Whinery: The Death of Privacy- Part 2- Surveillance Systems

OK Everyone, get out your tin foil hats and prepare to be briefed on the latest surveillance systems.

Straight from the battlefields and to an airbase near you come unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones.  Drones soon to be deployed from 45 airbases across the United States, according to the FAA. The closest to the Kansas City Metropolitan area will be located in Manhattan, KS. They won’t be armed like those over Afghanistan- not for now anyway – but they are quite sophisticated.

And according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) the drones can collect huge amounts of data. Some are equipped with gigapixel cameras that can track people and vehicles from over 20,000 feet and can zoom in on what they’re doing with great detail. Some need no runway for take off or landing, can fly more than 12 hours without refueling, and have the capability of monitoring up to 65 targets simultaneously.

Others may be equipped with live-feed video cameras, infrared cameras, heat sensors and radar which will be able to track people inside buildings or homes. And all this data can be run through a variety of databases. For instance if you’re at a political rally hostile to the State –  the info can be added to your file.

And if that’s not scary enough, are you ready for “Smart Appliances?”

My inner “paranoia” stops me from owning anything smarter than a smart phone-which is a big enough invasion of privacy. But there are a lot of you who may think its “neat” to buy appliances that can be hooked up to the Internet and be remotely operated.

And that provide real time data on your whereabouts and day-to-day activities. Samsung is even bringing us “Orwell’s TV” with a camera mounted on it pointed at you, the viewer! It’s supposed to be operated by you to converse with people over SKYPE. Supposedly it can’t be remotely turned on or anything- so move along, nothing to see here.

This is just the tip of the iceberg where surveillance technologies are concerned, and it’s only gonna get worse. There’s legislation already passed by the Senate that mandates a “black box”, like those in airplanes, to be put in automobiles manufactured after 2015. And it will record everything you do behind the wheel.

Where does it end?

Once again we must hope that the Courts save us from these invasions of privacy. And if the Courts don’t – we can always pray that the Sun sends a Coronal Mass Ejection that fries out the power grids and disables all the spy satellites…