Look out for those 30,000 drones across America's skies

Don't think that those dreadful and dangerous drones are only going to occupy the skies above Pakistan or Yemen or in the case of the Israelis, over the West Bank and Gaza.   As this piece from The Rutherford Institute, the assessment now is that by 2020 there will be some 30,000 drones criss-crossing the skies of America.   And look out for the large number of legislators in Washington with a material interest in seeing those drones being put in place.

"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. Once used exclusively by the military to carry out aerial surveillance and attacks on enemy insurgents abroad, these remotely piloted, semi-autonomous robots have now been authorized by Congress and President Obama for widespread use in American airspace. The military empire is coming home to roost.

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. By 2020, just eight short years from now, it is estimated that at least 30,000 of these drones will be crisscrossing the nation’s skies, serving a wide range of functions, both public and private, governmental and corporate. The end result, however, will be the same: we will find ourselves operating under a new paradigm marked by round-the-clock surveillance and with little hope of real privacy, a paradigm foisted upon us and from which there will be no escape, short of living in a cave, far removed from the reach of modern technology. Caves, by the way, are rather scarce.

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 - 30 billion per year industry.

As with every egregious government policy, there are politicians who stand to make money off the implementation of drones in America. Fifty-three members of the House of Representatives are part of the drone caucus which works to expand the use of drones domestically. So far this election season, 15 members of the caucus have received a total of $68,500 from General Atomics PAC, the political action committee of the drone manufacturer General Atomics. There is also a lobbying group with 507 corporate members spread across 55 countries, the Association for Unmanned Vehicles International, which is responsible for the language in the FAA bill which mandates the accelerated implementation of drone technology. Thus, our so-called representatives and the corporations which support them will make a great deal of money off of the decimation of Americans’ privacy rights."