DragonSpies

William Haskins · Oct 9, 2007

Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.

"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."

Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.

"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "

That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Others think they are, well, dragonflies -- an ancient order of insects that even biologists concede look about as robotic as a living creature can look.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100801434.html

i guess the protesters' only hope now is to jam the flying robots' radar with the radio transmitters the government has secretly implanted in their teeth fillings.

brokenfingers · Oct 9, 2007

In all honesty, I heard of some companies with the potential to make such mechanisms before 9/11. So it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it's true.

Actually, I've been looking for news of them ever since and was kinda surprised they hadn't been mentioned before now.

JoNightshade · Oct 9, 2007

I would be so psyched out if this article turned out to be true.

Because then I'd be living in The Future.

It has arrived!!!

William Haskins · Oct 9, 2007

brokenfingers said:
In all honesty, I heard of some companies with the potential to make such mechanisms before 9/11. So it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it's true.

Actually, I've been looking for news of them ever since and was kinda surprised they hadn't been mentioned before now.

definitely. it's old news:

But the CIA secretly developed a simple dragonfly snooper as long ago as the 1970s. And given recent advances, even skeptics say there is always a chance that some agency has quietly managed to make something operational.

brokenfingers · Oct 9, 2007

I find the fact that they're being used at political events disturbing, though.

William Haskins · Oct 9, 2007

brokenfingers said:
I find the fact that they're being used at political events disturbing, though.

allegedly.

you get some good chronic going around at some anti-war shindig and everything gets weird.

brokenfingers · Oct 9, 2007

Oh yes. Musn't forget about the Chronic Effect.

Joe270 · Oct 9, 2007

Bring a flyswatter to the next rally, problem solved.

Bird of Prey · Oct 9, 2007

Monday, January 24, 2005

Honeywell Develops Flying Camera for Soldiers

By Andrew Webb
Journal Staff Writer
A tiny aircraft that could serve as extra eyes, ears and nose for ground troops in combat is a step closer to reality.
The Albuquerque office of Honeywell last month began flight-testing the 13-inch-wide, 14-pound Micro Air Vehicle, or MAV, at its tethered-flight area here. Those tests will continue through March, at which point Honeywell will deliver the first 10 of the rugged vehicles to the Army for initial experimentation. . . . http://www.abqjournal.com/AED/296458outlook01-24-05.htm

Welcome to the twenty-first century, folks. If you think law enforcement isn't capable of this? Come on.

So much for dragonflies.

William Haskins · Oct 9, 2007

it's a new golden age of technology, yes?

whistlelock · Oct 9, 2007

As cool as it would be to have little robots that can hover and fly and take pictures adn spy and stuff, I don't think we're there yet.

Mostly because 13 year-old girls drive the manufacture and design of all new electronics in the US, and there isn't a market for this yet.

As soon at 13 year old girls want dragonfly robots to spy on their friends adn bothers, we will have them.

but not before.

Bird of Prey · Oct 9, 2007

William Haskins said:
it's a new golden age of technology, yes?

It is as long as we are vigilant and demand an open government. We cannot have a government opposed to the freedom of its citizens, aka The Patriot Act. We cannot have a government acting in consort to organizations that have divested themselves of an average American's best interests.

How do we do that?

A revision of the constitution.

I regret it's simply not working as originally planned.

Joe270 · Oct 9, 2007

Please, please tell me that you don't really believe in tiny fairy surveillance drones are actually in use, spying on a leftist rally.

Because:

1.) In a public rally, they sorta chant and yell out what they think, so the need to spy is sorta silly.

2.) It's not like leftists to keep secrets, if you want to know what one thinks, just say 'BUSH', and they'll go on and on and on, like the energizer bunny.

3.) If you'd rather believe that the government is evil than the simple fact that those protesters are goofy paranoid nutcases, then reality is no longer an issue for you.

Bird of Prey · Oct 9, 2007

Joe270 said:
Please, please tell me that you don't really believe in tiny fairy surveillance drones are actually in use, spying on a leftist rally.

Because:

1.) In a public rally, they sorta chant and yell out what they think, so the need to spy is sorta silly.

2.) It's not like leftists to keep secrets, if you want to know what one thinks, just say 'BUSH', and they'll go on and on and on, like the energizer bunny.

3.) If you'd rather believe that the government is evil than the simple fact that those protesters are goofy paranoid nutcases, then reality is no longer an issue for you.

Joe, if it wasn't for the fact that you're so. . .uncontroversial. . . I would be glad to demonstrate that your government, should you be at all in opposition, would be glad to check and recheck on you, know where you are and what you think. As it is, you're currently and readily identifiable as: nonthreatening.

Joe270 · Oct 9, 2007

Perhaps the problem is that the turnout for these demonstrations is so dismal, the rhetoric so tired and boring, that the attendees will do anything, including inventing fairy spy cams, to make them seem more interesting.

The simple fact is very few people care one whit about what they're saying. We've heard it ad nauseum and are sick of it. I sure wouldn't want to listen to recordings of it.

Now that's torture. If the NSA has some poor sap sealed in a room listening to Cindy Sheehan all day long, someone needs to call Amnesty International.

MattW · Oct 9, 2007

Don't inject me, bro!

Bird of Prey · Oct 9, 2007

Joe270 said:
Perhaps the problem is that the turnout for these demonstrations is so dismal, the rhetoric so tired and boring, that the attendees will do anything, including inventing fairy spy cams, to make them seem more interesting.

Maybe.

But I think it's pretty obvious that the population is larger than the government feels it can control without all kinds of technological help.

It's not all that new. It's been going on - rather indiscreetly - even prior to King.

A simple way to bring an unwieldy and what could be an autonomous self- possessed government back to the will of the people is one person: one vote. It's a huge step psychologically in terms of federal elections, to force candidates to discount lobbyists and be more representative of the people.

Joe270 · Oct 9, 2007

The prisons are bursting at the seams with political prisoners here in the US.

Bird of Prey · Oct 9, 2007

Joe270 said:
The prisons are bursting at the seams with political prisoners here in the US.

Meaningless statement.

You don't have to throw people in jail to ignore the majority mandate and pursue you're own agenda.

totidem_verbis · Oct 9, 2007

Perhaps they were just field testing the little buggers and a protest was the perfect opportunity.

If so many people are noticing the bugs, are they really effective?

brokenfingers · Oct 9, 2007

I can see them being used in war and for law enforcement/crime prevention etc. Especially tricky tasks like big dollar drug deals, tracking fugitives/material back to the source, hostage situations etc.

But for political rallies?

oswann · Oct 10, 2007

brokenfingers said:
I can see them being used in war and for law enforcement/crime prevention etc. Especially tricky tasks like big dollar drug deals, tracking fugitives/material back to the source, hostage situations etc.

But for political rallies?

I see them being used as the starting point of the next Porky's film.

Os.

TheGaffer · Oct 10, 2007

"You can't make a conventional robot of metal and ball bearings and just shrink the design down," said Ronald Fearing, a roboticist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Ah, c'mon, Fearing. It's all ball bearings these days.

Bird of Prey · Oct 10, 2007

brokenfingers said:
I can see them being used in war and for law enforcement/crime prevention etc. Especially tricky tasks like big dollar drug deals, tracking fugitives/material back to the source, hostage situations etc.

But for political rallies?

Why not? It's a great place to test them.

If the people "catch on" then the design can be adjusted or their flight pattern can be varied. I had a relative that was an unsuspecting guinea pig for the CIA.

And remember the Patriot Act? I think people fail to remember that we have facial recognition installed at certain airports and even poeple trained to "observe" others, looking for patterns of undue strain consistent with terrorist behavior. God forbid they should simply be terrified of flying. What an ordeal.

I watch Neoconservatives nodding approvingly at all that has been done to curtail freedom in this country and institute dog eat dog paranoia and I'm aghast that it's their hoodwinked conservative allies that claim the moral high ground on freedom, - worried about the nanny state - when if fact, it's the conservatives that have ushered in an Orwellian nightmare.

RumpleTumbler · Oct 10, 2007

What if the Ruuskies get a hold of one?

What if they reverse engineer it and can see the big board?

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