Aussie Police Consider Using Automated Spy Drones 113
beaverdownunder writes "Police in the Australian state of Victoria have confirmed that they are investigating employing unmanned drones in the war against crime, following the lead of law enforcement agencies in the United States, set to begin using drones as of tomorrow. This revelation has alarmed Australian civil libertarians, who fear that in a country with no constitutionally-protected civil rights, people could be surveilled for political reasons."
what they really meant (Score:5, Insightful)
Australian civil libertarians know that in a country with no constitutionally-protected civil rights, people will be surveilled for political reasons.
Fixed that for you.
civil rights don't matt (Score:4, Insightful)
in a country with no constitutionally-protected civil rights
Well, we have them here in the USA, but they make near to no difference whatsoever. We've built a government so big, with so much momentum and attracting so many power-hungry ppls, that it ignores civil rights when they are "inconvenient". Or it passes so many laws in so many ill-defined ways that everyone is guilty of violating them. Then if they don't like something or some group, it's just down to finding *which* laws they are breaking - because everyone is breaking some.
Civil rights only count to the extent that the citizenry defends them, and here, people generally do not. Whether they are written in a several hundred year old document, that doesn't matter. Ppl similarly do not defend against intrusive practices of big corporations. It's the same root cause: keep the people happy with bread and ci... err, Hollywood movies and Facebook, and they won't care about their rights.
War (Score:4, Insightful)
No editing of posts? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the fuck can't I edit my own posts?
The motivations might be:
(1) To accurately preserve "history". To prevent you from hiding a statement you later regret.
(2) To encourage people to get their post right the first time since their errors will be preserved.
(3) It can destroy the context of followup posts. The followup may be referring to something deleted or corrected. This would encourage more data usage as followups are incentivized to includes quotes in case of future edits.
Different than police helicopters with observers? (Score:5, Insightful)
I get the creepiness angle, you are far more likely to be "seen" when an expensive helicopter/crew is replaced with some number of drones. I just don't get the *new* legal issue. The police have been using that birds eye view for quite some time.
Global movement to totalitarianism (Score:5, Insightful)
Why won't you people wake up and realize that there is a GLOBAL movement towards totalitarianism?
Why do you keep turning the other way?
Australia, Britain, USA and many other countries are following the exact Standard Operating Procedure for taking a Free society and transforming it into a Totalitarian state.
Stop looking the other way. Start caring.