An American Lion

Predator

I realize we sold our privacy rights down the river so that politicians could feel better about doing nothing to protect us, but I didn’t know we would reach this point. The point where the revelation that drones are flying over American citizens on a regular basis, trying to catch criminals and whatnot, would be met with indifference. I can predict the indifference. I can tell you, without hesitation, that the media won’t explain this and the American people won’t be told why this is not such a great idea and how it can lead to abuses of power. Is there anyone who will sit down and explain to you that the reason why we don’t let the cops listen to every phone call being made in the country is because, if they did, everyone in America would be in jail, including, of course, 99% of the cops?

When you apply technology to law enforcement, you cannot apply a level of technology greater than the need to stop only the most reprehensible of crimes. You have to have a threshold where technology cannot become overkill. Yes, the police would like to have helicopter gunships. Do they get helicopter gunships to help them solve problems with high speed chases and grannies with canes who run amok through miniature golf courses? No, they don’t. This is because, once you give Johnny Law a helicopter gunship and tell him to solve his problems with it, you end up with Johnny Law using a helicopter gunship to shut down illegal lemonade stands. Human beings naturally abuse their power; when you have limited government, you throw a monkey wrench into that whole sort of thing. And, for good reason. Helicopter gunships really aren’t good for anything, other than shooting and killing vast numbers of people. And, do we really want that in our back yards? Let’s hope that answer stays “no” until I finally pass away out of this crazy world.

Do you think it’s an accident that this sort of thing comes out just as American Idol kicks into high gear?

It’s a frigid, dark night in the mountainous border region of southeast Arizona. A group of 31 suspected illegal immigrants are walking up and down rocky ridges toward Tucson, Arizona. They’re wearing small backpacks and stop to rest every few minutes.

This isn’t a scene unfolding before the eyes of Border Patrol agents on the ground. It comes from a video image provided by a Predator B unmanned aircraft 19,000 feet overhead. In fact, the nearest Border Patrol agents are far away.

Jerry Kersey is the Customs and Border Protection agent in charge of this night’s Predator mission. He and his two-man crew relay the information to Border Patrol agents from a small trailer 40 miles from the scene.

Kersey directs the agents on the ground, who are wearing night-vision goggles.

“Stop! Stop! They’re to your right,” Kersey firmly dictates over a radio transmission. “They must see you. The group is running.”

Is this really where we want to go as a society and as a country? Are we really comfortable handing over such over-the-top technology to the border patrol?

You might very well agree with the idea of using drones in this manner; well, why not use them to catch speeders, then? Why not use them to catch jaywalkers and punks with spraypaint cans? Why not fly one over every home in America just to make sure everyone is doing what they’re supposed to do, and make it so that it can peek through walls so that we’re all comfortable with what’s going on inside?

Once you let them do what they will, getting that genie back in the bottle becomes a little more difficult. Once you give your consent to being tracked, searched, recorded, databased, datamined and retained for all eternity, you don’t get that back. You cannot say “stop!” and you cannot make the case that they’ve “gone too far” because, we, as a nation, crossed that threshold years ago.

Believe me when I tell you this—you don’t know how valuable your privacy is until you no longer have it.