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Canberra Police Want Drones To Track Cars

Posted by timothy on from the robotic-drones-in-addition-to-the-regular-ones dept.

garymortimer tips this story at the Canberra Times, which starts: "Police have suggested that Canberra's new point-to-point speed cameras be linked to unmanned aerial surveillance drones and used to track vehicles of interest to authorities. The first of the cameras, which use automated number plate recognition technology to calculate a car's average speed and whether it is within the legal limit, are due to be switched on by the end of the year." I wonder how much surveillance by drone is already being done in the U.S., especially considering that even an (admittedly high-end) home-built drone is capable of hijinks that seem to parallel the cell-phone tracking activities the FBI has been shown to employ.

2 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. I Am Amazed by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I am truly amazed at just how much Big Brother that the (formerly, and once fiercely) independent Australians are willing to put up with. Virtually no private ownership of guns any more. Non-opt out Internet filtering. Now P2P traffic monitoring. How long before they regulate out of existence the Aussie equivalent of the pit bull - the legendary Australian Cattle Dog?

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    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
    1. Re:I Am Amazed by BJ_Covert_Action · · Score: 1, Insightful

      But how different is that from their Northern Hemisphere cousins the Americans?

      We States dwellers fought a damned revolution in the name of minimal, just government, liberty, and independence. Almost 250 years later we are habitually putting more power in the hands of the Federal government, mandating or outlawing just about everything (at least if you live in California), turning the other cheek when the NSA wiretaps our phone companies, and naming legislation that suspends Habeus Corpus the God damned PATRIOT Act, of all things.

      It seems that, for some reason, once societies get to a certain level of comfort, they inevitably start fucking up their citizens' lives for no good reason other than sheer boredom and, possibly, social paranoia of invisible boogeymen.

      Americans used to wrestle bears and Australians used to wrestle crocodiles but these days we'll sell out our rights as soon as we hear the words "terrorist!," or, "pedophile!"

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