Fiscally nuts. Socially insane.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Big Brother in the Sky

Glenn Reynolds (Instablogger) just post an article about a UAV originally tested by Houston local police now being used in Iraq. (Read all about it.)
What struck me here is not the article in itself (which I do find interesting, if you're wondering), but the use of a high-powered industrial UAV by a local police force. I personally find this ridiculous. So now a local police force has visibility over everything going on in their domain? That's big.

I guess I haven't explained the full magnitude of this yet. Let me, if I may. 

This police force is now pretty much able to monitor any one person's actions at any time of day, regardless of property restrictions (public or private). They claim to use it only for traffic violations, but at $1 million a piece, you would have to be an idiot to even entertain that idea. They damn well better be doing this with a warrant. (and good luck finding a judge who even knows what the hell a UAV is.) And this is just the local police force of Houston- who knows what's going on with the Feds.

(Here is another article on the issue, why don't you read all about it.)

1 comment:

Richard Johnson said...

It's pretty ridiculous that they would even need this kind of resource. I'm no expert, but it seems like a waste of money to me.