George Rebane
Unmanned surveillance aircraft come in a range of sizes that fit in the palm of your hand to big ones the size of airliners. The 21apr12 WSJ reports that the smaller ones are being snapped up by stateside governmental agencies ranging from federal bureaus to local police. Their manifold uses should be obvious to the intelligent reader. Having been introduced and ‘perfected’ in overseas military operations, this war surplus technology is now finding many cost-saving, capability expanding jobs for those who seek to monitor and control our every move – ‘Look Mommy, there’s a little helicopter outside my window!’ The lightly read will, of course, rejoice that it is all for our collective benefit.
On the ground Big Brother is being aided by one of his Big Sisters – Sen Barbara Boxer, D-CA. This unabashed socialist has introduced SB1831, aka MAP-21, to require that digital recorders (‘black boxes’) be installed “in all new passenger motor vehicles” starting in 2015. The recorded data is supposed to belong to the vehicle’s owner, except that there are so many exceptions in which it must be surrendered to the authorities. In short, it’s the state sticking another monitoring probe between our cheeks (see Sec 31406).
In any case, you won’t be surprised that Majority Leader Sen Harry Reed (D-NV) is right in there supporting our Barbara on this legislative hernia pack. And they have a lot of plans for these little technology innovations that entail the lawful and fully taxed future use of what used to be your car. California will lead again.
This bill also has a proviso that lets the feds yank your passport if you owe more than $50K in back taxes. With all the data access and control interfacing these black boxes will have, how long do you think it will be until your car won’t start if you fall short on some other fees, assessments, and/or taxes? The gummint will then be able to nail your car to the curb, and your transportation alternatives will be that ever reliable public transportation and hitchhiking.
If all this doesn’t make your day, let me add one more. Our President has just signed another executive order that will hold not only “oppressive governments” to account, but also supplying corporations, for using technology to do bad things in their countries. I think the US is excepted from this, just like not everybody has to sign up for Obamacare.
The 22apr12 WSJ reports that Obama’s EO “was a follow-up to a presidential directive issued in August establishing the board, which aims to develop prevention strategies, ensure that concerns are elevated to senior officials and create a mechanism for the administration to better work with allies to respond to early warning signs from around the world and prevent potential atrocities. … The August directive stated: ‘Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America.’ ”
Sounds like our Bush-bashing president wants to be able to whump a potentially bad country before it really becomes bad. And you did catch that last little trifle about all this being “a core moral responsibility of the United States of America.”? This kinda gives Bush2 – hell, even Bush1 – a blanket free pass on whacking Saddam and extreme sanctioning (aka invading) Iraq. Who cared about WMDs? We were just exercising another one of our core moral responsibilities.
And again there you have it dear reader – your government in peace and war, and you can’t make this stuff up.
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