Tag: drones

Woman’s insurance canceled after drone flies over her home

A woman had her insurance canceled after a drone flew over her home.

According to CBS News,a woman from Modesto, California told CBS Sacramento that her home insurance company of nearly 40 years dropped her coverage because of what it spotted with a drone.

Joan Van Kuren told CBS that she’s been renovating her home for more than three years, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to have her driveway redone, her kitchen updated and bathroom renovated, among other changes and upgrades.

“It was amazing,” Van Kuren told CBS when asked how it felt to get all the projects finished. “It was wonderful because it took forever.”

Soon after, however, Van Kuren said she was notified by letter that her home insurance company of nearly four decades, CSAA, had dropped her. According to CBS, the company cited a substantial increase in hazards with clutter or unsanitary conditions, with the letter calling it an unacceptable hazard and liability exposure.

Van Kuren told the network’s reporters that she decided to contact CSAA about the decision.

“She said they flew a drone over the home,” Van Kuren told CBS. “It almost feels like someone’s looking in your windows, you know, when they tell you that they flew a drone over your home and looked at it. It’s like, whoa.”

According to CBS, CSAA told Van Kuren that there was debris on the left side of the house.

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Backyard Privacy in the Age of Drones

Police departments and law enforcement agencies are increasingly collecting personal information using drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles. In addition to high-resolution photographic and video cameras, police drones may be equipped with myriad spying payloads, such as live-video transmitters, thermal imaging, heat sensors, mapping technology, automated license plate readers, cell site simulators, cell phone signal interceptors and other technologies. Captured data can later be scrutinized with backend software tools like license plate readers and face recognition technology. There have even been proposals for law enforcement to attach lethal and less-lethal weapons to drones and robots. 

Over the past decade or so, police drone use has dramatically expanded. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Atlas of Surveillance lists more than 1500 law enforcement agencies across the US that have been reported to employ drones. The result is that backyards, which are part of the constitutionally protected curtilage of a home, are frequently being captured, either intentionally or incidentally. In grappling with the legal implications of this phenomenon, we are confronted by a pair of U.S. Supreme Court cases from the 1980s:California v. Ciraolo and Florida v. Riley. There, the Supreme Court ruled that warrantless aerial surveillance conducted by law enforcement in low-flying manned aircrafts did not violate the Fourth Amendment because there was no reasonable expectation of privacy from what was visible from the sky. Although there are fundamental differences between surveillance by manned aircrafts and drones, some courts have extended the analysis to situations involving drones, shutting the door to federal constitution challenges.

Yet, Americans, legislators, and even judges, have long voiced serious worries with the threat of rampant and unchecked aerial surveillance. A couple of years ago, the Fourth Circuit found in Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department that a mass aerial surveillance program (using manned aircrafts) covering most of the city violated the Fourth Amendment. The exponential surge in police drone use has only heightened the privacy concerns underpinning that and similar decisions. Unlike the manned aircrafts in Ciraolo and Riley, drones can silently and unobtrusively gather an immense amount of data at only a tiny fraction of the cost of traditional aircrafts. Additionally, drones are smaller and easier to operate and can get into spaces—such as under eaves or between buildings—that planes and helicopters can never enter. And the noise created by manned airplanes and helicopters effectively functions as notice to those who are being watched, whereas drones can easily record information surreptitiously.

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DNC Convention Features Former CIA Director Who Was in Charge of Drone Programs that Killed Thousands

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta (2009-2011) was among the featured speakers on the final day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago on August 22 when Kamala Harris accepted the party’s nomination as its presidential candidate.

In his remarks, Panetta reinvoked the supposed glory days of the Obama administration when he gave the order to U.S. Special Forces to assassinate Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.

Panetta said that Harris would fit the bill as a “tough commander-in-chief to defend the USA against tyrants and terrorists.”

According to Panetta, Harris “knows a tyrant when she sees one” and “will stand up to them”—unlike Donald Trump, whom Panetta suggested had coddled dictators such as Vladimir Putin and effectively told them “they could do whatever they want.”

Panetta said that Trump is intent on “bringing back a new era of isolationism in U.S. foreign policy,” which the U.S. “foolishly and dangerously adopted in the 1930s.”

Quoting from Ronald Reagan, Panetta emphasized that “isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical government.”

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‘There is a risk of a nuclear incident at the Kursk nuclear power plant,’ warns IAEA, blames Ukraine for drone strikes on plant

As the expanding frontline inches within just a few kilometers of the Kursk nuclear power plant in Russia, there are fears there could be a major nuclear disaster.

“There is a risk of a nuclear incident at the Kursk nuclear power plant,” said Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), after visiting the facility in Kurchatov, in the Kursk region bordering Ukraine, on Tuesday.

He added that he had seen evidence of drone strikes during his visit to the plant.

“I was told today that there have been several cases of drone attacks on the site (the site of the Kursk nuclear power plant), on the facilities. The fact that there is fighting a few kilometers away from the nuclear power plant raises great concerns and anxiety about the security system,” Grossi added.

He stressed that under no circumstances should a nuclear power plant be the target of military action, nor should it be used by either side for military purposes. The director general also said that the security systems of a plant must be fully operational under all circumstances.

Grossi noted that the IAEA delegation was shown the traces of the Ukrainian attack on the Kursk nuclear power plant. Based on the evidence his team gathered, he said there could be no doubt that Ukraine carried out these strikes and where they came from.

Putin also announced on Thursday that Ukraine had attempted a drone strike on the Kursk nuclear power plant.

Grossi, who said that he had visited the reactor hall, the engine room, and the control room of an operating power plant unit — as well as the spent nuclear fuel storage — found that the Kursk plant was operating at what is very close to “normal” mode.

He stressed that the IAEA is responsible for maintaining nuclear safety and security in nuclear installations worldwide. He said that he had accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invitation to visit the Kursk nuclear power plant with his team to assess the situation personally and to find solutions together with his Russian counterparts. Earlier in the day, the IAEA director general was received by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.

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How Israel’s quadcopters traumatise, maim and kill Palestinians in Gaza

In the course of more than ten months, Israel unleashed an array of weaponry in its genocidal war on the Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave, killing and wounding thousands. One of the most deadly weapons in Israel’s arsenal is the quadcopter. 

A drone with four propellers, the quadcopter follows its targets in different spaces, including narrow alleys of streets, tents, and inside houses. The 1.6-metre Quadcopter is electronically controlled remotely. It can easily take off and move vertically and horizontally for military or civilian service. It weighs about ten kilograms only. 

Usually, the Israeli army deploys quadcopters for intelligence purposes to facilitate its mission on the ground. Nevertheless, the Israeli army have equipped these drones with explosive devices, transforming them into deadly suicide attacks.

Dozens of quadcopters have so far killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians by launching guided missiles. 

“Quadcaptors have killed about 1,000 Palestinians, including 350 women and 150 children, during the current genocidal war,” the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza noted in a recent press statement. 

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WWIII: Zelenskiy Says Ukraine Will Soon Be Able To Attack “Anywhere In Russia” – Ukraine Uses Long-Range Thermobaric Drone Inside Russian Federation Overnight

A jet-based drone rocket called Palyanytsia was fired onto RF territory overnight.

This is a new rocket drone type developed in Ukraine, or given to Zelenskyiy, and will seriously escalate the situation.

It contains aluminum fog that when blown up creates a vacuum effect — thermobaric rocket drone, 1500 km range.

The drone rocket was launched during the night of Aug 24.

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Sabotage Confirmed At Norwegian Air Base

Norway has revealed that one of its most strategic air bases has been the target of sabotage. The announcement comes as other European NATO air bases — namely in Germany — report incidents, one of which remains unexplained, as well as troubling drone activity over critical infrastructure. These incidents come amid increasing warnings about nefarious Russian activity on the continent, part of an apparent wave of ‘hybrid warfare’ as the conflict in Ukraine further stokes East-West tensions.

Reports emerged today from The Barents Observer that a critical communications cable associated with Evenes Air Station, in northern Norway, had been severed. The incident occurred in April and was reported to the police, but has only now been announced, as state prosecutors investigate what happened.

The precise function of the cable has not been disclosed, but reports describe it as being “part of the air base’s critical infrastructure,” and that it was cut outside the airfield’s perimeter. The Norwegian Police have confirmed that it was severed in a deliberate action but that, so far, no one has been charged, and no suspects have been identified at this point.

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Everything We Just Learned About The Ghost Shark Uncrewed Submarine

Anduril says it has received active interest in integrating more than a dozen new military and commercial payloads onto its Ghost Shark extra-large autonomous undersea vehicle (XL-AUV). Payload testing and otherwise demonstrating the Ghost Shark’s highly modular design are core focuses of new work on the underwater drone that is now set to occur in the United States.

The War Zone learned these and other new details about Ghost Shark in an interview earlier this week with Dr. Shane Arnott, Senior Vice President for Engineering at Anduril and the company’s maritime lead.

The Ghost Shark’s U.S. debut, which Anduril announced this week, came at the biennial U.S. Navy-led Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise in Hawaii, where the uncrewed undersea vehicle (UUV) was displayed to attendees. RIMPAC 2024 wrapped up on August 1. Development of Ghost Shark began in Australia in 2022 for that country’s navy, which is looking to acquire at least three of the UUVs by 2025. The Ghost Shark now in the United States is an additional example that Anduril built using its own funds.

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Photo Taken by TGP Reporter Appears to Show Trump Shooter Thomas Crooks’s Drone Flying Over Butler, PA Rally at 3:54 PM

A photo taken by longtime Gateway Pundit contributor Kristinn Taylor at President Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13 appears to show the drone flown by 20-year-old would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks.

The photo was taken a little over two hours before the would-be assassin fired eight shots at President Trump before he was finally neutralized. (Enlarged images of the photo included further below in this article.)

One Trump supporter, Corey Comperatore, was murdered while two Trump supporters were seriously wounded during the attack.

President Trump was shot in the head by a bullet that miraculously only hit his ear as he turned to his right on stage to look at a jumbotron with a graph on immigration. Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper 26 seconds (nearly half a minute!) after he opened fire on former President Donald Trump.

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Secret Service refused drones before Trump shooting, whistleblower says: Report

A new whistleblower report claims that the U.S. Secret Service refused local law enforcement offers to have drone security at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The allegation comes after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirmed that would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks flew a reconnaissance drone in the area just hours before the campaign rally.

Sharing a copy of a letter he sent on Thursday to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) highlighted new allegations from an anonymous whistleblower.

Hawley tweeted, “Whistleblower tells me local law enforcement partners & suppliers offered drones to Secret Service BEFORE the rally – but Secret Service declined.”

In his letter to Mayorkas, Hawley said a whistleblower said the Secret Service “repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology to secure the rally” the night before Trump’s Pennsylvania rally. In light of the whistleblower’s testimony, the Missouri senator said, “This means that the technology was both available to [U.S. Secret Service] and able to be deployed to secure the site.”

Despite having drone technology available, Hawley said the Secret Service said “no” to the offer. He added that the whistleblower also claimed that the Secret Service later requested the deployment of drone technology after the assassination attempt to “surveil the site in the aftermath of the attack.”

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