I read this morning that by 2020 there are going to be 30,000 civilian drones. (That's the kind that don't kill people, the non-military ones.) And the FAA thinks that over the next ten years drones will be a $90 billion+ industry and--get ready for it--100,000 new jobs! Well, we can stop all questions about this right now. All those jobs! All that money! What can be wrong with something like this?
Well, I'm here to tell you that you can kiss any rights you thought you had to privacy goodbye. Snooping technology is beyond anything you can possibly imagine right now, not to mention 10 years hence. And I have no confidence whatever that we're going to be smart enough not to deploy these damn things everywhere, putting them in the hands of police and local/state governments in the name of safety, efficiency, protection, security or some other nice-sounding goal.
Our Constitution's 4th Amendment says that we're supposed to have the right not to be snooped on by government and not to have them poking around in our property and privacy without strict limits. But people don't care about this anymore. Money, money, money. Jobs, jobs, jobs! That's all that matters. In fact, I'm beginning to think that if it's abstract (save of course good ole "freedom") it doesn't matter. That of course would include "privacy."
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