Is this a mosquito…NO. This is an "INSECT SPY DRONE" already in production. It can be controlled from a great distance and is equipped with a camera, microphone and can land on you, and use it's needle to take a DNA sample with the pain of a mosquito bite.
Most Americans have gotten used to regular news reports about military and CIA drones attacking terrorist suspects – including US citizens – in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere abroad.
But picture thousands of drone aircraft buzzing around the United States – peering from the sky at breaches in border security, wildfires about to become major conflagrations, patches of marijuana grown illegally deep within national forests, or environmental scofflaws polluting the land, air, and water.
By some government estimates, as many as 30,000 drones could be part of intelligence gathering and law enforcement here in the United States within the next ten years. Operated by agencies down to the local level, this would be in addition to the 110 current and planned drone activity sites run by the military services in 39 states, reported this week by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a non-government research project.
The presence of drones in the US was brought home Wednesday night when some people thought they saw a UFO along the Capitol Beltway in Washington. In fact, it was a disc-shaped X-47B UCAV (Unmanned Combat Air System) being hauled from Edwards Air Force Base in California to Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland for testing.
Civil libertarians warn that “unmanned aircraft carrying cameras raise the prospect of a significant new avenue for the surhaveillance of American life,” as the American Civil Liberties Union put it in a report last December.
“The technology is quickly becoming cheaper and more powerful, interest in deploying drones among police departments is increasing, and our privacy laws are not strong enough to ensure that the new technology will be used responsibly and consistently with democratic values,” reported the ACLU. “In short, all the pieces appear to be lining up for the eventual introduction of routine aerial surhaveillance in American life – a development that would profoundly change the character of public life in the United States.”
Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, highlights one potentially controversial part of US Air Force policy regarding military drones flown over the United States.
“Air Force Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) operations, exercise and training missions will not conduct nonconsensual surveillance on specifically identified US persons, unless expressly approved by the Secretary of Defense, consistent with US law and regulations,” according to an instruction on oversight of Air Force intelligence.
At the same time, the instruction states, “Collected imagery may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent.”
Americans have mixed feelings about pilotless drones flown over the United States, according to a new Monmouth University Poll.
A large majority (80 percent) supports the idea of using drones to help with search and rescue missions; a substantial majority also supports using drones to track down runaway criminals (67 percent) and control illegal immigration along US borders (64 percent).
But despite widespread support for certain domestic applications of drone technology, privacy issues are an obvious concern, the poll finds. For example, just 23 percent support using drones for such routine police activity as issuing speeding tickets while two-thirds oppose the idea.
“Specifically, 42 percent of Americans would be very concerned and 22 percent would be somewhat concerned about their own privacy if US law enforcement started using unmanned drones with high tech surveillance cameras," the poll report states.
Most Americans have gotten used to regular news reports about military and CIA drones attacking terrorist suspects – including US citizens – in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere abroad.
But picture thousands of drone aircraft buzzing around the United States – peering from the sky at breaches in border security, wildfires about to become major conflagrations, patches of marijuana grown illegally deep within national forests, or environmental scofflaws polluting the land, air, and water.
By some government estimates, as many as 30,000 drones could be part of intelligence gathering and law enforcement here in the United States within the next ten years. Operated by agencies down to the local level, this would be in addition to the 110 current and planned drone activity sites run by the military services in 39 states, reported this week by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a non-government research project.
The presence of drones in the US was brought home Wednesday night when some people thought they saw a UFO along the Capitol Beltway in Washington. In fact, it was a disc-shaped X-47B UCAV (Unmanned Combat Air System) being hauled from Edwards Air Force Base in California to Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland for testing.
Civil libertarians warn that “unmanned aircraft carrying cameras raise the prospect of a significant new avenue for the surhaveillance of American life,” as the American Civil Liberties Union put it in a report last December.
“The technology is quickly becoming cheaper and more powerful, interest in deploying drones among police departments is increasing, and our privacy laws are not strong enough to ensure that the new technology will be used responsibly and consistently with democratic values,” reported the ACLU. “In short, all the pieces appear to be lining up for the eventual introduction of routine aerial surhaveillance in American life – a development that would profoundly change the character of public life in the United States.”
Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, highlights one potentially controversial part of US Air Force policy regarding military drones flown over the United States.
“Air Force Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) operations, exercise and training missions will not conduct nonconsensual surveillance on specifically identified US persons, unless expressly approved by the Secretary of Defense, consistent with US law and regulations,” according to an instruction on oversight of Air Force intelligence.
At the same time, the instruction states, “Collected imagery may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent.”
Americans have mixed feelings about pilotless drones flown over the United States, according to a new Monmouth University Poll.
A large majority (80 percent) supports the idea of using drones to help with search and rescue missions; a substantial majority also supports using drones to track down runaway criminals (67 percent) and control illegal immigration along US borders (64 percent).
But despite widespread support for certain domestic applications of drone technology, privacy issues are an obvious concern, the poll finds. For example, just 23 percent support using drones for such routine police activity as issuing speeding tickets while two-thirds oppose the idea.
“Specifically, 42 percent of Americans would be very concerned and 22 percent would be somewhat concerned about their own privacy if US law enforcement started using unmanned drones with high tech surveillance cameras," the poll report states.
