Pentagon Developing Spy Drones to Spot “Adversarial Intent”

Predatory police state shifts focus to ‘guilty until proven innocent’

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The Pentagon is developing spy drones that can identify individuals by their facial features and also denote targets by their “adversarial intent,” part of the new approach of treating everyone as guilty until proven innocent as law enforcement across America turns to unmanned vehicles as a crime fighting tool.

The Army has recently handed out six contracts to companies in the pursuit of developing a system that can tag and track an individual based on their facial biometrics and track them permanently even if they get lost in a crowd.

“If this works out, we’ll have the ability to track people persistently across wide areas,” says Tim Faltemier, the lead biometrics researcher at Progeny Systems Corporation, which recently won one of the Army contracts. “A guy can go under a bridge or inside a house. But when he comes out, we’ll know it was the same guy that went in.”

Once the system captures an image composed of just 50 pixels of the person’s face, it can then build a complete 3D profile and keep track of their movements from 750 feet away.

“With backing by the Army, researchers from Notre Dame and Michigan State Universities collected images of faces at a “Twins Days” festival. Progeny then zeroed in on the twins’ scars, marks, and tattoos — and were able to spot one from the other. The company says the software can help the military “not only learn the identity of subjects but also their associations in social groups,” reports Wired.

Related software designed to identify individuals “most likely to harbor ill will toward the U.S. military or its objectives,” is also being developed for the Army by Charles River Analytics. Their “Adversary Behavior Acquisition, Collection, Understanding, and Summarization (ABACUS)” tool uses information collated from phone calls, informant tips and drone footage to create “threat assessments of individuals and groups”.

As we have previously reported, using technology to identify “malintent” is now the cutting edge of predatory police state technology set to be used against the American people as the entire focus of law enforcement shifts to guilty until proven innocent.

Pre-crime face scanning “lie detectors” are already being readied for airport and other “security” applications. If the technology judges you to be harboring emotions of distress, fear or distrust, you’ll be subjected to an interrogation. The fact that the system “successfully discriminates between truth and lies in about two-thirds of cases,” which equates to little more accuracy than chance alone, making it even less reliable than the notorious polygraph test, doesn’t seem to be a major concern for the developers.

The DHS also recently field tested their “FAST” program, which is also based around forcing people to undergo interrogations and then measuring their physiological responses to decide whether or not they have “malintent” and could be a criminal or a terrorist.

If you think that drone technology is solely for use against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, then think again. Everything developed for use in war zones abroad is already being tested domestically.

The Department of Homeland Security has already given the green light for a helicopter-style drone that can tase suspects from above.

“There’s a good chance ShadowHawk’s spine tingling buzz could be heard approaching a city near you,” reported Singularity Hub.

“As a sign of new law enforcement tactics to come, the Sheriff’s Office of Montgomery County, Texas was recently awarded a grant by the Department of Homeland Security for a squadron of ShadowHawks. Montgomery County’s Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel is psyched. “We are very excited about the funding and looking forward to placing the equipment into the field. Both my narcotics and SWAT units have been looking at numerous ways to deploy it and I absolutely believe it will become a critical component on all SWAT callouts and narcotics raids and emergency management operations.”