Are You Being Watched?

Raytheon did not create this, TCOM, LP, did, and it has many more applications than just security. One idea is to use the aerostat (the proper term) as portable cell-phone towers in the event of a hurricane the size of Katrina or Hugo or Isabel.

All of this goes against the US constitution but I don't think that is important to the younger generation. Of course, how could it be; I don't believe it was ever taught in the schools and the same goes for teaching patriotism for our country in the schools.

A recent Sonya Sotomayor case concerning a military coup indicates that not only are we being watched, we can't do much about it.

http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/06/sotomayer-case-on-military-coups.html

1984 comes a little late, but it arrives, nonetheless. I'm not sure that there is anything really wrong or invasive about monitoring public behavior. The anonymity of modern urban life has facilitated many crimes, and is the reason that more crimes go unwitnessed or reported in cities than in small towns. So this technology might make committing crimes harder to get away with- to return the "everybody knows you", small-town feel to urban life. It is not the collection of surveillance of public areas that I mind- it is the use to which it is put. If it is used as a tool for political suppression, for instance, to track the movements of a political enemy, it will lead to despotism. But the same can be said about any intelligence gathering. Hopefully this kind of tech will be used for the public good. We'll see, won't we? In the meantime, we ask for civilian oversight, and we don't get too paranoid about it. Sometimes a blimp is just a blimp.

I'd be more worried about it being owned by the government, but regardless, this is not much different from Google Street View Cars. If you hate this blimp, yell at Google as well, and pretty much any security company in the world.

Anyways, this is what you get from capitalism, and not communist style Big Brother stuff, a security company made a blimp that did its job and advertises to get money. You got exactly what you asked for in the land of the free and capitalism with this.

My favorite quote from the article: "The airship is great because it doesn't have that Big Brother feel, or create feelings of invasiveness," says Lee Silvestre, vice president of mission innovation in Raytheon's Integrated Defense division.
That's like being sodomized with a shoe and the perp chimes in "Not so bad, right? I mean you have to admit it doesn't have that classic rape feel..."
Way to be, Lee Silvestre. .

Awesome. Never mind the splitter rooms and filters installed by the NSA at our telecommunication hubs, the prison camps, Room 101 style torture programs, imperial wars under false pretense, loss of habeus corpus, and trillion dollar black hole budgets for the military each year. Next up: surveillance blimps over population centers. How can anyone argue such policies are representative of a free and vibrant society? Baseball, fireworks and apple pie are long gone. Winston's Rat Helmet is a poor substitute.

Why is this news? We have had the USAF Aerostats flying for years (since 1980, in fact)... here at Ft. Huachuca, AZ, Demming, NM, Marfa, TX.... Key West, FL....

pretty old and weak technology actually.

This is great, for all the people have no self control it may not be a good thing; one of these can do the work of several officers. The best part is the losers will still dink up, think of all the stupidest criminal footage they will be able to show!

So what about the "Goodyear" blimp? And those little RC blimp toys? And the Hindenburg? Are all those Raytheon's, too?

Yep pretty soon Big Brother will have camera up our ***. This is really, really getting bad. This needs to be stopped and the Government needs to get out of the business of watching us. Under the guise of the so-called Terrorist threat they are becoming the Terrorists. We are becoming a Prisoner Nation....

Well guess what? In the time shortly following 9/11 they where runnig blimps up the Hudson Valley in the pre dawn hours because I watched them go by my house.

I hate to tell you but after 9/11 they where running blimps up the Hudson Valley in the wee hours of the morning for quite awhile because i spent many nights wacthing them pass my house and a few times followed them

The more concerned power is about the goings on of its citizens the more concerned the citizens need to be about the goings on of those in power.

shoot away because a rife an,t going to kill it

That is an interesting principle. I suppose police have been walking around the streets, and driving their patrol cars, with their eyes shut. It could get a little hazardous for the highway patrol however. Maybe it is time to open them.