It’s frightening to see how much has been done in the past 10+ years WRT privacy rights and the rights of U.S. citizens (and non-citizens) who might be considered a “threat.”
The technological advances in the spy community is beyond frightening, and just a small glimpse into what our drones are capable of should send shivers down everyone’s spines. It’s extremely odd that nobody seems to care, and if you bring it up, people think you’re a nutty conspiracy theorist.
Why in the world does our government need to record and store **all** of our electronic communications for years? One has to wonder if drones are not also recording all of our spoken conversations as well, since they are now able to detect and record conversations between people on the ground and in buildings. Very frightening stuff going on these days.
This spy network would be my #1 target for cost-cutting. We should have a zero-tolerance policy for spying on American citizens. I’m not really a fan of drones or camera/microphone surveillance in any application because of the ability to quickly turn it against political enemies, even here in the U.S. Personally, I’d rather deal with the threat of terrorism than the threat of a government that knows every single detail about every single person in the U.S.
—————-
“Congress has already approved the deployment of approximately 30,000 drones in U.S. skies by the year 2020, prompting privacy advocates to question how the FAA will safeguard the American people from the aircraft.
…Concerns that the drones would add to privacy violations were vindicated when a newly discovered Air Force intelligence brief revealed that surveillance data of American citizens captured by drones “accidentally” can be stored and analyzed by the Pentagon.
“Collected imagery may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent,” the instruction states.
Meanwhile, the drone industry in the United States is doing its best to project a positive image to the public.
Michael Toscano, president of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, is optimistic that some astute public relations will help the industry.
“You have to keep repeating the good words,” he said, adding that the word “drones” should also be dispensed with because of its negative connotations and replaced with the term “remotely piloted vehicles.”
Salon observed:
Toscano made it sound like something straight out of a crisis-management textbook — or Orwell. The AUVSI wants to bombard the American public with positive images and messages about drones in an effort to reverse the growing perception of the aircraft as a threat to privacy and safety.
