Our Congress-- the one we elect-- has buried in the FAA Reauthorization Act a measuring ordering the FAA to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015. It is understandable why defense contractors have skin in the game, but if this measure is approved the American people might as well agree to being flayed alive as corporal punishment.
Even today, military drones are producing far more information than analysts can sift through, giving rise to whole new data mining enterprises. In civilian application, it is easy to see the next step are massive supercomputers to sort through data and, even, to make decisions on interpreting the movement of people. Hollywood was there first, and George Orwell was even earlier.
Let's say you were a campaign contributor who violated federal or state law and, as a result of a criminal proceeding, you had a chip implant with a GPS or maybe just a court order to carry your cell phone with you at all times. The drone could track your every movement in video just like the mujahadeen running through the underbrush in Kandahar province.
My advice is simple: call the White House and ask President Obama to veto the FAA Reauthorization Act until the drones provision is stripped out by Congress.
7 comments:
I am afraid for the future. George Orwell was right. Soon we will all be tracked and we all sat on our asses and let it happen in the name of safety or convenience (cell phones). What dopes we are.
I think that it is very reasonable to run for state-wide or national political office on a campaign whose focal point is civil liberties and freedom from data mining, spying on civilians and drones. We need a retreat from the use of terrorists and terrorism as excuses for widespread abuses of individual rights. Firewalls protecting people from technologies.
I see no problem with the drones. If you do not break the law no one is going to bother you.
Sigh. I want to go live in the jungle at least if I am going to be stalked I will know why and most likely who... With luck, I will protect myself.
this is the kind of news that just makes me want to curl up and ...scream loudly into a pillow. Mensa, certainly you jest. Your quote is the same inanity heard from the sheeple when the Fed's gave themselves the authority to eavesdrop on our phone calls after 9/11. Barf.
For those who doubt drones could make a difference in our lives, think of ANY of the 20th centuries totalitarian regimes and what they could have made of gps and drones if they had the technology.
I hope they look like the balloons
from The Prisoner!
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