California Governor OK’s Law Enforcement Drone Usage

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
Messages
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By virtue of his veto, California Governor Jerry Brown gave tacit approval of the use of drones by law enforcement agencies in California without first obtaining a search warrant.

Rather than err on the side of the public's interests, Brown has come down on the side of law enforcement. Currently, only 10 states require warrants for law enforcement drone usage. California won't be joining them.
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Brown vetoed the "drone privacy bill" passed in the legislature. It would have required warrants for drone surveillance. By vetoing the bill, the status quo remains.

The headline is misleading because he didn't OK law enforcement drone usage; it was already legal. He failed to restrict its future use, at least until it passes the legislature with a veto-proof majority and overcomes certain other problems.

The biggest problem with the bill is that there are other "freedoms" it conflicts with: anything visible to someone from public areas are not usually considered private. It's a complex issue, not really worth the words here. So continue on with the noise. ;)
 
Our military has had satellites in orbit for the last 20+ years that can read car license plates.
 
^ Really? I know they can get a pretty good picture, but license plates?
 
JeffDC said:
Our military has had satellites in orbit for the last 20+ years that can read car license plates.
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The resolution isn't quite that good, except in movies and conspiracy sites, but it is still pretty impressive. ;) There are fundamental limits based on 1) the diameter of the lens and 2) the wavelengths of light being recorded.

More advanced adaptive optics and image post-processing improvements now can probably do a little better than the best ~10cm (~4") resolution of very low orbit spy satellites from 15 years ago. https://web.archive.org/web/20040603053926/http://www.space.com/news/gov_imagery_990921.html

IOW, regardless of whatever the best spy satellite spy resolution is, law enforcement would much prefer to use drones.
 
The Earth is round and not all satellites are in geostationary orbit. Some, you know, move so the approach at all kinds of angles relative to stuff on the surface.
 
Satelites have limitations which make them impractical for many reasons. Surveillance satellites require low Earth orbits, which decay fast. Fuel to correct an orbit or re-target is limited. They can only stay over any spot on Earth for about a minute, and take about an hour and a half to orbit back to the same location. By the time it's back to the same location, the Earth has turned on it's axis, so it's no longer above the same target. Low orbits are also crowded with communications sats.

Geosynchronous orbits are much, much, higher, and don't allow useful photographic surveillance.


Physics 10 - Lecture 03: Gravity and Satellites
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdoU2YQJvOg#t=2978
 
sfsuphysics said:
So first bans all "non-reusable" bags, now he lets drones fly all willy nilly
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I'm kinda OK with the former (from a grocery store POV), but does this mean in CA you'll get hangers when you buy clothes? What will the Dry Cleaner's use?
 
nilepez said:
I'm kinda OK with the former (from a grocery store POV), but does this mean in CA you'll get hangers when you buy clothes? What will the Dry Cleaner's use?
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The problem I have with it is that it doesn't allow the grocery store to even give you a bag, plastic bags are a no-no, but if you want a paper bag that's ok... as long as you pay 10 cents per bag. Now if it was the store itself selling it, then fine, but nope this is collected to go into some fund that will probably do nothing to what it was envisioned to do.

That said, they still allow plastic bags for produce, they still wrap up meat in plastic ontop of plastic, just about everything out there larger than a single serving comes wrapped in a bunch of plastic.
 
Only in Kalifornistan. Well, at least they tend to instigate this kind of shit.
 
Perfect timing to give fines for all the illegal water usage that Brown just brought under his control. Good ol' Commifornia.
 
pxc said:
The resolution isn't quite that good, except in movies and conspiracy sites, but it is still pretty impressive. ;) There are fundamental limits based on 1) the diameter of the lens and 2) the wavelengths of light being recorded.

More advanced adaptive optics and image post-processing improvements now can probably do a little better than the best ~10cm (~4") resolution of very low orbit spy satellites from 15 years ago. https://web.archive.org/web/20040603053926/http://www.space.com/news/gov_imagery_990921.html

IOW, regardless of whatever the best spy satellite spy resolution is, law enforcement would much prefer to use drones.
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I distinctly remember newspaper stories from last century (late 1990s) about US military satellites being deployed with < 4 cm resolution. They didn't operate in the visible light band, IIRC it was microwave/mm wave/similar. Since 911 we have no clue what our own military's capabilities are, we're just forced to pay for it all.

BTW today that same resolution (4 cm) is available in visible light even with commercially available imagery. It's enough to tell whether a car has license plates but not quite enough to read them.
 
JeffDC said:
I distinctly remember newspaper stories from last century (late 1990s) about US military satellites being deployed with < 4 cm resolution. They didn't operate in the visible light band, IIRC it was microwave/mm wave/similar. Since 911 we have no clue what our own military's capabilities are, we're just forced to pay for it all.
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Problem is resolution is inversely proportional to the size of your objective, so if you go to a wavelength that's on the order of a million times larger, your lens needs to be a million times larger to have the same resolution. At least as far as the optics go. But considering a telescope about 10 inches is needed at a low altitude of about 100 miles to have 4cm resolution, that doesn't scale well for microwave.
 
sfsuphysics said:
The problem I have with it is that it doesn't allow the grocery store to even give you a bag, plastic bags are a no-no, but if you want a paper bag that's ok... as long as you pay 10 cents per bag. Now if it was the store itself selling it, then fine, but nope this is collected to go into some fund that will probably do nothing to what it was envisioned to do.

That said, they still allow plastic bags for produce, they still wrap up meat in plastic ontop of plastic, just about everything out there larger than a single serving comes wrapped in a bunch of plastic.
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I'm kinda OK with the paper bag bit too. It's a method to get people to reuse bags. One reason I don't use bags, is because I forget to reuse them, and it's a complete waste.

I get plastic for some fruit, though I find it disturbing that Grapes are increasingly sold in plastic bags that are not recycled as easily as the older plastic bags.

That said, I'm not sure why you'd need non-packaged meat in plastic. I get why you would put prepackaged meat in plastic, but I agree there's a bit of hypocrisy in the policy. And if I lived in CA, I'd probably bitch about it unless I could stop by the store every day and get a day or 2's worth of groceries. If I can do that, then it's easy for me to buy it, toss it loosely in the car and then carry it in, or grab some bags from the house and carry them in.
 
JeffDC said:
I distinctly remember newspaper stories from last century (late 1990s) about US military satellites being deployed with < 4 cm resolution. They didn't operate in the visible light band, IIRC it was microwave/mm wave/similar. Since 911 we have no clue what our own military's capabilities are, we're just forced to pay for it all.

BTW today that same resolution (4 cm) is available in visible light even with commercially available imagery. It's enough to tell whether a car has license plates but not quite enough to read them.
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I can say with confidence that there are no satellites up there that have the resolution to read license plates. None. Hell, some of our most advanced optics on military UAS systems can't read a license plate from 5 miles away (though atmospheric distortion and constant platform movement/vibration also has a lot to do with it). If that technology did exist, it would have made my job WAY easier when I was in the service.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Problem is resolution is inversely proportional to the size of your objective, so if you go to a wavelength that's on the order of a million times larger, your lens needs to be a million times larger to have the same resolution. At least as far as the optics go. But considering a telescope about 10 inches is needed at a low altitude of about 100 miles to have 4cm resolution, that doesn't scale well for microwave.
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Pshh, physics. Who need that?:D
 
JeffDC said:
I distinctly remember newspaper stories from last century (late 1990s) about US military satellites being deployed with < 4 cm resolution. They didn't operate in the visible light band, IIRC it was microwave/mm wave/similar. Since 911 we have no clue what our own military's capabilities are, we're just forced to pay for it all.

BTW today that same resolution (4 cm) is available in visible light even with commercially available imagery. It's enough to tell whether a car has license plates but not quite enough to read them.
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'Able to do something' and Able to do something on a huge scale' are often two different things.

There aren't enough satellites to track illegal lawn watering.
 
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