Something Feral

Digging up the flower-beds.


Saturday, January 23, 2010

Orwell v. Huxley


Just when I doubt the level of absurdity involved with what passes for law and justice in Britain, something fresh from the bowels of Dystopia is presented for our entertainment:
Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the ­"routine" monitoring of antisocial motorists, ­protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.

The arms manufacturer BAE Systems, which produces a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent police.
Funded by the taxpayers, for the taxpayers, as a necessary step in the War Against Whatever, for their own safety. It's not as bad as the obedience collars suggested by our very own DHS, but I'm sure they're getting to that. Presumably, it will activate when the serf subject runs with scissors, or is eating paste during publicly-televised lectures.

Initially, the picture above was meant to be funny, but then I found this, and the humor dried up.

2 comments:

Mike said...

Some US states already use aircraft to enforce traffic laws. We've been pushing ahead of the Brits until recently on some of this stuff.

Something Feral said...

Good point. Military technology does seem to be tested in "live laboratories" overseas and implemented domestically at an ever-increasing rate with seemingly zero effect on the behavior that it was implemented to prevent, if you take the authorities at their word.

Every time I hear "War on ______ ", I feel the noose tighten.