Posted on 02/08/2012 7:28:31 PM PST by Mier
Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Its a drone, and its watching you. Thats what privacy advocates fear from a bill Congress passed this week to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace.
The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015.
Privacy advocates say the measure will lead to widespread use of drones for electronic surveillance by police agencies across the country and eventually by private companies as well.
There are serious policy questions on the horizon about privacy and surveillance, by both government agencies and commercial entities, said Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
All is well! There is nothing to fear! Only the guilty need worry! /sarcasm (really necessary?)
BUT YOU ALL LOOK GUILTY FROM 15000 FEET
so saith SKYNET
Green drones will be subsidized by the Government. They will help stimulate the economy and create jobs!!
Chilly Skies over Amerika
Remember, if you whine and moan,
The Government may answer with a Drone.

Aren’t these drones a threat to general aviation?
Hellfire missiles and damnation coming to an American terrorist near you!
Hellfire missiles and damnation coming to an American terrorist like you!
Probably not.
For civilian surveillance, they probably fly under a thousand feet. That’s only as high as some city skyscrapers.
Most of these drones would probably be flown away from general/controlled traffic.
What’s the worst? An air to ground missile.
We could use them to get a gross in-out body count at inner city polling places, the ones with 99% turnout.
Similar thread
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2843949/posts?page=15#15
Excerpt:
I have just looked over the Senate version and here is the passage - Under Title VI: Aviation Research
(Sec. 607) Authorizes the FAA Administrator to: (1) arrange with the NAS to assess unmanned aircraft systems; and (2) establish three two-year cost-shared pilot projects in sparsely populated, low-density Class G air traffic airspace new test sites to conduct developmental work and service testing to improve unmanned aircraft for safe integration into the National Airspace System. Authorizes appropriations for FY2010-FY2011.
Directs the FAA Administrator to make available on the FAAs website a five-year roadmap for introduction of unmanned aircraft systems into the National Airspace System.
You would not believe the scope of this thing - the sole purpose of this piece of legislation is to grow the Government and to do it fast, while providing special exemptions for special people who promised to vote for it if they got theirs.
Why would congress allow that?
Perhaps we need to consider some unintended consequences.... I could foresee drug cartels mimicking drones for drug deliveries. I mean, if there are 30,000 of them, who would think anything?
Or worse, the bureaucrat that chooses to stalk their civilian target - high tech style.
Also, I believe it would then be necessary to cover my bedroom sky lights, and cover the upper windows if my bedroom, lest my amorous antics go viral?
I can already see the headlines and the taxpayer-funded settlement payouts.
Why would congress allow that?
Perhaps we need to consider some unintended consequences.... I could foresee drug cartels mimicking drones for drug deliveries. I mean, if there are 30,000 of them, who would think anything?
Or worse, the bureaucrat that chooses to robo-stalk their civilian target, for offenses real or imagined.
Also, I believe it would then be necessary to cover my bedroom sky lights, and cover the upper windows of my bedroom, lest my amorous antics go viral.
I can already see the headlines and the taxpayer-funded settlement payouts.
But I repeat myself!
Right, but I’ll bet the main focus of these will be used by your county department of development or whatever it’s called to monitor environmental issues like they currently use the GIS system for. We have a city in my county that uses GIS technology to make sure you don’t cut down any blackberry bushes or other vegetation without first getting your Mother May I request approved or have paid the proper permitting fees.
I can see many of these being launched and shot out of the air by homeowners.
We should never have let them start treating us like terrorists.
My God. What kind of country are we becoming? We’ve got gang shootings every night, corrupt police who beat the crap out of folks, aliens taking over whole neighborhoods, who knows what coming accross the border unimpeded, crazy people killing their kids in horrible ways, foul language as normal speech, gay people and their law-makers deciding it’s their “right” to enter into HOLY matrimony, I could go on and on...but what does our government focus on????? Writing memos to each other about watching out for the American citizen who opposes their tyranny and incompetence, trying to call them potential”terrorists.” And now they want to fly spy craft around in AMERICA to spy on its citizens.... heck I’d be all for it if I knew it would be used to rat out possible jihadists but with who we got in charge now that won’t be the case.
I hate to say it people, but when me and my husband retire....I don’t think I can stay here anymore. The sweep and scale of our rights and privacy being taken away is mind boggling. Of course nobody is doing anything about it.
This is what we get for voting in a bunch of Republicans and Tea Partiers? Really? If America refuses to see what is being done...then I don’t know....I guess I will be enjoying some other place to live, because we do not have the freedoms we once enjoyed anymore.....my heart is broken.
Great Analogy.. Whats is going on in our country?
My thoughts exactly.
While we are on the subject, how about we put a drone over every single assho!e in congress. Let’s start with Reid and Pelosi.
In all seriousness, I am convinced that both of them and their clans are out killing babies and small animals in their spare time.
Patriot Act, NDAA and now drones. How much longer until they put cameras in our homes, cars and places of work.
Big brother is here, America. We are truly f*cked!
Yep. It looks like we’re becoming a country of two classes: 1) The “public employees” constantly seeking to increase their hold over the peons whose labor they confiscate for their own benefit. 2) The productive sucker class who work their asses off and are taxed and regulated to death for it, all in the name of “benefits and services” they would not chose to buy if given the option. In other words, we are slowly splitting into two nations occupying the same borders and, probably, it will eventually work out as well as it did in Africa and the Balkans. But I’m a pessimist on the subject because I think there is a toxic mix of the clueless and some truly malevolent people infesting our government these days, and leftists who lose their inhibitions have historically had a habit of killing mass numbers of innocents before they are finally defeated. I see signs of the same turning inward of the security apparatus that we experienced during the Clinton years, and I worry that bad things are coming, if not from our own government then from a foreign foe who will recognize and exploit the opportunity.
Because they are out of other ideas of how to generate a $2 trillion deficit after we abolish the military.
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