My friend Barry Summers has been watching the development and marketing of the military-grade drone for use as a “persistent eye in the sky” over U.S. cities for years now. In September, he wrote with Medea Benjamin:
Along with civil liberties, a major concern must be safety. The military and the drone manufacturers, principally General Atomics, are arguing that the technology has advanced far enough that flying 79-ft. wingspan, six-ton drones over populated areas and alongside commercial air traffic is safe. We have one response: self-driving cars.
Speaking of cars, we have this on Monday from Voice of San Diego:
San Diego was supposed to be the site this year of a major drone project intended to show off the civilian capabilities of military-grade technology for monitoring things like wildfires and infrastructure. The players involved in the test flight obscured its other purpose: catching drivers who speed.
Records obtained by Voice of San Diego show that the city’s Office of Homeland Security had been supportive of General Atomics, a local defense contractor, in its attempt to open the skies above San Diego to new forms of surveillance. They wound up talking last year about how police might benefit from putting a massive vehicle with a camera above the metro.
San Diego had been “kicking around” the idea of using drones for speed enforcement, but asked General Atomics to leave that detail out of public statements.
When asked last year about the city’s connection to the SkyGuardian, Capt. Jeff Jordon, who manages special projects for the police chief, told the Union-Tribune he hadn’t heard of the drone but assumed the public wouldn’t react well to it. “People are concerned about the smart streetlights, so I can only imagine how they would feel about these,” he said.
I can too. But I have said for years no one will pay attention until one crashes into a school bus.
No worries, kids, drones almost never crash due to loss of contact with controllers.
(h/t Barry)