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May 17, 2014- Opinion By Steven E. Greer, MD
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is truly an evil organization for many reasons. For example, they have a large feature section today touting drones as safe friendly ways to take family vacation photos.
Are you kidding me?
The article states, “Flying a drone isn’t just exhilarating; it also fundamentally changed how I think about photography. It is hard to get excited about vintage filters on Instagram after shooting a drone selfie (call it a “dronie”) or panning hillside Napa vineyards at sunrise...”
Then, buried within the much larger article, one cover-your-ass statement goes, “I, too, am concerned about cameras fluttering outside my bedroom window. But we shouldn’t dismiss a technology that has the potential to empower us—safely—to record footage once available only to big-budget Hollywood productions and news choppers. Drones have even been used to record protests in Ukraine, Turkey and other areas. In reality, these consumer drones tend to make terrible spy machines, because most have cameras with wide-angle lenses and their propellers sound like swarm of angry bees. Still, people will think you’re a jerk if you fly one too close.“.
What is going on now, as we speak, is a fledgling lobbyist effort of various industries who want to use drones to rake in billions of dollars. These are not just safe retail companies, such as Amazon or Facebook, who will merely collect personal information on you. These are the scary folks who have the power of FBI agents, with guns, but yet are private contractors beyond regulation (Recall, from the NSA scandal we learned that more than 400,000 private contractors have Level 1 security clearances).
The WSJ is helping these conservative military conglomerates with propaganda stories, such as the drone feature article today. In the bigger picture, this is the same cast of characters who created the NSA in the first place, and who defend the NSA to this day (e.g. The WSJ, Rep. Peter King, Karl Rove, James Clapper, etc).
I call these efforts of the WSJ “evil” because they are not simply pushing an ideology that they truly believe in, with which I disagree. This is all about big bucks run amuck, pure and simple. This is all about a military industrial complex that has grown too large, compromising our freedoms.
The FAA is rightly trying to stop the spread of drones. Meanwhile, the scary military conglomerates, currently the same private contractors for the CIA and NSA, are salivating over the potential of supplying drones to every local police force in the nation, to the federal government as “security contractors”, etc.
Right now, even the most invasive of Internet companies, such as Google and Facebook, cannot penetrate your home if you do not stupidly allow them. However, small drones can easily peep into your windows and film your every move.
Who’s going to stop them? There are few laws against them.
It is easy to imagine the rationale that the new drone companies will use testifying before a hypothetical congressional hearing. They will say something like, “People can easily close the drapes. If a family chooses to open their home to the world, then we have a right to film them. We are making the country safe from terrorists.”. It will all be justified by the Boogie Man.
It will take decades before the Supreme Court tackles this issue as a Fourth Amendment violation. But once the cops and NSA get this powerful tool, there is no putting the Genie back into the bottle.
Thanks WSJ for making this all possible.
(Dr. Greer is a contracted freelance writer for the WSJ)
Paul Gigot’s Op-Ed section disgraces the Wall Street Journal yet again