Paramilitary Police State & Private Prisons

Predator Drones to Patrol Entire US-Mexico Border

September 1, 2010

Agence France Presse - The United States beginning Wednesday will add a third Predator drone to patrol its border with Mexico, allowing authorities for the first time to monitor the entire stretch of land separating the two neighbors using the unmanned aircraft.

A US Predator unmanned drone armed with a missile is seen on the tarmac.

The latest drone joins two others in covering the 2,000-mile (3,200 kilometer) frontier which runs across the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, the US Department of Homeland Security said.

With immigration a hot-button issue ahead of looming midterm elections in November, US President Barack Obama earlier this month signed a 600 million dollar bill aimed at reinforcing border security.

His administration is seeking to step up security as it presses for a comprehensive immigration reform measure that likely would allow many of the millions of illegal migrants in the United States to legalize their status.

Many Republican lawmakers say no immigration measure can be considered unless the federal government can ensure security along the southern US border to prevent a spillover from Mexico's crime-ridden north and to prevent the arrival of more undocumented migrants.

The United States, which is deeply concerned by the raging drug war in its southern neighbor, deployed 1,200 National Guard soldiers and 1,500 new agents to the border in recent weeks, as provided for in the recent legislation.

Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said the first unmanned aerial system (UAS) flight from Corpus Christi in Texas would mean the whole border from California to Texas was now covered.

"With the deployment of an UAS in Texas, DHS unmanned aerial capabilities will now cover the Southwest Border-from the El Centro Sector in California all the way to the Gulf of Mexico in Texas-providing critical aerial surveillance assistance to personnel on the ground," she said.

LA Authorities Plan to Use Heat-beam Ray in Jail

August 27, 2010

Associated Press – A device designed to control unruly inmates by blasting them with a beam of intense energy that causes a burning sensation is drawing heat from civil rights groups who fear it could cause serious injury and is "tantamount to torture."

The mechanism, known as an "Assault Intervention Device," is a stripped-down version of a military gadget that sends highly focused beams of energy at people and makes them feel as though they are burning. The Los Angeles County sheriff's department plans to install the device by Labor Day, making it the first time in the world the technology has been deployed in such a capacity.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California criticized Sheriff Lee Baca's decision in a letter sent Thursday, saying that the technology amounts to a ray gun at a county jail. The 4-feet-tall weapon, which looks like a cross between a robot and a satellite radar, will be mounted on the ceiling and can swivel.

It is remotely controlled by an operator in a separate room who lines up targets with a joystick.

The ACLU said the weapon was "tantamount to torture," noting that early military versions resulted in five airmen suffering lasting burns. It requested a meeting with Baca, who declined the invitation.

The sheriff unveiled the device last week and said it would be installed in the dorm of a jail in north Los Angeles County. It is far less powerful than the military version and has various safeguards in place, including a three-second limit to each beam of heat.

The natural response when blasted — to leap out the way — would be helpful in bringing difficult inmates under control and quelling riots, the sheriff said.

But the sheriff was creating a dangerous environment with "a weapon that can cause serious injury that is being put into a place where there is a long history of abuse of prisoners," ACLU attorney Peter Eliasberg said.

"That is a toxic combination."

Cmdr. Bob Osborne, who oversees technology for the sheriff's department, said the concerns were unfounded. He said he stood in front of the beam more than 50 times and that it never caused any sort of lasting damage.

"The neat thing with this device is you experience pain but you are not injured by it," Osborne said. "It doesn't injure your skin, the beam doesn't have the power to do that."

He said the device would be a more humane way of dealing with jail disturbances. Unlike hitting inmates with batons or deploying tear gas, a shot from the beam has no aftereffects, he said.

The device was made specifically for the sheriff's department by Raytheon Missile Systems. Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said its $750,000 cost was paid for by a Department of Justice technology grant.

After a six-month trial, the sheriff will determine if the device is effective and if it should be deployed in other jails.

"When this pilot program is done, the realistic hope is it will accomplish not only what the sheriff's department wants but what the ACLU wants, which is to save lives harmlessly," Whitmore said.

A Raytheon spokesman on Thursday referred questions to the sheriff's department, but provided a fact sheet describing how the device only penetrates skin to a depth 1/64 of an inch. The military's version of the device can shoot a beam more than 800 feet but the sheriff's department model has a maximum range of 85 feet.

Angelica Arias, an attorney with the county's Office of Independent Review, which monitors the sheriff's department, said only deputies with special training would be able to use the device and a video would be automatically recorded each time it is operated.

"Based on the level of scrutiny the department has put on itself and its training, it doesn't appear there would be too much wiggle room for misuse," Arias said.

Spy Satellite Used on U.S. Citizens, ‘All Americans Should Have Great Pride’

August 27, 2010

CNN - Spy Satellites created and used for war are now being made available to local law enforcement for use on U.S. Citizens.

Seven Sci-Fi Weapons from Tomorrow Are Here Today

June 14, 2010

TechNewsDaily - Life has been imitating art with a vengeance lately in the field of weaponry. A number of weapons and weapons systems now on active duty or in the prototype stage seem to have been ripped straight out of the overwrought imagination of a sci-fi writer. Here’s a trip back to the future to look at some of the latest military and law enforcement hardware.

Stunning

Even in time of war, there are situations when you do not want to — or need to ­— use lethal force on a human being. The problem is that it’s hard to shoot someone just a little. Taser has come up with an alternative, the eXtended Range Electronic Projectile (XREP), a self-contained wireless electronic control device that is fired from a 12 gauge pump-action shotgun. It can paralyze a person without pain at up to 88 feet and can penetrate clothing. When it reaches its target, the XREP projectile autonomously generates neuromuscular incapacitation for 20 seconds, long enough for a solider or law officer to determine if the person is friend or foe.

Bots at War

Robots such as the wise-cracking duo of R2-D2 and C-3PO are a staple of science fiction. And in the real world we’ve grown accustomed to seeing robotic vehicles on the evening news approaching a suspicious package while the humans controlling the device are safely behind cover. It’s a given that bots can save human lives, both in “Star Wars” and in our world. But what if there were a robot that can go on the offensive as well and take the place of soldiers in dangerous situations? That’s just what the U.S. Army is ordering up. Its newest enlistee, the Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System (MAARS), is a robot that can open doors and set explosives or remove objects with a gripper claw. Its turret is fitted with an M24b machine gun, which gives it major firepower, and it has a gunshot detection capability, so it can determine where shots are coming from and return the fire. It also has 360-degree vision, two-way communications, night and thermo vision and lasers. This is a G.I. Joe on steroids, but one that doesn’t bleed.

X-Ray Vision

Superman wasn’t shy about using his X-ray vision to spot evil-doers through the walls of buildings. And Metropolis was a better place for it. This year, the U.S. Army will attempt to give the troops in Afghanistan a similar advantage when it issues hand-held sensors that can see through walls, detect buried explosives and spot enemy combatants crawling through underground tunnels or hiding behind trees. These Eagle5 scanners — an M model and a P model —use low-power, ultra-wideband radio frequency (RF) waves to produce images of what’s concealed by wood, stone, brick, concrete or dirt. The M, which looks like an oversize cell phone and weighs 3.5 pounds, is designed to detect motion and can pick up people more than 20 feet away though eight-inch concrete slabs. The larger P, which weighs 6 pounds, is designed to penetrate the ground and can detect people in tunnels and buried explosives at depths greater than 10 feet.

Where Hummers Fear to Tread

Rugged terrain is tough slogging for foot soldiers, even when they’re not fighting. The average equipment load for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, ranges from 97 to more than 135 pounds. Humping those kinds of loads takes a toll. The Imperial forces in “Star Wars” had the AT-AT (All Terrain Armored Transport) walkers to ferry its troops. Not to outdone in our galaxy, DARPA and the U.S. Marine Corps have awarded a contract to Boston Dynamics to develop a prototype for Darpa’s Legged Squad Support System (LS3). The L3 will be a walking quadruped that will augment squads by carrying traditional and new equipment autonomously and will be able to cover complex terrain where tactical vehicles can’t go. It will be able to carry a payload of 40 pounds over as much as 20 miles and provide 24 hours of self-sustained capability.

Invisibility Cloak

Harry Potter got a lot of mileage out of invisibility in the “Harry Potter” series. Not being seen is a key tactic in every warfighter’s toolkit. Earlier warriors adopted camouflage to blend into their surroundings. Modern-day hardware relies on stealth technology, design and materials to make aircraft, naval vessels and vehicles harder to pick out by radar, sonar or heat-sensitive sensors. Invisibility, though, is the Holy Grail in stealth. And the British Army claims to have found it, albeit in a rather kludgy way. In secret tests in 2007, they coated a tank in silicon, turning it into something like a movie screen. Video cameras on the tank take footage of the tank’s environment in real time and project the images on the surface of the tank. Voila, an invisibility cloak of sorts. Not to be outdone, the boffins at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have launched their own work to investigate “urban obfuscants” to develop protective shields for soldiers in urban combat situations.

Doomsday Cannon

Fans of “Battlestar Galactica” will instantly warm to the concept of railguns, which use electrical energy instead of gun powder to fire projectiles at very high speeds, destroying their targets with kinetic energy rather than conventional explosives. It works by sending electric currents along parallel rails, which creates the electromagnetic force needed to fire projectiles at a higher rate of speed than traditional powder-powered cannons. Railguns also have a much great range, as much as 200 to 250 miles. This allows ships to fire deep into enemy territory while staying safely out of harm’s way. Because they don’t require gun powder they are inherently safer than conventional cannons, and free up storage space aboard ship. They also provide a more uniform power charge, which gives them greater accuracy. The U.S. Navy is currently testing early prototype railguns to replace their conventional weapons aboard ship. The service hopes to have a full-capability prototype by 2018.

Death Ray

Vaporizing things and folks with a powerful ray has been a staple of fervid sci-fi imaginations since the beginnings of the genre. Today, we’ve got weaponized lasers to do that for us. Boeing recently offered a powerful proof-of-concept of the lethal capabilities of airborne laser weapons when it blasted a ballistic missile into oblivion from its Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB). The modified B 747-400 is fitted with a Northrup Gruman megawatt-class laser (read higher energy) and a Lockheed Martin beam and fire control system. The ALTB uses one low-energy laser to track the target and a second one to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbances. Then it unleashes its killer laser that heats the target to “critical structural failure.” That’s defense-speak for oblivion.