SKYNET Exists: City in New Jersey Using Drones to Enforce Social Distancing Rules
“Spying on innocent citizens…this must be one of the most fascist things I’ve ever seen.”
First, we find out that Google will hand over location date to health officials.
Now we have a city in New Jersey using drones to enforce social distancing rules. The city is using drones from a company headquartered in China, too.
Can someone please remind every government in the country that 1984 is a novel, not an instructional manual?
The Elizabeth Police Department made the announcement via Facebook:
The department wrote:
These drones will be around the City with an automated message from the Mayor telling you to STOP gathering, disperse and go home.
Summonses HAVE AND WILL CONTINUE to be issued to those found in violation.
Fines are up to $1000.
You have been advised.
China did this after the Wuhan coronavirus broke out. Belgium also used drones on their citizens.
It gets more disturbing because NJ.com reported the department will use drones from DJI Technology.
DJI Technology’s headquarters is based in China. The company’s website also states that the “drones could be used to spray disinfectants or check temperatures using infrared cameras.”
Elizabeth spokeswoman Kelly Martins assured citizens the police department will only use the drones that can send out recorded messages. Martins said officials will deploy the drones “in areas that may be difficult for a police car to access, to have people do social distance.”
I know I’m a paranoid libertarian who hates government (just ask Professor Jacobson!) but please tell me I’m not the only one who finds this creepy and worrisome. Some of the comments on the Facebook post show I’m not alone:
- “Spying on innocent citizens…this must be one of the most fascist things I’ve ever seen.”
- “So know [sic] every govt agency in our country wants to act like communist China or have the police gotten that lazy.”
- “You’re violating 6 foot rule so we’re gonna have multiple people get in your personal space and throw you in jail where you will have no personal space and probably be infected by others”
- “This is totalitarianism. Period. I’ve never seen cops on such disgusting power trips before. Go ahead, keep deleting the negative comments. Whoever is running this page is a civil SERVANT. The page and your salary are paid by those commenting. You don’t get to decide what speech is appropriate or not unless it is in clear violation of statutes.”
- “Straight out of China’s playbook. Well done!”
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Comments
Removing negative comments from the PD FB page may also be a violation of public records/disclosure statutes in the state.
It’s a good thing New Jersey citizens or disarmed. Excuse me New Jersey subjects are disarmed. One of those drones might get hurt!
I lived in NJ for a number of years. What a sorry state. The cops there must have read the Schutzstaffel how-to manual. I was pulled over for allegedly going the wrong way down a one-way street in the sleepy town of Hammonton. They needed 2 cars and 4 cops, who approached both sides of the car with guns drawn, to ask my then-wife and myself where we were from, what we were doing there, etc. When I said “Holland, PA” I swear the one who screamed at me “Are you from Holland or are you from Pennsylvania” released his safety. Um, Holland is IN Pennsylvania, you jackbooted thugs. New Jersey has to be up there among the most criminally insanely governed states.
There’s actually a Dan Aykroyd film, Nothing But Trouble, that takes place in a town in New Jersey. You have to experience the cops there to realize this movie was probably inspired by a real incident.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102558/
That’s a crazy story. You and your wife are lucky to come out of it unscathed. Stupidity and bad training make for dangerous policing.
Hello, neighbor to the north. NJ is indeed bad, I have managed to avoid it for 20 years now.
NJ Peasants.
The county of Maui is doing this too.
even worse, the PD didn’t say eff you to this as a bad idea.
When you have a hammer (drone fleet) everything looks like a nail (criminal).
At least the drones don’t have lasers.
Yet!
Reminds me – I haven’t been skeet shooting in awhile.
At that altitude I wouldn’t use a trap load with 7 1/2 shot. Better to use a 12 ga with 3” mag and #2 shot (it looks kind of mallard sized) for a bird 20 yards straight up. Modified choke too, I think.
Volusia County, FL, is also doing it.
Shoot it down with 00 buck. When a drone comes over your property, you have no idea who is operating it or what they are or aren’t looking at. Shoot it down, plain and simple. Everybody needs to file a lawsuit against police departments and mayors that pull this kind of crap.
You are “kidding” ? … Better to form a “group” and collectively point lasers at the camera (though that may be an FAA violation). Best form a grassroots movement to remove the Mayor from office.
Maybe some ham operators and other electronic hobbyists experimenting with telemetry jamming.
Too few pellets. You will get a better and tighter pattern with #2 using a 12 ga 3” mag.
Hobbyisys: Estes minuteman surface to air missile battery.
Slipping into tyranny is so effortless.
Same people who have done their best to outlaw private business use of drones.
Get out the 12 gauge!
Where is the legal authority in NJ (and NY) laws for any politician to impose monetary fines on any citizen for exercising the constitutionally protected right to assemble ?
Guys, have you not been paying attention since passage of the Patriot Act and subsequent intelligence collection legislation?
A visible drone is the least of your concerns. All the drone does is allow police to reach into hard to access areas. Overwhelmingly, those areas will be in public. I don’t understand the concern if a patrol officer tells a crowd to disburse whether in person or via a drone.
I expect drone video will become admissible evidence; same as “red light” camera video, and somewhat mirroring video recording of “public servants” in performance of their official duties (though I don’t think the latter relevant – authorities will likely “find” a parallel). … There in is the threat; the LEO person must be present and bring any charge based on their observation, which can be challenged. … Drones are a further encroachment on privacy and “establish” a basis for “guilty until proven innocent”, or perhaps more to the point as a practical (due to time and cost) matter negate affirmative defenses.
Sisu,
If one is in public then you don’t have any privacy expectations regarding observation, still photos or video. If in public view, but only from a height, then maybe you do have a privacy expectation.
The bottom line is the use of a drone to disburse a crowd isn’t the real problem. The problem is whether the order to disburse is lawful. It really doesn’t matter if a patrolman tells me or if a remote operated drone does via message. The key point is the legality of the order not the means of it’s delivery.
These overreaching actions using the covid as a basis in certain areas are on net good. I state this because they demonstrate to everyone who bothers to pay attention just how far some of the officials have strayed. The want to be petty tyrants are showing their true colors. It is up to all of us who disagree with their actions to marshal support, build a coalition of like minded voters and show up to vote them out of office.
I don’t understand the concern if a patrol officer tells a crowd to disburse whether in person or via a drone.
In New Jersey, a patrol officer asking civilians to disburse is just normal business. Fork over, or do you want to see us at the station house?
Drones are for show to inform various elements of citizenry using least resistance and resulting in no riots. Ie the city doesn’t want the cops interacting with the utes. See Baltimore nyc dc philly doing same with sound trucks.
When you see things like this, you can begin to understand how Hitler was able to changes things as he and his cronies did in Nazi Germany. It always starts with a justification of doing something for your own good.
Notice it is from the leftward leaning municipalities that we are seeing this type of totalitarian behavior from the government grow and expand.
No one should ever think that a regime that was like Hitler’s could never form here. It can, and it is shocking at how quickly it can turn. The leftists are in rapture over the developments they are calling for under this siege of Chinese Coronavirus.
My county park down the street in Woodcliff Lake had the entrances barricaded and police taped. It has a nice pond and a paved walking path. This is almost as bad as the surfboarder. Shutting down open areas is an egregious infringement of the First Amendment. I don’t like where this is going.
Turnabout is fair play. When the cops or sheriffs walk into a restaurant, everybody stare at them. Watch them. Bore holes in them with your stares.
There is not one single thing they can do. If one makes a move, grab your phones and make videos thst can be shipped to the cloud fast.
Follow them around.
Don’t blame the cops. They have to follow orders too. I’ve met and/or chatted with both the local police and sheriff’s deputies. They don’t like this any more than you do, but they have to follow orders – and most of them try very hard to be pleasant and outgoing while doing so.
I don’t think it was the mayor or even police commissioner who purchased the drones themselves. Somewhere in the line, people said this was s good idea, authorized the purchase, set up the drone and equipment, and physically operated it. All of those people had a chance to say NO…and they did not.
Cops following orders. My comeback is simple…Two Dutch cops were following orders when they arrested Anne Franke and family sending them to their death. Beware the “universal” cop.
Bullshit. Over-the-top rhetoric is how we got into this mess. And those “cops” weren’t the ones being tried at Nuernburg (with a few egregious exceptions), it was their leaders – the guys who gave the orders.
“We were only following orders”. Now where have I heard that one before. Oh yeah, it was used back in 1945 in some famous trials in Nuremberg, Germany. Didn’t work then. Certainly won’t work now.
You can’t make this stuff up — Dhimmi-crats using Chinese-made drones, to spy on Americans facing a Chinese-facilitated pandemic, in the most brazenly totalitarian manner, possible.
When are the Dhimmi-crats going to officially acknowledge that unabashed totalitarianism lies at the core of their ethos and platform?
Another great product from Omni Consumer Products.
I’ll buy that for a dollar!
Skynet in Jersey. Raccoon City in China. Planned Parenthood everywhere else. #WickedSolution
Six feet social separation from abortionists should (the Church and congregants can always hold private reproductive rites) reduce several hundred thousand excess deaths annually in America alone. Oh, and wear a condom (“pussy hat”), wash your hands thoroughly, and be wary of progressives promising shared/shifted responsibility.
Bill of Rights? What Bill of Rights? We surrendered them without even a whimper. Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Peacefully Assemble, Freedom of Religion, due process, et al. If you think you’ll get them back, you’re dreaming. This whole exercise is a precedent that will come back to haunt us next year or the year after, or any year in the future when another pseudo-emergency appears.
“If the government told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?”
We have all proved to big government socialists around the world that yes indeed we will jump.