DHS Conducts ‘Drive-by’ Surveillance. What’s Next?
It was Adolf Hitler who first used science and technology to monitor people, places, and things. Closed-circuit television, or CCTV, was developed for the Third Reich by Siemens AG to observe V-2 rocket launches and operators at the Peenemünde Research Center in Germany. In the 1940s, CCTV used strategically placed video cameras to capture footage and then broadcast it back, allowing for real-time surveillance.
Flash forward 70 years and surveillance systems have, like it or not, become broadly accepted as part of 21st century life — from traffic cameras, to nanny cams, to business cameras. But then, last fall, after passengers at airports became the subjects of body cavity searches through an X-ray technology called backscatter, people cried foul. Being observed is one thing. Having body parts examined is just spooky.
Now, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, has made public a series of government contracts that reveal that the Department of Homeland Security has been paying millions of dollars to develop and implement several radical programs that allow for an even broader, even spookier form of covert surveillance, namely “drive-by” surveillance from innocuous looking vans. In its own words this allows the Department of Homeland Security to conduct “covert inspection of moving subjects,” which includes people, places, and things.
According to a former Homeland Security officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity, DHS has been conducting this “drive-by” surveillance of American citizens since at least 2007, using a technologically advanced vehicle called a Z Backscatter Van, or ZBV for short. The corporation that makes the surveillance van, American Science and Engineering Inc. (AS&E), received a $17.5 million service contract from the U.S. government for the ZBVs in the winter of 2007.
“The system’s unique ‘drive-by’ capability allows one or two operators to conduct X-ray imaging of suspect vehicles and objects while the ZBV drives past,” says AS&E on its website. “The ZBV can also be operated in stationary mode by parking the system and producing X-ray images of vehicles as they pass by,” it adds. Screening can also be performed remotely while the system is parked. “The system is unobtrusive, as it maintains the outward appearance of an ordinary van,” says AS&E.
Unobtrusive is the operative word. While the innocuous looking vans may not be attracting attention from those they target for surveillance, they should be attracting outrage from the rest of the free-thinking world. Conducting random, covert surveillance on people, places, and things — from a moving van — is hardly in keeping with America’s system of laws and values. Whatever happened to the Fourth Amendment?
It is not just privacy advocates who are incensed. At least one former U.S. secretary of defense agrees. As co-chair of a 2008 committee for the National Research Council that analyzed the effects spying on citizens have on a democracy, William Perry had this to say: “The danger of terror attacks on the U.S. is real and serious, and we should use the information technologies at our disposal to combat this threat. However, the threat does not justify government activities that violate the law, or fundamental changes in the level of privacy protection to which Americans are entitled.”
If they don’t monitor who they sell to, and aren’t willing to share who they are selling to, I guess some group who fears the government should get together some money, buy one of these vans, hire a driver and a couple technicians to drive around Washington D.C. And monitor those who are monitoring us.
Anyone want to know what the White House looks like in X-Ray? How about Ms. Napolitano’s home in D.C?
That should give Ms. Napolitano and President Obama something to think about.
Are these machines really using X-rays? Use of X-rays in hospital is carefully controlled and the operators retire behind screens to avoid excessive exposure. Surely the government cannot be proposing to expose the population to random exposure?
They use microwave radiation, same as the airport body scanners.
I’m beginning to wonder if anyone is going to get cancer with all of this constant X-ray imaging, be it from the airports or from the drive-by vans? The government always seems to assure us that what their doing is always “safe.” That is until people start dropping like flies. Then, of course, it was all a tragic mistake. All this X-raying is just starting to get a little wierd and is making me believe that the terrorists have won by making us this paranoid.
Find the terrorists and kill the terrorists. That IS the best defense against these madmen.
I agree with Jefferson.
Also, since this company is obviously engaged in interstate commerce, which is regulated by Congress, a wise Congressman could submit a law requiring public disclosure of sales of such devices. Well meaning and informed lawmakers could actually do something helpful instead of just complaining.
Hint to Jason Chaffetz!
I think we should park one outside the White House and monitor it continuously. I’m sure exposure to the radiation is perfectly safe.
Terrorists are less of a threat to us than our own government.
Gotta love that Patriot Act.
Welcome to the United Amerikan Socialist Republics. Show me your papers!!!
Fickle Americans of today! Maybe a full blown war on our soverign soil will wake some of you folks up for once. Todays generations have NO respect for national security having never experienced war on our soil. Even losing 3,000 good citizens on 9/11 can’t awaken your common sense and appreciation for national security. War against America has been overtly announced and is being strategically executed and because the battlefield does not rise to the level of your movie and digital games, you have no concerns. PATHETIC!
Hey, Troll, go away, and drown yourself. We already know that HSC and other 3-letter agencies are conducting psyhops. You’re not foolin’ anybody …
X-ray badges for everyone which has a GPS on it. That way I can get to control the world faster. Soon, you all will have to swear an oath to me too.
Do any of you sheep have any suggstions on what I should do about the un-washed Americans who are armed to the teeth? I’ve got to get those wepaons, and outlaw their Bibles.
You can reach me at Lucis Trust inside the UN building.
hang the qunts it’s the only language they understand
What would the progs say if Bush had done this? The double standard is breathtaking, yet the left has no problem if Odumbo’s clowns do it.
If it’s been going on since 2007 (as the post alleges), then Bush did do it. The surprising element isn’t that there’s a double standard — by now, everybody should understand that. The surprise is that Pajamas Media “outed” the technology’s use, when one would have expected the New York Times to have done so during Bush’s presidency (or illegitimate presidency, as most NYT editors/readers would contend).
This Department has complete use of OUR MONEY.
So why don’t they use drones?
Can’t they get GEICO insurance on them?
Have you ever considered how your local highway patrols’ radar gun works?
It works on the principle of guilty until proven innocent.
We have given up our rights to travel without a government license and then our more rights to control people who want to drive fast.
What the DHS is doing is just a continuation of the erosion of our rights.
“Those who would trade freedom for security, deserve neither.” – BF
And to mention another sacred cow: Don’t DUI laws and check points grossly violate the principle of “innocent until proven guilty”? Even after two martini’s you may be driving better and are less likely to have an incident than 99% of the non-drinking drivers in the neighboring senior community. You haven’t broken any driving law and you have done nothing to anyone. And yet you will lose your license, spend time in jail and your livelihood will be placed in jeopardy. Imagine any other law that finds you guilty because someone feels you have an above average chance of committing a crime.
Anybody who wants to trade their liberty and privacy for “security” is a fool. Examine some countries that have done so, and tell me you want to move there because of their improved security. The fact is, they are not safer, and individual freedom is diminished. Not for me, not in America.
The Patriot Act has nothing to do with this x-ray searching, and what’s pathetic is that many weak and frightened Americans accept this type of intrusion with open arms. Those who are cowed by terrorism are becoming our true enemies; fueled by their fear, they would have us sell out the Constitution.
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…..”
What part of this is so difficult to understand? Can the vans! They don’t belong here!
you guy are way behind on this one. they have been using them to monitor trucks on the hiway for about 2 years. did you think if they got away with that they would stop there?
This makes me think it might be a good idea to carry a “Nuke Alert” radiation detector. When you’re “shot” ante up and follow.
http://www.nukalert.com/
my brother in law drives a white van to deliver home groceries, now i wonder if he is really a national security agent… sometimes he locks himself into his office with the computer, so i wonder if it’s true?
If you are in puplic do you have a right to expect privacy? Do you grant this to others?
The gas company cab drive down the street and read the meter so I guess this is possible. We won’t have any privacy at all and may all die from some kind of ray poisoning. Perhaps that’s why Napolitano was chosen to head HHS,,,she is so dumb she wouldn’t know enough to spill the beans.
1. It’s possible. It’s even real.
2. Nobody is going to die from “some kind of ray poisoning”. You are in more danger from McDonalds.
3. Napolitano wasn’t chosen because she’s dumb, she was chosen because she’s evil.
The reason that the Army openly marks its minefields is to steer/funnel the enemy to zeroed-in fields of fire, i.e., “killing zones.”
If security of high-volume public transportation nodes like train & bus stations is a worry then such vans should be parked strategicly at appropriate entrances with highly publicized markings so as to scare off any potential bombers BEFORE they can do damage absent any indication that we have a capability of associated “flying squads” standing at the ready to act on the intel.
Thank you
What happened? A lot of people, some of whom call themselves “conservatives”, would rather be “safe” than free.
Just scan the so-called conservative commentators when the Patriot Act was passed, and then renewed. Real conservatives who objected were called traitors.
It was okay, though, because it was for “National SECURITY”! Yay! National security! Rah! Rah! Sis Boom Bah!
I mean, anything for Law and Order, right? After all, we’re CONSERVATIVES, so of course we support the police [state].