"It doesn't have that big brother feel". Now that we know it has a camera inside it does. Oppression doesn't suddenly become more tolerable because it's been prettied up! Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

[edit on 10-3-2010 by warpcrafter]

They have also been used with radar to watch the southern border for drug smugglers. I forgot where exactly they used it, but it was in a news story a few years ago. Somewhere along the Gulf coast.

[edit on 11/3/10 by spirit_horse]

Whenever I see things like this a question always rings through my head; why would a species act in such a way towards itself? Let's forget all the wars and genocides for just one second. Here we have humans putting forth a great deal of time and consciousness into actively invading the privacy of fellow humans. This is pure psychological warfare, keeping the mind stressed and uneasy and thus forcing the body into a fear-based flight mode. All I ask is for what purpose. What would compel atoms in a molecule to suppress one another?

Yet another example of micro management of the entire populace...except this time they can make money off of it by selling ad space.

I'm really amused by all the backdoor ways various governments are bringing pure military technology into play against thier own people.

I like the selling points mentioned: it doesn't have the big brother feel and it can be used to monitor large groups in case they turn into riotous mobs.

Might as well through in a cell reciever to and high powered scanner too, that way you could cross-reference the coming ID cards with the SIM from a person's cell phone.

What a great way to sidestep privacy issues without needing to worry about obtaining a warrent.

500 ft altitude?

I remember the US story last year about the RFID tags that the Canadian government is phasing into passports (and trying hard to get in to driver's lisences) and how border guards could scan them from 100M (300 ish feet). At the same time here in Canada, the government was telling us that the maximum effective range was 1M (3ish feet).

Previous to thier release, the spokesperson deflected the issue by actually laughing it off; questioning if people honestly thought the government was going to follow behind every citizen with a scanner.

Follow behind me? No, but with the increasing use of cameras everywhere I have to question how long it will be until the RFID scaners are incoporated into them.

Why waste the opportunity.

[edit on 11-3-2010 by {davinci}]

This is almost laughable. The points being brought up are great.

The Ratheon spokesman saying it doesn't "feel" like big brother. What the hell does it matter what it "feels" like, the fact is that this thing is big brother.

And someone brought up the point about ad space. Going a step further than that, the military could and probably will give big money to companies to allow them to install some equipment. The blimp for example, why couldn't that be fit onto Goodyear blimps that go across the country. Looks innocent enough. And the crew doesn't have to bother with it at all. There is a million applications for a simple camera system

Oh and this tidbit;

Raytheon argues that its technology is no different than what's already watching us on a daily basis: street cameras, cop cars, helicopters and foot patrols. "No new information is being picked up by the airships, necessarily," Silvestre says.
"Necessarily"