A courageous news team in Houston reported on the Houston Police Department’s testing of an unmanned drone with a high-def, long-range camera that can see inside people’s homes. Check out the video report here.
Mostly I regard the Fourth Estate with skepticism. News media have long since sold out to the government to garner exclusives and to curry favor, to Big Business because Big Business owns the media outlets, and to the lowest common denominator of populist taste because they need to sell copies or gain ratings to stay in business. Objectivity is a myth. Wikileaks is doing what the media should do, but media outlets long ago lost the balls to execute their own mandate: inform the public. Of everything.
However, in this case, local K2 news in Houston did what the media should do: it kept an eye on the police. The Houston Police Department tried to keep media out, and lied to the pilot of the news copter about FAA restrictions. When the Houston Police Department realized that they’d been seen despite their attempts at security, they scrambled to give a press report.
Yes, unmanned drones can have helpful, protective, practical applications, like putting out brush fires and following bank robbers. But make no mistake: this drone will certainly be used by Big Brother, by which I mean the police, FBI, Homeland Security, etc. to deprive civilians of their privacy. To collect information “just in case.”
We all know that information can be massaged to prove any point whatsoever.
It is unfortunate but true that 9/11 has been used to destroy civil liberties. “American freedom” is a myth, a nostalgic idea from a past that has vanished. Totalitarianism approaches. Much of it is financially oriented. We live in a time when Big Business has won, and continues to win, so many legislative victories depriving individuals of choice and forcing individuals to pay outrageous prices that Big Business has become an arm of the government, controlling us. I’ve said it before and will say it again: There is a pattern at work in the world. The pattern is the slow but steady erosion of civil liberties and individual rights. These are handed over to Big Business so that the few can make money at the expense of the many. BEWARE.
Then there are the security forces, who inexorably increase their power so as to enslave the public, eradicate free speech, eliminate the free dissemination of ideas, and deprive us of our privacy.
Beware.