Speaker 1: Okay, so this episode is partially about protests, but not
Speaker 1: necessarily a specific one. It's not really about Trump's military
Speaker 1: parade on Saturday, or the No King's protest and response
Speaker 1: to that. It's not about the ice raids or the
Speaker 1: protests that have been going on in response to that
Speaker 1: for almost two weeks at this point. I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: seen all that online. But just to start us off,
Speaker 1: i live in Los Angeles where some of the biggest
Speaker 1: protests have been happening, and I've been out every day
Speaker 1: with my camera covering the protests. Most of the time,
Speaker 1: it's pretty calm and peaceful. Despite that, law enforcement presence
Speaker 1: has been massive, and it's not just the LAPD. The
Speaker 1: National Guard is here and so are the Marines. Officials
Speaker 1: estimated that this deployment would cost one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: four million dollars. It does get hectic. I've seen tear
Speaker 1: gas canisters launched a protesters' heads. I've seen police horses
Speaker 1: nearly trample multiple people, and an unhoused person who didn't
Speaker 1: seem to understand what was even going on being beaten
Speaker 1: up with a baton. And that was in the space
Speaker 1: of half an hour on Saturday. Afternoon. This stuff is
Speaker 1: usually aimed at protesters, but journalists are not exempt from
Speaker 1: being pushed, having tear gas thrown at him, or even
Speaker 1: being shot at with one of those less lethal rounds.
Speaker 1: I can confirm that because I've been hit by one
Speaker 1: of those rounds twice. But again, this episode isn't about
Speaker 1: me or journalists in general. It's also not even really
Speaker 1: about the protesters. It's about the tools that are being
Speaker 1: used to watch all of them, and about surveillance and
Speaker 1: protests in general, and a trend that we're starting to
Speaker 1: see take shape. If you're listening to this in June
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty five, the things you're about to hear
Speaker 1: in this episode might sound concerning to you. If you're
Speaker 1: listening after that, all this might just sound kind of quaint.
Speaker 1: But let's get into it.
Speaker 2: I'm time.
Speaker 1: From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is kill Switch. I'm
Speaker 1: Dexter Thomas. Goodbye. On Tuesday, June tenth, Joseph Cox over
Speaker 1: at four or four Media noticed something weird going on
Speaker 1: in the flight data over LA.
Speaker 3: When the protests started over the weekend. I did what
Speaker 3: I often do when there's a protest or some sort
Speaker 3: of large event is I go and check flight data
Speaker 3: to adsb exchange dot com. It's a website where volunteers
Speaker 3: they run basically little sensors that can detect flight traffic.
Speaker 3: The website then makes this freely available. But what I
Speaker 3: usually do is I go and I start seeing what
Speaker 3: aircraft are in the sky above this protest or this event.
Speaker 3: And in this case, the skies were busy. There was
Speaker 3: a lot going on up there.
Speaker 2: Zerre one traffic couble clock one droll ma ab direction,
Speaker 2: another Troy Q nine to two drum seven three traffic
Speaker 2: cover clock eight miles the direction, another Troy nine two
Speaker 2: three drunk.
Speaker 3: I'm sure people on the ground would have noticed this
Speaker 3: as well, But there were aircraft up there that you
Speaker 3: would have heard, would have seen, and then I think
Speaker 3: many others do you may not have even noticed as well.
Speaker 3: So there are sort of two suspicious flight paths. The
Speaker 3: first time, I was doing circles and I followed where
Speaker 3: it took off, and it took off and eventually landed
Speaker 3: from March Air Reserve Base, which is to the east
Speaker 3: of LA. We don't fully actually know what that flight is.
Speaker 3: I think it's a larger DHS plane. I haven't fully
Speaker 3: verified that. But the other one which we have verified
Speaker 3: is that there were these other really interesting flight patterns
Speaker 3: above downtown LA and Paramount, but they were in this
Speaker 3: very distinctive hexagonal pattern and it was a much higher altitude.
Speaker 3: It was like over ten thousand feet something like that.
Speaker 3: There's something in the sky at around ten thousand feet
Speaker 3: flying these hexagonal patterns. Doesn't have a call sign.
Speaker 1: What is a call sign? Why would you expect a
Speaker 1: call sign from an aircraft?
Speaker 3: I'll try my best because I'm definitely on an aviation expert, okay,
Speaker 3: but I am incredibly interested in it journalistically. So a
Speaker 3: col sign is basically unique code and aircraft is going
Speaker 3: to broadcast, be assigned so it can identify itself of
Speaker 3: two other planes and to air traffic control. So to
Speaker 3: be able to effectively organize air traffic, you need to
Speaker 3: know which plane is which. You'll have Delta flight seven
Speaker 3: oh two or whatever, and obviously that's going to be
Speaker 3: a Delta one the DHS call sign or one that
Speaker 3: they often uses Troy Troo y. So this is how
Speaker 3: planes identify themselves and how ATC can manage them. If
Speaker 3: you don't have a call sign, that's interesting because it's
Speaker 3: obviously raised the question of why don't you want this
Speaker 3: plane to be identified? And it does make it harder
Speaker 3: to figure out what agency is behind this craft. Not impossible, yeah,
Speaker 3: but that information is out there and you cross reference it.
Speaker 3: You'll look up FAA registration records, and that's usually how
Speaker 3: you'll go, oh, that's registered to DHS. Oh that's registered
Speaker 3: to California Highway Patrol or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of like driving that a license plate,
Speaker 1: which yeah, I suppose some agencies can do, yeah in
Speaker 1: the sky, driving with a licensed plane in the sky,
Speaker 1: that would raise them questions From.
Speaker 3: Me, I'm immediately interested because I've seen those hexagans before,
Speaker 3: and that was when DHS flew predator drones above Minneapolis
Speaker 3: during the BLM protests in twenty twenty. So that is
Speaker 3: immediately really interesting. It's very distinctive, like you don't normally
Speaker 3: see those patterns on flight data.
Speaker 1: Joseph started connecting the dats and he wrote an article
Speaker 1: on four or four media saying that it looked like
Speaker 1: two very similar drones were flying over the anti ice
Speaker 1: protests in LA and that these might belong to DHS,
Speaker 1: the Department of Homeland Security fly in a hexagon.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So again this is where the limit of my
Speaker 3: expertise shows itself. I can't necessarily say they're flying exactly
Speaker 3: in a hexagon, or is that how the data is
Speaker 3: being interpreted by ADBs exchange or something like that. But
Speaker 3: it appears as a hexagon, and that is an immediate
Speaker 3: red flag of that might be a predator drone.
Speaker 1: In case that phrase predator drone sounds familiar to you,
Speaker 1: we're talking generally here about a series of unmanned aircraft
Speaker 1: developed by General Atomics, the MQ one, the Predator, and
Speaker 1: the MQ nine the Reaper. These have been used for surveillance,
Speaker 1: including along the border between the US and Mexico, but
Speaker 1: they've also been used for so called targeted strikes and
Speaker 1: launching air to ground missiles to kill people in places
Speaker 1: like Afghanistan and Iraq. Most people wouldn't expect that one
Speaker 1: of these drones were flying over a major American city.
Speaker 1: You think of predator drones, you think of this as, oh,
Speaker 1: this is something used in wartime, this is use for war.
Speaker 1: Just a backup, what usually would you associate a predator with?
Speaker 3: I would usually associate a predator just broadly speaking, flying
Speaker 3: over a country like Afghanistan during the US's war on terror,
Speaker 3: I would associate it with maybe a convoy of cars
Speaker 3: is driving from one location to another, and intelligence of
Speaker 3: some veracity set that there is some sort of insurgent
Speaker 3: or some sort of al kaeda isis Taliban whoever leader
Speaker 3: inside this vehicle. We're now going to fire the health
Speaker 3: fire missile and we're going to destroy that vehicle. That
Speaker 3: would be the standard way of thinking about it. And
Speaker 3: I think, of course, with the US's drone wars, it
Speaker 3: has targeted weddings as well. Is done so called double
Speaker 3: tap processes, where you fire a drone strike, it kills people,
Speaker 3: people then go to help you, then fire a second
Speaker 3: missile because you want to get those as well. These
Speaker 3: are weapons of assassination and weapons of war, and now
Speaker 3: those are flying above US soil. To be clear, I'm
Speaker 3: pretty sure that DHS ones are not armed, so I
Speaker 3: want to be very clear about that. But they are
Speaker 3: still incredibly powerful surveillance apparatus. They have very high powers
Speaker 3: cameras on them. They can potentially have very sophisticated electronic
Speaker 3: surveillance technology as well. We don't know whether that's being
Speaker 3: used above these protests, but at.
Speaker 1: This point Joseph wasn't one hundred percent sure who these
Speaker 1: aircraft belonged to. And this is where a community of
Speaker 1: people who study this stuff come in. An aviation enthusiast
Speaker 1: named aero Scout did some digging and finally helped connect
Speaker 1: that final dat.
Speaker 3: I tried to see where it took off. I can't
Speaker 3: figure it out. Maybe it had this transponder off or
Speaker 3: whatever before that. Eventually I see it flies to the
Speaker 3: US Mexican border, which is obviously where US Customs and
Speaker 3: Border Protection hangs out and stores some of their drones.
Speaker 3: So they were very smart and they followed the flight
Speaker 3: path of what looked like the drone. They found the
Speaker 3: relevant atc Audio, and in that haystack they found a
Speaker 3: couple of needles, including the mention of Troy, which is
Speaker 3: the DHS call sign. Even though this drone is not
Speaker 3: broadcasting a call sign, it's mentioned there. And then crucially,
Speaker 3: some of the audio says a Q nine, which is
Speaker 3: shorthand for the MQ nine, which is the official name
Speaker 3: for a Predator or a reaper drone. So cross referencing
Speaker 3: it was confirmed. I actually emailed Customs and Border protection. First,
Speaker 3: when I first saw the hexagons, I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I mean I have to immediately approach the comment. Now.
Speaker 3: They took several days to get back to me, like
Speaker 3: an unusually long time. But then they got back to
Speaker 3: me and they confirmed that their MQ nine predators are
Speaker 3: supporting federal law enforcement in the Greater Los Angeles area,
Speaker 3: including quote, Immigration and Customs enforcement with aerial support of
Speaker 3: their operations.
Speaker 1: Okay, so specifically ICE.
Speaker 3: Also yes, because I asked, are you flying these for
Speaker 3: yourselves or you flying them for another agency? This statement says, yes,
Speaker 3: we are flying them for ICE. Interestingly, CBB says it
Speaker 3: is not engaged in the surveillance of First Amendment activities.
Speaker 3: End quote, which is, well, you're flying above a protest,
Speaker 3: I hope, Like, are you just not gonna You're gonna
Speaker 3: not point the camera at the protest?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sorry. Not read that sentence to me again.
Speaker 1: I need to partse that again.
Speaker 3: This is the four quote. Additionally, they are providing officers
Speaker 3: safety surveillance ren requested by officers air and marine operations.
Speaker 3: Is not engaged in the surveillance First Amendment activities.
Speaker 1: First Amendment activities, I would certainly associate with the protest.
Speaker 1: That is interesting, Okay.
Speaker 3: I would say it's a few different ways to interpret it.
Speaker 3: The one would be that, oh, no, we were asked
Speaker 3: by ICE to fly and provide situational awareness for the
Speaker 3: protection of our employee. Is that sort of thing, and
Speaker 3: maybe we incidentally filmed people protesting. That's one very charitable interpretation.
Speaker 3: Another one would be that we don't view the protests's
Speaker 3: First Amendment protected speech because they're all violent or whatever.
Speaker 3: And again this is me extrapolating from the statement. But
Speaker 3: when you marry that statement with drone footage like DHS
Speaker 3: posted on Twitter, it says these protests that they are violent,
Speaker 3: California needs to get this under control. And there's footage
Speaker 3: from a drone. They don't say predator. By'm going to
Speaker 3: presume it's the predator and it's specifically of the protest
Speaker 3: like it shows Peel protesting. So I don't know. It's
Speaker 3: very hard to square that statement with the fact that
Speaker 3: a predator drone flew not just above downtown LA, but
Speaker 3: also flew above Paramount. It flew above the two areas
Speaker 3: where the protests were.
Speaker 1: Let's talk real briefly if we could about this site
Speaker 1: where you're able to actually track stuff. This data is
Speaker 1: basically freely available to anybody who wants to look at it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can go to adsb exchange dot com right now.
Speaker 3: You can then move your cursor over Los Angeles and
Speaker 3: then you can see the air traffic coming in and out.
Speaker 3: But it is an amazing tool journalistically for researchers as well,
Speaker 3: and this information is available to anybody. It's just a
Speaker 3: barrier to entry for interpreting it. And again I'm absolutely
Speaker 3: non expert. I'm just good enough to go that looks
Speaker 3: like a drone to me people who are a lot
Speaker 3: better than me.
Speaker 1: So at first, there's a flight pattern that looks like
Speaker 1: it's a hexagon. This looks like Minneapolis twenty twenty. And
Speaker 1: actually tipping back to twenty twenty, when you first realized
Speaker 1: that there was a predator flying over Minneapolis, were you
Speaker 1: surprised at all?
Speaker 3: I was entirely shocked, and that was the first time
Speaker 3: I had seen it. My co founder, Jason Kubler has
Speaker 3: been covering drones is and years. He may have been
Speaker 3: less surprised, but I think I almost had a benefit
Speaker 3: of coming in sort of clear eyed about it because
Speaker 3: they're flying predator drones for protests. That's insane to me,
Speaker 3: as somebody way back when I was actually an intern
Speaker 3: at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, and I
Speaker 3: was one of my jobs was you need to enter
Speaker 3: into a spreadsheet the drone strikes from Obama's drone war
Speaker 3: inside Yemen and then subsequent administrations as well. So for
Speaker 3: me journalistically, predator drones, reaper drones, they are a weapon
Speaker 3: for war, they are a weapon for assassination, and now
Speaker 3: they're flying essentially that same technology over protests inside the
Speaker 3: United States. I was blown away by that. I confirmed
Speaker 3: it with DHS at the time, and then I started
Speaker 3: to go back and look through more flight data associated
Speaker 3: with those drones and you could then go look through
Speaker 3: historical data and figure out, oh, they're actually flying these
Speaker 3: all over the country, sometimes over the one hundred mile
Speaker 3: border limit above US cities. So this is actually happening
Speaker 3: for a long time. It's just we don't necessarily understand
Speaker 3: or see that. Customs and Border Protection published footage, so
Speaker 3: that they said was drone footage, and it's very clear
Speaker 3: you can see people running around and protesting and the
Speaker 3: police response and all of that. So in this context,
Speaker 3: they're being used as a situational awareness tool, is what
Speaker 3: CPB told me. But I still think it's wild and
Speaker 3: there's a big public interest in telling people there's like
Speaker 3: a dot in the sky watching this, and you may
Speaker 3: not realize that, and then we have a conversation about
Speaker 3: whether we want that where we think it's proportionate. Some
Speaker 3: people might be okay, but we can't have that conversation.
Speaker 3: That's what digging free flight, DATCHA and finding out in
Speaker 3: the first place.
Speaker 1: So these situational awareness tools, that dot in the sky
Speaker 1: might feel distant, but it is watching. That being said,
Speaker 1: that's not the only way people are being watched. That's
Speaker 1: after the break. If you go to a protest, whether
Speaker 1: you're actually marching all day or you're just there for
Speaker 1: a little bit to see what's going on, you're probably
Speaker 1: aware that you're being watched more than normal. For some people,
Speaker 1: maybe that's comforting. For others that feels like a risk
Speaker 1: that would make them uncomfortable. Surveillance is no longer theoretical.
Speaker 1: It's over your head, it's in your pocket, and especially
Speaker 1: at a protest, it's all around you. So this brings
Speaker 1: me to another set of questions. Which is I've been
Speaker 1: here physically out documenting protests as best as I can
Speaker 1: on one person, and as I'm out here reporting on
Speaker 1: the protests, actually physically going to the protests. And I've
Speaker 1: covered protests before where people are increasingly concerned about their security. Right,
Speaker 1: especially in twenty twenty, people were already wearing masks because
Speaker 1: of COVID, which you didn't see too much of before
Speaker 1: that it would really sort of a select group of
Speaker 1: people who would wear masks to a protest. You saw
Speaker 1: that more than twenty twenty, and you certainly see that now.
Speaker 1: But if there are drones in the sky, realistically, how
Speaker 1: anonymous can one be at a protest?
Speaker 3: And I'll preface this with I'm not necessarily giving advice
Speaker 3: to one side or activists, law enforcement, to any It's
Speaker 3: more just like a cold analysis of the technology itself.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say it's impossible, but I would say it
Speaker 3: has got exponentially harder, just based on the sort of
Speaker 3: technology that's going to be at one of these protests. So,
Speaker 3: as we've said, you'll have prejudice drones with very high
Speaker 3: powered cameras. I don't know whether footage from that would
Speaker 3: be used in a criminal prosecution or anything like that.
Speaker 3: But regardless, it's there and it's collecting data on the
Speaker 3: ground or even sometimes in the drone. Maybe you will
Speaker 3: have technologies such as imsy catchers, which are basically these
Speaker 3: fake cell phone towers which broadcast a signal they trick
Speaker 3: phones into connecting to them, and that can give up
Speaker 3: unique identifiers associated with your phone. That can be sort
Speaker 3: of a springboard for law enforcement to then go get
Speaker 3: more information about people. They can also in some cases
Speaker 3: intercept text messages and phone calls as well, although with
Speaker 3: upgrades to four G and five G like that may
Speaker 3: not necessarily be the case. And then the big one
Speaker 3: for me is that I don't think we've seen it
Speaker 3: deployed by will be very interested if state or local
Speaker 3: do use This is, of course, facial recognition technology, where
Speaker 3: so many agencies across the United States by this tool
Speaker 3: called CLEARVIEWAI that's built on a massive database of billions
Speaker 3: of images of people's faces. They point a camera at
Speaker 3: somebody on their phone. It's an app you installed on
Speaker 3: the phone. A police officer does that, scans the face
Speaker 3: and brings up their vembo or whatever it is, so
Speaker 3: they can identify the person quite easily. Apparently it works
Speaker 3: in some cases even when people are wearing masks, and
Speaker 3: it's sort of to hammer on that just cold analysis
Speaker 3: of the tech. I think that might also be why
Speaker 3: a lot of ice officers and well primarily ice officers
Speaker 3: masking their faces right, may be concerned about there, because
Speaker 3: there's actually tools that anybody can use in the same
Speaker 3: sort of way anybody can access flight data. There are
Speaker 3: facial recognition tools that anybody can access and you can
Speaker 3: put faces through there.
Speaker 1: Officers also being concerned about being identified themselves using the
Speaker 1: same sort of technology.
Speaker 3: But potentially, yeah, it's a dual use technology. It can
Speaker 3: be used by anybody. Because the access to this tech
Speaker 3: has filtered down. It's not just a tool for law
Speaker 3: enforcements anymore. It's a tool for anybody with an Internet
Speaker 3: connection and the smartphone.
Speaker 1: There's really two things that we can be thinking about
Speaker 1: when we're thinking about ones. I suppose the right to
Speaker 1: privacy even just walking around on the street, and this
Speaker 1: is something that you cover a lot just in general.
Speaker 1: Do you have the right to privacy when you go
Speaker 1: and buy chicken at the store or buy apples at
Speaker 1: the store. And increasingly I think people are paying a
Speaker 1: bit more attention to this they maybe haven't been in
Speaker 1: the past. But there's of course, when somebody hears there
Speaker 1: are drones in the sky, I think immediately some people
Speaker 1: might be immediately concerned, Hey, why is somebody spying on me?
Speaker 1: Right immediately might think about that. There's also the fact
Speaker 1: that there's so many cameras. There's so many cameras at
Speaker 1: a protest, you basically can't avoid being on cameras somewhere.
Speaker 3: While I was looking at the flight data over the weekend,
Speaker 3: I was pairing it with this sort of compilation of
Speaker 3: live streams on tiktoks. Some YouTube channel had very handily
Speaker 3: taken all of these people who are on TikTok or
Speaker 3: over platforms and put it all on one screen. So
Speaker 3: I could watch like the LA protests from all of
Speaker 3: these different angles at once, and I say, wow, this
Speaker 3: is pretty useful actually, and it would switch audio of them.
Speaker 3: But like I was only able to do that because
Speaker 3: ordinary people are filming at live streaming.
Speaker 1: If you're able to watch it and other people are
Speaker 1: able to watch it, of course law enforcement is able
Speaker 1: to watch this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they will then be able to archive that
Speaker 3: footage potentially, and if they feel the need to for
Speaker 3: whatever reason. You can also do facial recognition tech after
Speaker 3: the fact. It's not just a live thing. You can
Speaker 3: take a video that was uploaded or streamed to TikTok
Speaker 3: or whatever and then run the technology on that after
Speaker 3: the fact. This is why Laura enforcement are so attracted
Speaker 3: to this and why clear View and other products have
Speaker 3: been so popular across the US is that you can
Speaker 3: take something as singular as someone's face and then use
Speaker 3: that as a springboard for a criminal investigation.
Speaker 1: I think one of the really fascinating things about protests
Speaker 1: right now, if I can say that, is that, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, you do have people, I think rightfully so,
Speaker 1: who are concerned about surveillance of any type. Right there's
Speaker 1: actual official, purposeful surveillance, say by a drone, and there
Speaker 1: would be law enforce on watching somebody's TikTok of them.
Speaker 1: On the flip side, there is a desire for documentation.
Speaker 1: We've seen time and time again how difficult is it
Speaker 1: to get police to release body cam footage and how
Speaker 1: many things would have gone unreported, George Floyd's murder being
Speaker 1: one of them if somebody were not there to document it.
Speaker 1: And I've seen and filmed plenty of things that probably
Speaker 1: a lot of people would not have known about had
Speaker 1: somebody not been there with a camera. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: this kind of the dual concerns. I suppose the desire
Speaker 1: for really everybody should be able to film something, the
Speaker 1: public should know about things. But then everybody is filming
Speaker 1: things and everyone, if we allow for the police to
Speaker 1: be part of the public, can see it also.
Speaker 3: Yeah, ubiquitous surveillance is absolutely a double edged sword. With
Speaker 3: everything you've said, and I agree with all of it,
Speaker 3: I guess I would lean towards Ultimately, I think it's
Speaker 3: probably a good thing that more people are able to
Speaker 3: film more and more events over time. The idea that
Speaker 3: anybody can see some sort of injustice happening, police brutality
Speaker 3: or whatever and go and film it, I think, on
Speaker 3: average hands out to be a good and powerful thing.
Speaker 3: And I think you can see that where in some
Speaker 3: of the ice raids or the ice activity you can
Speaker 3: overhear or people have reported that they will say, go
Speaker 3: for the one with the camera. This is a very
Speaker 3: powerful tool for the public and for everybody. Just people
Speaker 3: may want to be careful about what they film, just
Speaker 3: in the same way I'm careful about. I'm not going
Speaker 3: to go on Facebook and upload a bunch of photos
Speaker 3: of myself and tag where they all were or something
Speaker 3: like that, just from a purely personal privacy perspective as well.
Speaker 1: So what are you going to be watching for. I
Speaker 1: don't see these protests stopping. I don't see the momentum
Speaker 1: go anywhere. What are you looking for?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to keep looking at flight data if necessary,
Speaker 3: dive into atc audio. I'll be looking above what happens.
Speaker 3: If protests move to another city, and I believe some
Speaker 3: are planned, I'll probably look at those as well. And
Speaker 3: it's not that, oh my god, surveillance planes are always bad.
Speaker 3: It's no. They can have very legitimate use cases. But
Speaker 3: I think journalistically it's worth looking and analyzing and understanding, Okay,
Speaker 3: is it proportionate to be flying a Predator drone above
Speaker 3: this area of a protest or whatever the aircraft turns
Speaker 3: out to be. And again, we can only have that
Speaker 3: conversation if people are looking at the data and figuring
Speaker 3: out what's going on. Yeah, in the same way, we
Speaker 3: can only figure out what's going on with people like
Speaker 3: yourselves when you're actually on the ground filming, talking to protests,
Speaker 3: talking to law enforcement, and figuring out what's going on there.
Speaker 3: It's the same thing.
Speaker 1: You said you were surprised when you saw this in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. You were surprised when you saw a drone
Speaker 1: or reprodrone specifically or Minneapolis. You said you're less surprised
Speaker 1: now in LA. Would it be reasonable to assume that
Speaker 1: if there's a large protest, there might be one of
Speaker 1: these things in the sky in the future here in
Speaker 1: the United States?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's maybe not a given. Customs and
Speaker 3: Border Protection only has a fleet of I think ten drones.
Speaker 3: I think they only have five land mission presents drones.
Speaker 3: They can't be everywhere all at once, obviously, And I
Speaker 3: guess what made it almost obvious that we're going to
Speaker 3: fly a drone here is that there is a connection
Speaker 3: and a nexus of course to DHS and ICE. These
Speaker 3: are anti ice protests. Customs and Border Protection is also
Speaker 3: a part of DHS. It would make absolute sense that
Speaker 3: one arm of DHS is going to support the mission
Speaker 3: of another one. So will we see them in other protests? Broadly, yes,
Speaker 3: will we see these drones and other anti ice protests.
Speaker 3: I think it's pretty likely, Yeah, depending on the size
Speaker 3: and the response.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for making time for this. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, there.
Speaker 1: Is a lot more we could say about the protests
Speaker 1: that are happening right now, but again, this episode isn't
Speaker 1: really about these protests in particular. But I do want
Speaker 1: to mention one thing in the show notes, We've put
Speaker 1: a link to a guide on how you can be
Speaker 1: safe for the protest. This applies to you whether you're
Speaker 1: a journalist, whether you're a protest to yourself, or just
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't trust the news and you want to
Speaker 1: turn off the TV, get off your phone and just
Speaker 1: see for yourself what's happening outside. Again, that's in the
Speaker 1: show notes. That's from Wired dot com and I've read
Speaker 1: through it and I definitely recommend it for everyone. Thanks
Speaker 1: once again so much for listening to kill Switch. Let
Speaker 1: us know what you think, and if there's something else
Speaker 1: you'd like us to cover, let us know. You can
Speaker 1: hit us up at kill Switch at Kaleidoscope dot NYC,
Speaker 1: or you can hit me up personally at dex digi
Speaker 1: that's d e x d I g I on Instagram
Speaker 1: or on Blue Sky if that's your thing, and while
Speaker 1: you're at it on Apple podcast or Spotify, before you
Speaker 1: close that app, leave us a review. It helps other
Speaker 1: people find the show, which in turn helps us keep
Speaker 1: doing our thing. Kill Switch is hosted by Me Dexter Thomas.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Sena Ozaki, Darluk Potts, and Kate Osbourne.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by me and Kyle Murdoch and
Speaker 1: Kyle also mixed the show. From Kaleidoscope, Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are oz Lashin, Bungesh Hajigadur and Kate Osbourne. From iHeart,
Speaker 1: our executive producers are Katrina Norvil and Nikki Etur