Ground drones in Florida, Negron tells lawmakers

"It's fine to kill terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan with drones. But I don't think we should use them to monitor the activities of law-abiding Floridians."

-- Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, explaining his proposal to limit the use of unmanned drones by Florida law enforcement agencies.

Read Michael Van Sickler's full story here.

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Comments

[Max Salfinger]

Negron is so retarded!

[Samuel R. Kephart]

Cleverly invented to counter growing terrorism, drones usage offers no controls nor checks and balances to prevent them from being used for politically nefarious purposes.

Imagine what Richard Nixon would have done if he’d had such peremptory or discretionary presidential authority? Any of his antagonists, like Daniel Ellsberg, would have monitored by domestic drones... and then Ellsberg would have been picked up and held for providing “material support” to the enemy in a time of war.

There are currently no discernible safeguards to prevent a paranoid and power hungry President (think Johnson, Nixon, or Obama), or his/her national security team, from using drone technology as a threat and/or punishment to political enemies, particularly given the exigencies of war or a domestic emergency like 9/11.

For national security purposes, Americans are already subject to warrantless wiretaps of calls and emails, the warrantless GPS “tagging” of their vehicles, the domestic use of Predators or other spy-in-the-sky drones, and the Department of Homeland Security’s monitoring of all our behavior through “data fusion centers.”

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/

Given this toxic mash-up of losses of privacy, if the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then domestic drones are a superhighway to an Orwellian panoptic gulag.

America’s promise has always been the power of the many to rule, instead of the one. Ungoverned drone usage, particularly domestically, gives power to the one.

Domestic drone usage is ill-conceived, elitist, and end-runs our inherent Constitutional protections.

Here are two (2) different videos that anchor my points:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssoOASanKao

http://vimeo.com/59689349

[Redundant]

Libertarian? Negron? More laws and regulations do not a Libertarian make. He probably backed the bills banning Sharia Law and droopy pants, too.