If they're deployed in public spaces, and prevent yet more police brutality, they're definitely worthwhile.

Tacit acceptance of 24 hour Big Brother surveillance, but of course if it's people you agree with doing it then it's OK.

If the police act in accordance with the law and display some basic human decency then they should have nothing to worry about....

"This occurred most notably during the eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, where police prevented even credentialed journalists from entering."

If that was Syria - there would be outrage.

Funny how the fearful will accept buckets of hypocrisy in order to believe that they are 'protected'.

Is this still going on?

This won't help the Occupy cause.

Occupy will eventually halt live-steams and instead resort to releasing heavily edited footage of incidents to ensure their own violent actions and provocation isn't shown.

The general public, the "99%" they supposedly represent won’t be fooled by this resulting in yet another Occupy PR fail the likes of which OccupyLSX have become world leaders in.

We are not so much worried about the current political establishment...

Speak for yourself.

Is this still going on?

Shame isn't it - the right wing were convinced it woud be over in weeks.

This is what happens when you assume everyone else's commitment is as weak as your own.

It's not just going on - it's getting bigger.

They blocked the ports in Oakland last week. Not bad for "a bunch of dirty hippies and jobless scum" (not my words I might add)

Leave the American kids to their toys, and let grown up Europeans show you how it's done -

http://youtu.be/Qcoxao3XBZQ

;-)

The question is, do we really want the paranoiac nightmare of our airspace being polluted by police and personal drones with all of us watching our watchers? We are not sure how this will unfold, but we are sure that the outcome will be as unpredictable as the technological developments themselves.

Yup, it's catching: the watchers forgot that anyone can pick up a bug.

How long before all kinds of radio controlled flight are banned. Big brother is here and now. A shame for all the radio control clubs around the country.

"This occurred most notably during the eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, where police prevented even credentialed journalists from entering."

If that was Syria - there would be outrage.

Funny how the fearful will accept buckets of hypocrisy in order to believe that they are 'protected'.

I wish I could hit the recommend button more than once. I als with that doing so would make a difference!

I also wish.. why not damn edit function?!?!

"It is a lightweight four-rotor helicopter that you can buy cheaply on Amazon and control with your iPhone. It has an onboard camera so that you can view everything on your phone that it points at."

The irony that all these products were created by the free markets Occupy purports to so despise appears to be completely lost on the author. And indeed the Occupiers.

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"The irony that all these products were created by the free markets"

Really?

I thought these were created by the inventor who had the idea to build one - I believe Da Vinci had the first design of a helicopter.

Are you brave enough to attribute the works of Da Vinci to Capitalism as well as everything else in between?

Seriously - I think you're confusing 'created' with 'marketed' - the two are definitely not the same.

I love the way you Austrians try to re-write history to support Capitalism and attribute any invention in the last 200 years to capitalism.

...and besides, if you're a real Austrian then you would know that free market capitalism was not in fact in place during the invention, marketing or distribution of the mini-copter as it 'ended' the moment Governments interfered.

...but I guess living with contradictory things is something you get used to as an Austrian school student eh?

The person who calls him/herself Ludwig Von Mises: The OWS supporters whom I know personally are not opposed to the free market (an utterly hypothetical concept.) They are opposed to the crony capitalism which has seen banks and big financial institutions getting direct cash transfusions from the Fed and the Congress while the unemployed are kicked to the curb, and people are losing their homes.
My own attitude toward the free market is like Gandhi's to Western Civilization. It would be a good idea.

"In a nation where everybody is concerned about jobs, you are applauding the fact that somebody prevented others from going to work."

Goldman Sachs own the ports and the workers didn't mind.

Please take note, do your research better before you simply repeat something you read in your morning rag. Informed debate is so much better than uninformed debate.

"We'll let you know in next year's elections just what we think of you and the world you envision."

Considering less than 50% of the UK bother to vote - and the US isn't much better - I'd say the demonstration at the ballot box that you plan will be a pointless exercise.

..and how would you know what world I envision? - prejudice much?

I could be a Nazi for all you know - supporting the nationalistic blockade of ports against imported labour brought in by the owners (the banks)

The battery only gives 12 minutes flight time before needing 90 minutes recharging. You'd need a veritable squadron of these things in order to provide continuous surveillance over any "action" - but definitely a step in the right direction.

It's sad, but in the end you have to think that 99% of politicians are pretty useless scum if the aim is to improve the quality of life for everyone in the world.

They should be aiming to ensure that we have a caring, open and tolerant society that treats everyone with a minimum standard of respect, standard of life and value.

(And before the raving loonies chime in, that's not socialism/communism but simple human decency.)

If this kind of activity is your big leftist wet dream, you will probably be very surprised that the vast majority of Americans will continue to blow you off as a

Very friendly bunch the yanks.

So now I'm confused.

Mises says this is Free market Capitalism.

You say it's Cronyism

I say you need to both read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and then realise the moment he penned it - the free market was over.

...actually I place the 'beginning of the end' of "the free market" in the middle ages when restrictions were placed on the London meat market to prevent everyone dying from dysentry.

From there on in every new free market has corrupted itself and the public demand regulation - thereby ending any idea of free market Capitlaism a long time ago.

Private citizens can now buy their own surveillance drones to watch the police.

_______________________________________________

Excellent idea.

The police state has got out of control.

Watch out for new gun control legislation that the Obama administration may pass to confistcate the guns of Citizens too under some national emergency!

I'd like to know when the word 'leftist' was entered into the English vocabulary.

I mean can anyone be 'ist' of the left? - If this was a recognised word then there would surely be an opposite (rightist?)

I think the right are trying to speak again - they should stick to grunting as we can just about understand that. When they try to look clever it's just a thesaurian car crash

MinorityReporter
.

From there on in every new free market has corrupted itself and the public demand regulation - thereby ending any idea of free market Capitlaism a long time ago.

_______________________________________________________

It is not people who have demanded regulations - the government's desire to control and regulate everything is not new or unknown.

This is why we must keep the government on a tight leash, and not easily let them expand power or increase their budgets.

@MinorityReporter
"Goldman Sachs own the ports and the workers didn't mind."

Even those on a hourly/daily rate? How do you know none of them minded losing pay?

I thought these [remote control helicopters] were created by the inventor who had the idea to build one - I believe Da Vinci had the first design of a helicopter.

Are you brave enough to attribute the works of Da Vinci to Capitalism as well as everything else in between?

Seriously - I think you're confusing 'created' with 'marketed' - the two are definitely not the same.

Nobody's attributing Da Vinci's designs to the free market. But he, visionary that he was, didn't design a toy helicopter that can be controlled from an iPhone. That is a product of capitalism.

There are two separate themes in this article: -
the growth of new surveillance technologies, and their implementation by police
protestors getting access to these technologies and putting them to use against the police.

Let's be clear, the protestors are hardly leading the way in drone technology - they are following rather than leading.

In Britain, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has been working with the Civil Aviation Authority to produce guidelines for the operation of drones. It seems ACPO is very keen to make them an everyday reality.

In general, we are moving towards a situation of more surveillance and more automated surveillance.

An interesting features of these drones is that they can operate largely automated, flying themselves, not requiring any skill from a human operator.

A few years ago, in Britain we found ourselves with the national automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) camera network. monitoring road traffic.

ACPO has been working hard to develop automatic face recognition systems.

The Metropolitan Police have already adopted automatic reocgnition systems that can track logos on individuals' clothing, to be able to follow and track individuals from camera to camera, across the CCTV network, as they move from place to place.

What the public does not seem to appreciate is how quickly the price of CCTV technology is falling, allowing a greater concentration of cameras, and greater sophistication. Installation prices are falling from nearly £100,000 around 1999 (for top-end cameras) to less than £5,000 today, in sophisticated airport face-recognition camera installations, and soon less than £500. We3 see companies like NEC offering off-the-shelf intelligent CCTV network systems, with behaviour recognition, able to alert operators to "incidents" and individuals of interest.

What does this mean, in real terms? It means it is possible to move from a situation in London, where there are about 24,000 networked cameras, to the situation in Beijing where there are 300,000 networked cameras, and other Chinese cities where there are over half a million. This level of surveillance density just is not possible without costs per unit coming down and without automatic surveillance (because there would never be enough operators to watch that number of cameras).

WageLabourer

If they're deployed in public spaces, and prevent yet more police brutality, they're definitely worthwhile.

______________________________________________________

The reason for high crime in inner cities is due to tight gun control legislation enacted there.

This increases the reliance on the police, and also gives an extra boost to the criminals (who will have guns anyways, whether it is legal or illegal) since they feel safer that their victims will be unarmed.

Goldman Sachs own the ports and the workers didn't mind.

Several unions opposed the move.

Yes I agree (with SickSwan that is) - perhaps it would be possible to fit weaponry on one of those Occucopters? i dont propose anything too violent at all (that would be kind of non-european) - just perhaps itching powder guns or something like that - then, if they could be controlled from Sheffield, well then we are off...

Truly, we are descending into a nightmare Orwellian world.

Helicopters continually whirring around overhead. Unmanned drones circling, spying on everyone. Cameras in all the streets, watching our every move. Heavily armed police with their batons, Tasers and pepper spray. Mobile surveillance vans driving round filming everyone. Police wanting to open fire on protestors. Prime Ministers wanting water cannon and CS gas.

It's like something out of Bladerunner.

I thought we were supposed to be a free society.

Nobody's attributing Da Vinci's designs to the free market. But he, visionary that he was, didn't design a toy helicopter that can be controlled from an iPhone. That is a product of capitalism.

Given the overwhelming majority of the planet is capitalist, the sentiment is pretty much meaningless. Vast amounts of pollution are the product of capitalism. Most of the world's food supply is the product of capitalism. Pretty much every industry and everything anywhere is the product of capitalism, just because that's the system just about everybody lives under.

This does not prove that these things wouldn't exist without it, or, more pertinently, were it to exist in a less aggressive form.

I think you need to re-read your history books.

Name a regulation that was prompted by Government interference rather than public demand (WW wartime centralised control dows not count)

Just 1 in the last 200 years will do fine.

One thing I know about Governments is that if there is a viable option to 'do nothing' - then they will take it.

You're response is verging on the paranoid - and the ridiculous.

The reason for high crime in inner cities is due to tight gun control legislation enacted there. This increases the reliance on the police, and also gives an extra boost to the criminals (who will have guns anyways, whether it is legal or illegal) since they feel safer that their victims will be unarmed.

So logically, the UK, where there are universal tight gun control laws, will have a massively higher homicide and gun crime rate than the US?

Nope, the exact opposite is true.

We are not sure how this will unfold, but we are sure that the outcome will be as unpredictable as the technological developments themselves.

Well given that DARPA has already made robots the size of hummingbirds, its fair to predict that "being constantly watched" will be nothing. Next to concern us is what stealthy and tiny weapons might be attached. What might feed from or feed into your bloodstream while you sleep? If we're all Borg, who'll give a toss?

I said the WORKERS - not the unions.

Are you now going to suggest that workers are represented by the unions?

Be careful - ASLEF tube strike Boxing day - you don't want to torpedo your own argument.

FPV system, First Person view,with goggles allows you to fly beyond visual range. Look it up, examples on Youtube, amazing stuff. Could be useful for recording criminal police behaviour, I've been on the receiving end of unprovoked Police brutality myself and wished someone was recording that. The Police as a profession reflects society, their organisation has a mixture of good, bad and total psychopaths; all on very good pay I should add.

I wouldn't want one of these unless you could attach weapons to it.

The concept of the mobile phone was invented by Reginald Fessenden during the war when he invented the ship to shore radio - and had nothing to do with free market capitalism as it was funded by the Government.

The same with helicopters (originally a state funded military programme)

You are attributing the re-packaging of an original idea as 'the invention'

These items would have been invented anyway - necessity is the mother of invention - not want - which is what capitalism is based on.

I was flying mobile helicopters before you knew who Steve Jobs even was.

I disagree - most inventions which are attributed to capitalism were infact state funded military inventions.

Capitalists wouldn't have bothered trying to get to the moon, it wouldn't have been 'profitable' - however it readily accepts and re-brands the inventions resulting from such massive state funded programmes and profits from them.

...and then people assume capitalism was the cause of the invention - not the beneficiary.

Mixing up cause and effect is what Capitalists do best.

whitesteps

So logically, the UK, where there are universal tight gun control laws, will have a massively higher homicide and gun crime rate than the US?

______________________________________________________

No it is not that simple.

You are not comparing like for like.
The people, the cultural attitudes, etc. introduce additional factors that must be considered.

MinorityReporter

One thing I know about Governments is that if there is a viable option to 'do nothing' - then they will take it.

_______________________________________________________

It is precisely the opposite.

The hardest thing for the government to do is to stand by and do nothing. There is far more policial gain to be had by doing something rather than nothing.

e.g say one dodgy hair dresser causes harm to their customer, and the government is already considering licencing the trade to control the people and gain power.

In the US - after 9/11, the Patriot Act was ushered in without any debate or consultation. The government had a nice excuse to push draconian to gain more power.

Recently, I sat in court through the trial and later appeal of two different cases involving activists, being prosecuted for "political" offences in public places.

What became apparent at these cases was : -
i) how important CCTV evidence can be, and
ii) it can sometimes be difficult for protestors to get proper access to CCTV footage.

The CCTV footage that eventually exonerated protestors was released only very late at the appeal stage, just before the appeal hearing, and was not available at the original trials. It was hard to avoid the impression that release of CCTV recordings was handled in a partisan way.

The idea that protestors have their own independent CCTV system appears to be a response to this.

This also seems to adopt the position "done nothing wrong, nothing to hide, nothing to fear".

For many protestors, there would be some value in independent recordings. The vast majority of protestors go to great lengths to stay within the law, realising that the law guarantees their freedom and their right to protest.

On the other hand, accepting that CCTV protects them thus legitimises CCTV, and builds a case for more CCTV in public places. This is very dangerous in a situation where ubiquitous surveillance is becoming a technological reality. It is dangerous and wrong to legitimise a total surveillance society.

Surveillance in general and CCTV in particular undermines rather than enhances civil liberties.

This is particularly true since CCTV recordings tend to be handled in a partisan way, predominatly justify prosecution, and where citizens are on the defensive, having difficulty trying to access the CCTV recordings that could exonerate them. This problem is going to become even more acute as Legal Aid is cut, making it more difficult for lawyers to access CCTV recordings (and find out which recordings might exist, from different cameras), then spend hours trawling through those recordings, trying to build a balanced view of what might have happened.

When Jean Charles de Menezes was shot at Stockwell Tube station, police said the cameras were not working
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/aug/14/july7.terrorism

Part of the problem is that "public" surveillance is partisan, not impartial - but there is no way of making it protect privacy.

In a tota; surveillance society, we may be called upon to justify everywhere we have gone, everything we have done, with no right to be left alone.

If the police have nothing to hide they have nothing to fear

Oh the irony

“Nobody's attributing Da Vinci's designs to the free market. But he, visionary that he was, didn't design a toy helicopter that can be controlled from an iPhone. That is a product of capitalism.”

It takes more than making something and selling it for it to be a “product of capitalism”. By those standards, a peasant selling a few home-produced eggs would be a red-in-tooth-and-claw “capitalist”.

The protest is towards the misuse of capitalism by large stock companies, who are most certainly capitalist in their aims, to privilege a few workers (executives) to the disadvantage of the many workers.

My definition of capitalism in this post: Using money (aka “capital”) for the specific purpose of creating money (aka “capital”).

My definition of worker in this post: Anybody who works for a wage, rather than risking his own capital.

Maybe burkas are the way to go. You think they make them in extra large?

At minorityreporter

Licensing laws didn't have any public demand.

"e.g say one dodgy hair dresser causes harm to their customer, and the government is already considering licencing the trade to control the people and gain power. "

You have just made my point for me - thanks for saving me the effort.

1 dodgy hairdresser - which you and I both know about - despite neither of us living or working in the area and without us even using that hairdresser.

So that's 1 dodgy hairdresser - a very public airing in most of the national newspapers and the numerous responses and indications of "it's appalling" - which are then re-reported back to the Government by the press as "the people are up in arms about this" and the Government is forced to act.

There's the lobbyists - note the bit about 'lead to further claims'

http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=150580

..and this is certainly NOT the first time it's happened - anyone who has watched Watchdog would know this.

I presume you don't live in this world - as you clearly don't observe things?

Your idea that Governments interfere without demand is a frivolous reorganisation of the truth.

Do you want more proof? - I can scour the internet for numerous examples of damage caused by bleaching and dying.

Flying a RC plane or copter in an urban environment. What a concept. Has Mr Pool vetted his concept for safety with a RC airplane club? Here we have untrained operators; flying in narrow, restricted airspace; over crowds. What happens when he crashes it. I know, blame the Tea Party! Obviously, it would be a right wing plot to crush the American Fall/Winter.

Meanwhile, in Syria citizens are really rishing life and limb!

A swarm of Nano Hummingbirds should be able to take care of any protest, or any inconvenient population group. I suggest people start training their cats to take them on, lest they come in through your window or that of one of your children.

AeroVironment/DARPA Nano Hummingbird UAV flying