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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWelcome Home From the Wars, Drones!
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/13I mean, come on. You knew it had to happen, didnt you? In a 2010 Department of Homeland Security report, wrested from the bowels of the secrecy/surveillance state (thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation), the Customs and Border Protection agency suggests arming their small fleet of surveillance drones. The purpose: to immobilize TOIs, or targets of interest, along the U.S.-Mexican border. Those arms would, of course, be non-lethal in nature. Its all so civilized. Kinda like the Star Trek folks putting their phasers on stun, not kill. And count on it, sooner or later it will happen. And then, of course, the lethal weapons will follow. Otherwise, how in the world could we track and eliminate terrorists in the homeland efficiently?
All of this comes under the heading of self-fulfilling prophecy. You create and take to your battle zones a wonder weapon that, according to the promotional materials, will make the targeting of human beings so surgically precise it might even end the war on terror as we know it. (Forget the fact that, in the field, drones turn out, according to the latest military study of Afghanistan, to be far less precise than manned aircraft if youre measuring by how many civilians are knocked off, how much collateral damage is done.) Anyway, you use that weapon ever more profligately on distant battlefields in distant wars. You come to rely on it, even if it doesnt exactly work as advertised. And then, like the soldiers you sent into the same war zones (who didnt exactly work as advertised either), the weaponry begins to come home.
Drones? You can rant about them, write about them, organize against them, try to stop them from flying over your hometown. And still, like the implacable Terminators of film fame, they will arrive in the homeland. Will? Have. As FBI Director Robert Mueller testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee recently, the Bureau is already using them. In a coda meant to relieve us all of drone anxiety, however, he pointed out that it's employing them "in a very, very minimal way and very seldom... we have very few." And, oh yes, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives are testing drones for similar use. Also undoubtedly very minimally and very few, so dont fret (for now). As for police departments wielding armed drones, count on that, too, sooner or later.
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Welcome Home From the Wars, Drones! (Original Post)
xchrom
Jul 2013
OP
RC
(25,592 posts)1. Gotta comb that hooverd up database for likely targets for enemies of the Homeland.
Can't be letting those drones go to waste now, can we?
Junkdrawer
(27,993 posts)3. That Edgar suit just gets more and more rotten....
This is coming soon:
ileus
(15,396 posts)4. Just clicking the link to that article will win you a flyby.
Hell just opening this page may put us on the NSA's radar.