ALIEN V PREDATOR

I may have the reputation of cleaving to the paranoid, but I could detect a pattern if I tried real hard. A lot of those in power and a lot of corporations would be delighted if every outbreak of real or manufactured hysteria could be met with more robots, more cameras, more drones in the sky, and more surveillance software. It’s Skynet meets Big Brother.

“After years of political pressure from Texas politicians, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar said Monday that he expects the federal government to deliver unmanned aircraft to watch over the border with Mexico by this fall. Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, said he has had discussions with top officials from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's office of air and marine operations, and they agreed to the timetable, subject to Federal Aviation Administration approval to allow the surveillance planes — often referred to in the political vernacular as "Predator drones" — to fly over Texas. Laura Brown, an FAA spokeswoman, said the administration is "working as quickly as we can on this." Cuellar said the FAA told him that regulators' main concern has been with Texas' heavy airplane traffic — both private and commercial. If approved, the unmanned aircraft in Texas would add to the federal government's existing border effort, which includes a handful of other unmanned aircraft, 20,000 Border Patrol agents, about 650 miles of border fence and 41 mobile surveillance systems, according to Customs and Border Protection. The plane, which is made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and officially called a Predator B, is able to spot illegal border activity and send images in real time to border officials. At that point, Border Patrol agents could be dispatched, according to Customs and Border Protection.” (Click here for more)

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The secret word is Spy