John W. Whitehead: The Empire Strikes Back: Attack of the Drones

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/attack-of-the-drones_b_1464244.html
What a great chance to make money! And they can make money with "anti-drones technology as well!

These are really scaring prospects for our future. The surveillance state becomes reality. They can monitor everything, and kill everybody they suspect he is an opponent, anywhere in the world. When I think of the Iranian scientists who died by explosions last year, I guess this is happening already. I prognosticate the Nazi regime in Germany last century was kindergarten compared to what lies ahead!


A summary of the article in the Huffington Post:


Drones -- unmanned aerial vehicles -- come in all shapes and sizes, from nano-sized drones as small as a grain of sand that can do everything from conducting surveillance to detonating explosive charges, to massive "hunter/killer" Predator warships that unleash firepower from on high.

While there are at least 63 active drone sites around the U.S., the Obama administration is calling for drone technology to be integrated into the national air space by 2015.

While the legislative vehicle for this rapid transition into a surveillance state came in the guise of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill, passed by Congress and signed into law by Obama in February 2012, it was steamrollered into place after intense corporate lobbying by drone makers and potential customers hoping to capitalize on the $12 to $30 billion per year industry.

Fifty-three members of the House of Representatives are part of the drone caucus, which works to expand the use of drones domestically.

While the threat these drones pose to privacy is unprecedented, they are being unleashed on the American populace before any real protocols to protect our privacy rights have been put in place and in such a way as to completely alter the landscape of our lives and our freedoms.

As technology advances and cost decreases -- drones are already orders of magnitude less expensive to purchase and operate than piloted aircraft -- the market for federal, state, and local government and commercial drones rapidly grows.

Indeed, in the name of efficiency and cost-effectiveness, law enforcement agencies will find a whole host of clever and innovative ways to use drones to invade our daily lives, not the least of which will be traffic enforcement and crowd control.

Vanguard Defense Industries has confirmed that its Shadowhawk drone, which is already being sold to law enforcement agencies throughout the country, will be outfitted with lethal weapons, including a grenade launcher or a shotgun, and weapons of compliance, such as tear gas and rubber buckshot.

However, while the lethal capabilities of these drones are troubling, especially when one factors in the possibility of them getting into the wrong hands or malfunctioning, the more pressing concern has to do with the drones' surveillance capabilities.

The point is that with 56 government agencies now authorized to use drones, including 22 law enforcement agencies and 24 universities, the drones are not going away.

"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." --James Madison

Please read the full article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/attack-of-the-drones_b_1464244.html

German Officials Are Teaching International Police How To Secretly Monitor Computers - Business Insider

http://www.businessinsider.com/german-officials-are-teaching-international-police-how-to-secretly-monitor-computers-2012-4


Several international law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, held meetings with German police between 2008-12 to discuss the deployment of a monitoring software to covertly infiltrate computers, according to German government reports and reported by Ryan Gallagher at Slate.

The revelations come in response to questions by Andrej Hunko, a member of German Parliament, after a Berlin-based hacker collective called "Chaos Computer Club" exposed in October that the German police were using potentially illegal software called "Bundestrojaner” (i.e. federal Trojan horse) to spy on suspects.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/german-officials-are-teaching-international-police-how-to-secretly-monitor-computers-2012-4#ixzz1rZoXZLaG

The Cyber-Industrial Complex | guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/dec/02/cyber-industrial-complex-spying?newsfeed=true
Thanks to Fabio