What could possibly go wrong – hick – go wrong – hick – go wrong?

BTW, last line: ‘thing’ <– 'thin'

How long before they want these to be used for crowd disbursement when folks are protesting? Think of a drone with the sound cannon, tear gas, or similar crowd control mechanisms…

Straight talk from a cop on surveilling.

“It gives us a good opportunity to have an eye up there. Not a surveilling eye, not a spying eye. Let’s make the distinction. A surveilling eye to help us to do the things we need to do, honestly, to keep people safe,” said Miami-Dade Police Director James Loftus.
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=3151

There’s no where in the world to hids from US oppression.

I don’t think protests will necessarily be a good use of these, people already know how to blind their cameras and I really don’t think missiles are in the cards.

http://www.wikihow.com/Blind-a-Surveillance-Camera

However, I can’t imagine the Et Cetera Agency will be able to resist using these to find pot plants.

Eventually, these big, high flying drones will be old technology and will probably be replaced by bumblebee-sized machines silently flying around our houses and elsewhere, no doubt.

Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus

It’s like an internal UAV Lobbying group.

Here’s more:

Congressional UAV boosters collected nearly $1.8 million; MAASSIVE; War is Business; 2/17/11

This is all following a certain progression, that is, the transformation of America into a surveillance police state, primarily occurring after 9/11, with the 9/11 attacks by right-wing religious zealots being “conveniently” used (by other right-wing zealots) as the rationale for locking down America, for letting the war profiteers run wild…but only in the interest of “national security.”

War profiteers have made a killing financially off Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (as they continue to do under President Obama), so it was only a matter of time before they turned their attention to making a killing financially on the domestic front. What is showing up in America’s skies today in the way of drone surveillance aircraft is either newly-manufactured hardware or hardware shifted from overseas combat zones…with someone in the background making money…always.

The whole privatization scheme hatched and launched by the Bush/Cheney administration deals solely with making war profitable for all the private firms and individuals receiving no-bid contracts, in which taxpayer money is diverted into their privatized pockets, with most (if not all) of these no-bid contracts going solely to crony-Republican conservative-owned companies (especially during the infamous and criminal Bush/Cheney years), who no doubt would be so grateful for having so mush of the tens of billions in “national security” taxpayer dollars funneled their way that they would reciprocate by funneling huge campaign donations back into Republican Party campaign coffers.

After 9/11, one of the first things the Bush administration did was co-opt American spy satellites, training their space-based cameras on American soil for the first time (before, they’d been prohibited from spying on Americans on American soil while passing overhead). But this wasn’t good enough for them. They’d already implemented their Total Information Awareness system, getting complicit telecom companies to participate in warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, vacuuming up all that the no-bid private contractors could get their hands on, storing in super-computers, for analysis, to catch suspected right-wing religious terrorists (of the foreign kind), drug dealers, prostitution rings, whatever, whomever, all in the name of “national security” (remember Ashcroft’s priority list?).

After the co-opting of these spy satellites for domestic purposes, Bush Republicans wanted something closer to the ground, which conveniently appeared in recent advances in remote-controlled drone surveillance aircraft (the merger of GPS technology with advances in miniaturized computer/video-camera technology). I first heard of these drones being used overseas in the Iraq/Afghanistan war efforts. Domestically, the first I heard of these drones being used in America was when the Bush administration announced that a Predate drone squadron was being based at Ellington AFB outside Houston, presumably to monitor the Texas/Mexico border (even though there are close airbases to the border area). Then, I read a couple of years ago that the Houston Police Department was shown a drone demonstration as a prelude to its buying some.

Forget about “creeping socialism,” as some conservatives are wont to talk about. How about “creeping fascism,” which is apparently what most “national security” conservatives have in mind for America?

I am reminded, for some reason, of pre-World War II Nazi Germany. World War I, and war reparations, impoverished Germany, with the 1929 Stock Market Crash impoverishing Germany even more going into the 1930s, with the German budget in shambles…something which the Nazis and Hitler took advantage of. (Hmmm, kind of looks like what today’s Republicans are trying to do: tax cuts for wealthy corporatists/industrialists, cuts in social programs, increased impoverishment of the middle-class and poor, attacks on labor unions). Then, as the Nazis rose to power, promising to “clean-up” German society and bring prosperity back, they formed “citizens watch” groups (the Brown-shirts) to police everyone, to monitor their activities, to compile an “enemies list” of any Germans viewed as a threat to the Nazi leadership and their self-proclaimed superiority. (Hmmm, kind of sounds like today’s Republicans once again). Then, instead of the Nazis pumping money into government programs to help make life better for all Germans, they diverted tons of money into building the Nazi war machine, impoverishing Germany even more. Result? World War II.

It’s funny how history keeps repeating itself…or tragic if one happens to be on a conservative/Republican/Nazi “enemies list,” deemed a “threat,” kept under surveillance, monitored in one way or another, targeted for censorship or incarceration or even elimination…and all done under the auspices of a “national security” umbrella, like in Nazi Germany, like in Stalin’s Russia, like in one conservative totalitarian dictatorship after another around the world, throughout the history of the world…and democracy be damned.

“On Monday, in a case that represents an about-face in American policy, Obama administration lawyers will charge in immigration court here that General [Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova] participated in torture when he commanded the Salvadoran armed forces and will seek to have him deported.

“The case against General Vides is hailed by human rights advocates as the first time a special human rights office at the Department of Homeland Security has brought immigration charges against a top-ranking foreign military commander.”

LINK.