Spy Plane on Pipeline Patrol Exposed: Private corp operated by former military

Private corporation spying on everyone, owned by former military, has pipeline patrol

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News

A private corporation has been operating spy planes, and secretly spying on everyone. The exposure has caused outrage in Baltimore. 

An investigation by Censored News reveals that the company -- Persistent Surveillance Systems -- has a pipeline patrol, as shown in this screen capture below from its web site.

Further, it is now revealed that police are paying this private corporation. Police are using private funds to pay this private corporation in order to avoid detection, since they are spying without warrants.

The company boasts that its plane, HawkEyeII, can spy on people at night, in a wide area.

"The technology was first developed by the military and deployed in the siege of Fallujah," reports Partnership for Civil Justice Fund.

Persistent Surveillance Systems reports on its website that it is owned by Ross T. McNutt, PhD.

The following biography reveals that McNutt is a major and was (or still is) employed by the Secretary of the Air Force at the Pentagon. 
http://csse.usc.edu/csse/event/2000/ARR/day2/8a_McNutt%20Reducing%20Air%20Force.pdf

PIPELINE PATROL BY SECRET SPY PLANE

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Baltimore’s covert spy plane program: a national crossroads for privacy and free speech
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By Carl Messineo
PCJF Legal Director

Published on Alternet

Everyone’s movements are watched from a hidden camera in the sky, but no one knows it. Ex-military private contractors control the cameras and run the operation to avoid government oversight. In the background, billionaire funders salivate at the possibility of plush government contracts.

In the City of Baltimore this dystopian scenario is already real life.

A private security firm, Persistent Surveillance Systems, with funding from a billionaire former hedge fund manager, has been filming and recording the people of Baltimore from the skies, using a surveillance plane with an ultra-wide angle camera that circles the city recording the imagery to massive hard drives. The range encompasses thirty square miles simultaneously, almost one third of the city.

“Imagine Google Earth with TiVo capability” gushes Ross McNutt, the founder of PSS.

The technology was first developed by the military and deployed in the siege of Fallujah.

In an all-too-familiar transition, this battlefield technology needs a new marketplace in order to maintain profitability. Wars come and go, but the domestic marketplace is persistent.

Such is the growth cycle of the Surveillance Industrial Complex, the morphed offspring of the Military Industrial Complex that has distorted values and driven policies for years on end. Capital interests profit from the people’s collective and individual loss of personal privacy.

McNutt founded Persistent Surveillance Systems to bring that battlefield technology home to monitor the people of the United States. He viewed Baltimore as an excellent proving ground in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray homicide. However, McNutt lacked necessary finances. In stepped Texas-based hedge fund manager and billionaires John and Laura Arnold. The Arnolds' foundation donated $120,000 to a local foundation, the Baltimore Community Foundation, which funded the spy plane.

By securing private funding, the Baltimore Police Department was able to use the dragnet surveillance technology off-the-books. There was no government oversight or authorization from elected officials, no public disclosures to the community or hearings before the City Council. It was all surreptitious and undisclosed ...

How the Government Creates an Intimate Picture of Your Private Life — Read the rest of the report

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Partnership for Civil Justice Fund
http://www.justiceonline.org/