Talk about unlikely partners. The ACLU and the Tea Party unite against drones!
Excerpt from US News story:
The ACLU-Tea Party bill, which will be introduced by Virginia delegate Todd Gilbert in early 2013, when Virginia's legislative session resumes, looks to put strict limits on when and how drones can be used.
....
Although the coalition has yet to draft the bill, an ACLU press release says the legislation will prohibit law enforcement from using drones without a specific warrant, prohibit the retention of data, video, and photos that are not related to an ongoing police investigation, and require law enforcement to alert the public that drones are flying in their area.
"What the legislation is intended to do is to place strict scrutiny on ability of government to use [drones] to monitor our citizens," Gilbert says. "We want to make sure we live in the kind of world envisioned by our founding fathers, not one envisioned by George Orwell."
Comments
I'm closing comments on this post. I hadn't intended it to get into a political debate.
I'm not sure if political discussion is only against the rules in the forum or also in blog comments. And of course there's the fact that debating with you ends in my comments censored and myself banned.
There's lot's of people caged up for crimes they didn't commit, so called victim-less "crimes", or failure to pay fines. In fact, the "land of the free" has a higher percentage of its citizens locked in cages than any other country in the world.
I'm glad there's nothing in our hundreds of thousands of pages of laws that prevents you from doing what you want. However, your support of more legislation will surly lead that to become untrue at some point.
> what have you got to hide?
What do YOU have to hide? Please post all your personal info, private details of your life, photos of your personal activities, etc.. You've got nothing to hide right, so why not?
I forgot to mention though... if I don't approve of any of your activities or they violate my arbitrary rules I will send armed men to your door to kidnap you and throw you in a cage like an animal. If you resist you will be beaten and/or murdered. Of course, if you cooperate and pay my extortion fee I will let you out until I decide how much cage time you actually deserve for the activities I don't approve of.
See, nothing to worry about right?
Oh the omnipresent evil eye in the sky... knee jerk media driven drivel exploited by politicians playing on the fears of their constituents.
Honestly people in the US have more to fear from their phone companies abusing all the data they have collected on mobile phone usage than the prospect that the police will abuse their privacy by flying UAVs.
When ever this issue is raise my automatic response is if you are so adverse to UAV use by the police what have you got to hide?
This is the most reasonable legislation I've heard proposed in many years. Cops with drones are the last thing in the world this country needs.