ACAB.

BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world to Lefty Memes@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 394 points –
14

Where I grew up, there were signs on highways and such saying "Police Aerial Surveillance", "Police Speed Traps" or whatever. I never found one that didn't have "Pigs In Space" scrawled on it.

If you don't get the reference: The Muppet Show.

Decades later, and halfway around the world, I'll look up at a police helicopter and think, "Oh look: piiiiigs in spaaaaace."

They get birds to do their dirty work around me. And not like in a "birds aren't real" way; they train hawks to fly over the highways and use things attached to the birds to monitor traffic.

Police helicopters are literally expensive. A very notable piece of corruption.

They do provide valuable services like rescue (you can see the winch pod on the side) and search using IR and extremely high definition cameras. It's not corruption, but I'm not going to deny that they do a lot of surveillance.

This gives the police far too much credit.

Sure, the fed do this shit for protests, but I can guarantee you that the pigs don't have the manpower for a flying-techie-hack-squad like you're imagining

A lot of larger city departments have drones now, so yes they do.

Do you really not believe that local departments don’t have StingRay’s in their copters or cars, or KingFish’s in their pockets? Harris specifically sells these things to local PD in addition to state and federal agencies.

Also for general knowledge, you can build your own imsi catcher if you want to. While running it is probably illegal if you’re in the US or EU, who really gives a fuck?

They do this regularly in Australia to look for illegal plants etc