Blindrodie Gaar Pontificates Death of Country

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Death From Above: Navy Drone Logo Features Grim Reaper

New killer drone that “thinks for itself” rolled out

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Aug 1, 2012

The US Navy, which has just revealed the latest development in stealth drone technology, is using a logo for its unmanned aviation program that literally features the angel of Death, clothed in a black cloak with a hood, holding aloft a large scythe.

The logo for the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons was photographed and posted to Instagram by Wired writer Spencer Ackerman.

The image of the logo is unaltered and can be verified as genuine on this official document, a bio of rear admiral Tim Heely, the Navy’s drone Program Executive Officer.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/93900704/REAR-ADMIRAL-JOHN-Vdoc

There have been some pretty extreme military patches in the past, but to feature the Grim Reaper with red glowing eyes sends a clear message about the Navy’s drone program – it’s purely concerned with killing people.

Which is bad news for anyone who finds themselves on the end of the X-47B, a new 62 feet long autonomous drone set to become an integral part of the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System (UCLASS).

Judging by the branding, however, there seems to be more of a focus on striking (and killing) than on surveillance.

The new drone was unveiled during its first public test flight over Chesapeake Bay this week. The craft was airborne for 35 minutes and reached an altitude of 7,500 feet, traveling at 207 mph.


The Navy wants to eventually have the aircraft take off and land onto an aircraft carrier hundreds of miles away, all with just the click of a mouse. This would make it the only craft of its kind to have that ability.

The drone is controlled by an onboard Control Display Unit which, it is said, can independently think for itself, plot course corrections, react to unforeseen contingencies, and chart new directions.

“In the coming months, you can expect to see the X-47B flying over the base and surrounding area along the Chesapeake Bay,” Matt Funk, lead test engineer, told NBC4.

Whether Americans will feel comfortable about a robot drone that makes its own decisions flying overhead under the logo of Death is by-the-bye.

Perhaps the X-47B death drone will eventually find a home in Pakistan, where it is believed that more than 1,000 innocent civilians have been killed from drone strikes since 2004.

It is these kind of figures that have prompted Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States to demand this week that the drone strikes stop.

During a debate with White House war adviser Douglas Lute at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, Sherry Rehman said drone attacks in her home country are now only serving to radicalize extremists.

“I am not saying drones have not assisted in the war against terror, but they have diminishing rate of returns,” Rehman said by video teleconference from Washington.

“We will seek an end to drone strikes and there will be no compromise on that,” she added, ahead of the new Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Zaheerul Islam’s impending first meeting with CIA Director David Petraeus.

Lute would not comment on the drone program.

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

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12.Iran reveals new data about downed US drone

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[miguel]

Drones are simply a tool of war. Much like IEDs, F-16s etc. The beauty of them is that our brothers and sisters are not in harms way when the drones to their work.

[Free]

Stopping Drones Proactively and Locally
Posted by Michael S. Rozeff on August 1, 2012 03:20 PM http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/
An activist group in Buffalo is pushing the Common Council to legislate "that drones not be purchased, leased, borrowed, tested or used by any agency of the City of Buffalo." The group wants Buffalo to be the first city in America to ban drones

http://www.buffalonews.com/city/communities/buffalo/article978176.ece

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Robotics Professor Warns Drones Will “Lead To A Sanitised Factory Of Slaughter”

We are witnessing the beginning of “the industrial revolution of war”

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Aug 3, 2012


A prominent artificial intelligence expert has urged that president Obama is setting a horrendous precedent by embracing drone technology as a means of covert warfare.

Professor Noel Sharkey of Sheffield University, penned a piece in The Guardian today that slams the use of missile strikes using unmanned ariel vehicles, warning that what we are seeing is just the beginning of “the industrial revolution of war.”

Sharkey notes that the CIA is thought to have killed anywhere up to 1035 civilians in drone strikes outside of legitimate war zones in the last eight years, including 200 children.

“Who in their right mind would give a powerful unmanned air force to a covert organisation with such a track record for unaccountable and illegal killing?” the professor asks.

“Obama is establishing a dangerous precedent that is, at best, legally questionable in a world where more than 50 countries are acquiring the technology.” he adds.

Sharkey warns that in a modern day arms race, other countries such as Israel, India, Russia and especially China are racing to develop and export armed attack drones.
“Given the 10-year spate of CIA drone strikes, what can be said when other countries use drone strikes against perceived threats in other states?” Sharkey asks.

Sharkey, a founding member of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC), also noted that current drones are “like the Wright brothers’ prototypes compared to what’s coming next.”

“Here is where the real danger resides: automated killing as the final step in the industrial revolution of war – a clean factory of slaughter with no physical blood on our hands and none of our own side killed.” he writes, noting that automated drones have been under development since at least 2004.

“We have records of civilian casualties, including numerous children, from drone strikes when there are humans watching on computer screens and deciding when to fire.” Sharkey notes. “Think how much worse it will be when drones deal death automatically. Is this really a technology we want the secret intelligence services of the world to control?”

Professor Sharkey previously appeared on the Alex Jones Show in 2008, when he warned that the world was sleepwalking into a potentially lethal technocracy and called for safeguards on such technology to be put into place.

“If you have an autonomous robot then it’s going to make decisions who to kill, when to kill and where to kill them.” Sharkey stated at the time. “The scary thing is that the reason this has to happen is because of mission complexity and also so that when there’s a problem with communications you can send a robot in with no communication and it will decide who to kill, and that is really worrying to me.” the professor said.

“The one thing I try to get across to policy makers is that there is this kind of mythical artificial intelligence, every time killer robots are mentioned people start talking about Terminator and ‘Skynet’ and all this stuff that’s really fairytales, and if they were like that it would be better, because what you’ve got here is like a washing machine. This is a dumb stupid machine, and then you are going to give it the decision to kill people, it’s just ridiculous.” Sharkey told listeners.

As we noted this week, a new 62 feet long autonomous drone called the X-47B is set to become an integral part of the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System (UCLASS).

The new drone was unveiled during its first public test flight over Chesapeake Bay this week. The craft was airborne for 35 minutes and reached an altitude of 7,500 feet, traveling at 207 mph.


The Navy wants to eventually have the aircraft take off and land onto an aircraft carrier hundreds of miles away, all with just the click of a mouse. This would make it the only craft of its kind to have that ability.

The drone is controlled by an onboard Control Display Unit which, it is said, can independently think for itself, plot course corrections, react to unforeseen contingencies, and chart new directions.

Meanwhile, as the use of drones domestically in the US explodes, another dangerous precedent has been set this week with a North Dakota court approving the use of drones to help arrest citizens on US soil.

District Judge Joel Medd denied a request to dismiss charges against Rodney Brossart, who was arrested after law enforcement resorted to using a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to inspect his property, according to court documents obtained by US News.

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

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FAA Documents Show Drones Over US Pose Huge Safety Risk

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Aug 14, 2012

Recently released FAA documents have raised yet more questions surrounding the opening up of US skies to unmanned surveillance drones.

Thousands of pages of FAA experimental drone flight records that were obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) detail just how complicated it would be to operate thousands of unmanned arial vehicles safely without spending billions of dollars.

The documents, received by CIR through the Freedom of Information Act, discuss at length the fact that drones do not have sophisticated collision-avoidance systems and pose more of a threat to other aircraft because their pilots are on the ground with limited visual contact.

Experienced California mechanic and pilot Mel Beckman, tells CIR that drone aircraft are problematic because pilots are required to “see and avoid,” – in other words, literally keep an eye out for other aircraft.

“There’s no way for a drone pilot to do that,” Beckman said. “He’s on the ground, and he’s looking through a small aperture. Yes, the camera can swivel a little bit, but it’s nothing like the panoramic view the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) envisioned when they expected pilots to maintain their own visual surveillance.”

“There’s a big disconnect between ground pilots and the aircraft they’re flying,” pilot Beckman said. “The regulations currently don’t accommodate that.”

The FAA documents estimate that an outlay of $2 billion is needed in order to begin development of a satisfactory safety program for drones. In a document dated 2008, the Government Accountability Office estimated that such a program would not be ready before 2020.
The documents also cover numerous instances of companies testing drones. The FAA strictly confined the testing to areas of space where there was no other aircraft, precisely because the drones have no capabilities to avoid collisions. In numerous tests the drones STILL crashed into other objects.

“Without the ability to see and avoid, manufacturers rely on “chase planes” with a human pilot or ground observers who can visually track the drone” writes CIR Homeland Security reporter G.W. Schulz.

Over heavily built up areas with restricted airspace, the margin of safety for operation of drones is even narrower.

“By the time you avoid all of those areas and try to thread the needle, you’re limiting aircraft operations into a very narrow airspace, and you’re also compressing traffic into a very narrow corridor,” said Heidi Williams, vice president of air traffic services and modernization for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. “That reduces the margin of safety for many operators.” she added, noting that the technology will need to be “as reliable as the human eye” in order to be safe.

Despite such warnings, FAA Acting Administrator Michael Huerta noted last week during the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference in Las Vegas, that over the next three years drones will begin rolling out. He added that “building human consensus … is an equally important task and unbelievably complicated.”

Huerta’s comments attracted criticism from some experts in the field, including Paul Schultz, CEO of Hawaiya Technologies in Aiea, Hawaii and a UAV manufacturer.

“This is all just happy talk. There are so many complex issues, like safety, related to implementation of UAVs that they haven’t even touched yet, like how anyone will pay for this.” Schultz said.

“Unmanned drones operating with airliners?” Schultz questioned. “Do you know how easy it is right now for some crazy person to take control of a drone through its GPS system? We’ll need to add coding to GPS to prevent such actions. Sure the technology exists, but to implement it nationwide is a huge problem.”

As Schultz notes, sophistictaed drones can also be “spoofed” using relatively basic components, meaning anyone could potentially take full control of the vehicle.

University of Texas Professor Todd Humphreys recently testified to Congress on this very matter.

Manufacturers of drones, almost exclusively defense contractors, have spent $2.3 million so far on lobbying Congress to open up US airspace.

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

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12.Drones could patrol in U.S., FAA says



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[miguel]

Court Approves First Use of Drone By Local Police To Arrest Man

BY PAUL F. ENZINNA ON AUGUST 14, 2012 9:07 AM |


In June 2011, six cattle wandered onto the North Dakota property of Rodney Brossart. Brossart refused to return them to their owner until he had paid Brossart for feed consumed by the cows. North Dakota law permits such "distraint," but, noting that "there have been problems with [him] in the past," the Nelson County Sheriff's Office decided to arrest Brossart. During an armed standoff, the Sheriff took up the offer by the Department of Homeland Security to lend the Sheriff an unmanned Predator drone. When the drone confirmed that Brossart and his family had not left the ranch, and were unarmed, Sheriff's deputies arrested Brossart and four members of his family. The Brossarts moved to dismiss the charges, arguing, inter alia, that use of the drone constituted "outrageous governmental conduct," "unlawful surveillance," and an "illegal search and seizure." North Dakota District Judge Joel Medd denied the motion, writing that "there was no improper use of an unmanned aerial vehicle" and that the drone "appears to have had no bearing on these charges being contested here."

The Brossart case is the first in which a court has approved a domestic law enforcement agency's use of a drone to investigate or arrest a suspect. But it certainly won't be the last. In February of this year, members of Congress backed by the drone industry inserted language in the the FAA reauthorization bill requiring the agency to simplify and accelerate the process for allowing domestic agencies to operate drones. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security has launched a program to "facilitate and accelerate the adoption" of drones by domestic agencies. The FAA has already authorized dozens of domestic agencies to operate drones, including the police departments of Houston, North Little Rock and Gadsden, Alabama. Other states and localities are lining up for FAA authorization and DHS grant funds. There has even been talk by some local police of adding weapons to domestic drones.

There is no question that drones will make it easier for domestic law enforcement agencies to investigate crimes and arrest suspects. This may make us safer, although the lack of sophisticated onboard collision avoidance systems and the prospect of local sheriffs's deputies piloting drones outfitted with rubber bullets and tear gas engenders some doubt on this point. And the use of domestic drones will certainly provide jobs and profits for drone manufacturers. But as even DHS has recognized, the use of domestic drones raises enormous privacy and Constitutional issues. DHS says "we will not be watching backyards," but as domestic drones proliferate, it will become harder and harder to control what all of the agencies approved to use them are doing with them. The Fourth Amendment guarantees Americans the right "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." One wonders what its drafters would say about the use of drones to arrest a family in a dispute over trespassing cows.


http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/2012/08/court-approves-first-use-of-drone-by-local-police-to-arrest-man.php

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Pentagon Developing Autonomous Humanoid Robots To “Perform Evacuation Operations”

DARPA enlists makers of “BigDog” to construct machines that can think for themselves

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Aug 16, 2012


The Department of Defense has awarded a lucrative contract to an engineering and robotics design company to develop and build humanoid robots that can act intelligently without supervision.

Boston Dynamics Inc. has been contracted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the agency responsible for the development of new technologies for use by the military, in a deal worth $10.9 million.

The DoD announced Tuesday that “The robotic platforms will be humanoid, consisting of two legs, a torso, two arms with hands, a sensor head and on board computing.”

DARPA’s website says that the robots will help “conduct humanitarian, disaster relief and related operations.”

“The plan identifies requirements to extend aid to victims of natural or man-made disasters and conduct evacuation operations.” reads the brief, first released in April as part of DARPA’s ‘Robotics Challenge’.

The robots will operate with “supervised autonomy”, according to DARPA, and will be able to act intelligently by themselves, making their own decisions if and when direct supervision is not possible.

The Pentagon also envisions that the robots will be able to use basic and diverse “tools”.

“The primary technical goal of the DRC is to develop ground robots capable of executing complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments. Competitors in the DRC are expected to focus on robots that can use standard tools and equipment commonly available in human environments, ranging from hand tools to vehicles, with an emphasis on adaptability to tools with diverse specifications.” reads the original brief.

The robots are set to be completed by Aug. 9, 2014, according to the contract.

Boston Dynamics has enjoyed a long working relationship with DARPA, during which time it has developed the rather frightening BigDog. This hydraulic quadruped robot can carry up to 340lb load, meaning it can be effectively weaponised, and recovers its balance even after sliding on ice and snow:


The company has also developed the CHEETAH- Fastest Legged Robot, a four-footed robot that gallops at 18 mph:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/83ULlgpT1UQ%20560%20315

The company also developed RiSE, a robot that climbs vertical terrain such as walls, trees and fences, using feet with micro-claws to climb on textured surfaces:


In addition to a host of other smaller robots, Boston Dynamics is also developing PETMAN, a robot that simulates human physiology and balances itself as it walks, squats and does calisthenics:


While the Pentagon says the robots are for “humanitarian” missions, one cannot avoid thinking of the propensity to adapt this kind of military style technology for other more aggressive purposes.

Indeed, the Pentagon has, in the past, issued a request to contractors to develop teams of robots that can search for, detect and track “non-cooperative” humans in “pursuit/evasion scenarios”.

Issued in 2008, the request, called for a “Multi-Robot Pursuit System” to be operated by one person.

The proposal described the need to

“…develop a software/hardware suit that would enable a multi-robot team, together with a human operator, to search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject.

The main research task will involve determining the movements of the robot team through the environment to maximize the opportunity to find the subject, while minimizing the chances of missing the subject. If the operator is an active member of the search team, the software should minimize the chance that the operator may encounter the subject.”

It is seemingly important to the Pentagon that the operator should not have to come into contact with the person being chased down by the machines.

The description continues:

“The software should maintain awareness of line-of-sight, as well as communication and sensor limits. It will be necessary to determine an appropriate sensor suite that can reliably detect human presence and is suitable for implementation on small robotic platforms.”

Paul Marks at The New Scientist pointed out such proposals are somewhat concerning, because they inevitably will be adapted for domestic purposes such as crowd control.

“…how long before we see packs of droids hunting down pesky demonstrators with paralysing weapons? Or could the packs even be lethally armed?” Marks asks.

Marks interviewed Steve Wright, an expert on police and military technologies, from Leeds Metropolitan University, who commented:

“The giveaway here is the phrase ‘a non-cooperative human subject’.

What we have here are the beginnings of something designed to enable robots to hunt down humans like a pack of dogs. Once the software is perfected we can reasonably anticipate that they will become autonomous and become armed.

We can also expect such systems to be equipped with human detection and tracking devices including sensors which detect human breath and the radio waves associated with a human heart beat. These are technologies already developed.”

Indeed, noted as PHASE III on the Pentagon proposal was the desire to have the robots developed to “intelligently and autonomously search”.

Top robotics expert, Noel Sharkey, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at the University of Sheffield, has previously warned that the world may be sleepwalking into a potentially lethal technocracy and has called for safeguards on such technology to be put into place.

In 2008, Professor Sharkey told listeners of the Alex Jones show:

“If you have an autonomous robot then it’s going to make decisions who to kill, when to kill and where to kill them. The scary thing is that the reason this has to happen is because of mission complexity and also so that when there’s a problem with communications you can send a robot in with no communication and it will decide who to kill, and that is really worrying to me.”

The professor also warned that such autonomous weapons could easily be used in the future by law enforcement officials in cites, pointing out that South Korean authorities are already planning to have a fully armed autonomous robot police force in their cities.

—————————————————————-

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

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12.Google developing new car that drives itself



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[SamKellner]

Jim said ;

Why is it so hard to deal with the aforementioned mistake?

It's over. It has been delt with. We have learned have we not?

Will the current outcome change the world? Will morality change as we know it due to this mistake in the rules? No.

I share your passion on the issue Davis, but not the outcome. You shined a big fat light on the situation. Job done!
You have better things to do I'm sure…

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... 8&start=20

[Free]

Gaar, flirts being banned by Davis Straub, by demonstrating the lowest denominator had been attained?
Goal accomplished. What's the problem?

Evil eats it's own but Rodies' message was more suck up, than shut up.

Jim said ;

Why is it so hard to deal with the aforementioned mistake?

It's over. It has been delt with. We have learned have we not?

Will the current outcome change the world? Will morality change as we know it due to this mistake in the rules? No.

I share your passion on the issue Davis, but not the outcome. You shined a big fat light on the situation. Job done!
You have better things to do I'm sure…

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... 8&start=20