• Media Enquiries

    07505 448925(24hr)

Another unmanned drone takes to the skies…

Globalhawk We've been warned of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) being planned to fly over Britain for monitoring antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers.

We've had remote-controlled, flying CCTV cameras used by the police that break privacy laws by flying without permission over residential areas.

Now the Mail on Sunday reports that MI5 and GCHQ are set to buy up a series of £23million Global Hawk drones to 'search for terror cells' in the UK:

A Top-secret US unmanned drone used to locate Al Qaeda and Taliban hideouts in Pakistan and Afghanistan could soon be patrolling over British cities to search for hidden terror cells.

It is not known how many drones the UK wants from manufacturer Northrop Grumman, but earlier this year a senior Ministry of Defence procurement official visited the Pentagon to begin negotiations.

MI5 and GCHQ already use three Britten-Norman Islander aircraft fitted with sophisticated surveillance equipment. They have been used to track down terror cells and to locate former Afghan veterans who may have returned to Britain to plot terror attacks.

The aircraft are able to identify suspects using 'voice-prints' of insurgents with British accents that were picked up by spy planes monitoring Taliban radio signals in Afghanistan.

This is a very frightening use of technology: our voices being monitored from 30,000 ft. Sure, the Home Office is rolling-out these aircraft to target terrorists, but what else will they be picking up while they're monitoring our conversations? 

Britain doesn't need any more surveillance. End of story.

By Dylan Sharpe

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Big Brother Watch Posted in Privacy
  • guy herbert

    Strikes me as a completely barmy story. Either the MoS has got the wrong end of the stick, or it is empty disinformation designed to mislead and scare credulous would-be terrorists, or (most likely) what the drones will actually be used for is Top Secret and any old story will do. Most Britons live in cities. Our native ‘terror cells’ such as they are, are going to be using the same established means of communications as anyone else not roaming mountains and moorlands with military-style radio networks. The established means of communications can mostly be easily tapped and or tracked from within the infrastructure. How a drone, or an Islander, is supposed to help is puzzling.

  • Redacted

    Is it technically possible? From 30,000 ft.? Like Guy I’m also a bit mystified.
    To monitor ordinary speech effectively from that height you would need an exceedingly directional microphone surely, because of the amplification required and the general background noise. The wind would be a factor. Urban areas would be cacophonous. Today’s countryside is hardly quiet either. The dynamic range it would have to cope with (from speech to power tools, amplified music, traffic and other aircraft) would be huge. Even with an array of microphones, signal post-processing, selective sampling etc you are looking for a needle in a haystack. You need to get pretty lucky and have a target speak as you pass over, also while there is no appreciable background noise in his vicinity. False positives? By the time you’ve made a match, will the target still be in the same place?
    Maybe there are other onboard sensors they aren’t discussing. Chemical signatures of weapons procedures? Radioactivity?
    If they can monitor mobile telecomms with it, might that circumvent some legal restrictions?
    I used to love walking in the countryside, because of the precious sense of privacy. Now, the knowledge of things like this has rid me of my illusions and I can’t see any point in rambling anymore, so I no longer go. So many things I used to enjoy, that I no longer want to do. Landowners like Madonna will be pleased I suppose.

  • http://www.cazzyjones.blogspot.com Cazzy Jones

    http://cazzyjones.blogspot.com/2010/04/thunderbolt-and-lightning-very-very.html
    Slightly O/T but another example of surveillance taking a step forward as reported by the BBC online yesterday.

  • http://www.malcolmpryce.com Malcolm Pryce

    This is pure disinformation. I don’t doubt they are going to acquire the drones, but the explanation offered is nonsense. I don’t believe for a second it is remotely feasible to pick out ‘voice-prints’ of ‘insurgents’ from among millions of other voices down amongst us ants. What they mean is, we are going to overfly you with these drones and we know if we pretend it is something to protect you against terror you will grudgingly accept it. You can always spot stories that have been invented by MI5 and planted in complicit newspapers by the naive Janet-and-John prose style. ‘A senior Ministry of Defence procurement official visited the Pentagon to begin negotiations.’ Really? What for? Why not just pick up the phone and order them from Northrop Grumman? I’m pretty sure I read an almost identical story about two years ago.

  • http://www.airjordan.cc Air Jordan shoes

    All things will come round to anyone who will but wait. We should have the patience to await, then success will not far away from us.