Robert Ariail for March 08, 2013

United Paranoids of America?

Only under extraordinary circumstances, but still, it does, cause for further thoughtˍʼ˜˚ʼ˜

Rand Paul: If you attend a Tea Party meeting and criticize the president, they’re going to kill you in your bed with a drone strike.

am I the only one who thinks it’s not ok when either party does it?

Interesting, isn’t it? Any idea what would happen if Mr. Obama told us “You’re either with us, or you’re a terrorist”? I’m pretty sure the reaction would be different than what it was during the last administration.

Surveillance cameras in NYC in 1998: 769. In 2005: 4468. It’s happening everywhere. Add drones to the mix and there will be no privacy by 2050. Probably not even in your bedroom with infrared sensing technology.

But that’s exactly what they are!

I’m waiting for the explosion from the right on actually capturing, and bringing to New York for a trial, a foreigner, bin Laden’s son-in-law no less! Of course, brining a criminal to trial in our jurisdiction is obviously a “wrong move” again by Obama and the Justice Dept., right??

It doesn’t sound like many of you have heard of Alameda County, California and its Sheriff/Coroner, Gregory J. Ahern.…He wants to bring drones into use by his department so he can see what’s going on in the county he is supposed to keep the peace over.…He argues that he does not have enough people in the Sheriff’s Office to watch over all the territory that Alameda County covers, from Oakland and Berkeley to Hayward, Fremont and Castro Valley to over the hills in Pleasanton, Dublin (which has a dedicated Sheriff’s Office detachment serviing as that city’s outsourced Police Department) and Livermore.…Ahern (more like A-hole these days), wants these drones to watch over the county, from gang activity in Oakland and Hayward to drug activity in the hills around Livermore and Pleasanton, to even prostitution and human-trafficking in Dublin and Fremont.…The problem here, as in most counties in California, is that these folks are always short of money and will use whatever means to increase that revenue (such as being the outsourced PD for Dublin) and what is to stop them from using these drones to spy on tax scofflaws for the IRS or even the Franchise Tax Board if these agencies pay the ACSO to do that, or even catch speeders and expired/concealed tags on any highway these drones survey and then alert the nearest CHP officer because the CHP pays the ACSO to do this?…And given the “Dirty DUI” scandal in Contra Costa County—the next county over from Alameda County—what would stop some corrupt former cop out there “calling in favors” to his friends in the ACSO to do some work with these drones following this former cop’s investigation targets?…And given that scandal, what would stop somebody who either controls these drones, or has ties to the people that do, to use them to spy on their enemies, especially their political rivals or worse yet, a member of a drug cartel use their influence over the Peace Officer or Politician they have in their pocket to use these drones to spy on their targets and enemies, all under the aegis of the ACSO and their drones?…It’s bad enough that we have nepotists in our county government like the Lockyers and shoplifters like Hayashi, but somebody could use the surveillance gathered from these drones to spy on anybody’s activity and possibly use that to intimidate honest people from running for these offices to replace the corrupted ones, or even be used to extort things from the corrupted politicians currently in office.…Lord Acton wrote that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” and if Ahern gets his drones, he and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office will have absolute power over the rest of the people in Alameda County and that no matter how good Ahern’s intentions may be here in implementing these drones, somebody else out there may have other intentions, even more nefarious than Ahern’s, and may use these instruments for their own purposes.…Best off to “nip this one in the bud” and bar any domestic Law Enforcement agency out there charged with keeping the peace from using these instruments and tools in the first place, especially when it’s an agency that is pretty much only answerable to itself and nobody else—short of “whistleblowers” and litigation.

And he does a darned good job at it. Sometimes it’s so subtle it’s hard to tell. Hey, a lot of people originally thought that Stephen Colbert really believed the stuff he said….

i see the kool aide guzzlers out in force thinking that when holder originally said it was ok to drone attack anyone in the USA that it is silly for paul to attack him on it

It is hoped the US Gov’t will not use drones or any other form of lethal force against US citizens on US soil unless imminent harm is anticipated and verified….That said….A mindless drone operated by remote control is only under the control of the person who actively HAS control. With the cyber threats facing the US, there is a legitimate concern that the US gov’t is the ONLY entity capable of giving instructions to an unmanned drone.Respectfully,C.