a careful eye on the unfolding unrest.
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. CBP uses the drone in anti-terrorism operations by helping to identify and intercept potential terrorists and illegal cross-border activity.
Also at The Drive and Business Insider.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:39AM (8 children)
Customs and Border protection? What on earth are those guys doing patrolling a riot in Minneapolis?
Their tech is fairly in depth. They can follow you for as long as they're in the sky and "rewind" where you came from if need be. Get caught up in the wrong place? They'll rewind the tape until they know what house you came out of.
This is great when there is truly an enemy that you need to track that is threatening lives. In a free country like this, diverse communities can feed the fear. Humans aren't good at recognizing strangers as just other people. People are very good at bias and imagining "others" are out to get them.
When the people in charge to start thinking that enemies are simply others they don't know, this tech becomes dangerous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @03:50AM (2 children)
Patrolling the Ontario border and got blown off-course?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @04:14PM (1 child)
Not off course. The US federal government considers everything within 100 miles of the actual border to be "the border". Which means most of the population of the US lives "on the border".
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @04:38PM
Also, the US federal government considered anyone of color to be terrorists. Which means the majority of the population of the US lives as terrorists.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Pav on Sunday May 31 2020, @09:02AM (2 children)
Perhaps they can figure out who this guy [youtube.com] is (though I suspect they won't). He appears to be an agent provocateur , and a couple of people say they recognise the guy... a police officer. Granted, this was his ex wife and her friend... so there's that. The precinct he's from also denies it's him, and apparently he has an alibi.
Still, I wonder if that umbrella might have been a way to make the guy more trackable in realtime from the air.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @04:36PM
More trackable, less identifiable in realtime from the air.
(Score: 2) by helel on Monday June 01 2020, @12:44AM
His alibi is that he was on the clock at the time. Seems like a pretty piss poor alibi to me as nobody was accusing him of doing this on his day off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @12:00PM
>> Customs and Border protection? What on earth are those guys doing patrolling a riot in Minneapolis?
It's right there in their title: "Customs" and Border Protection. It's the custom in the USA to repress uppity black folk, so they're just ensuring the custom is upheld.
(Score: 2) by http on Sunday May 31 2020, @08:11PM
Breaking the law.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.