drones, chips, secret spies & street-sweeper cameras

feds to fly more drones along US borders
from ap: Four Predator B drones have become fixtures over Arizona since October 2006, and two more will join them soon, Juan Munoz-Torres, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman, said Wednesday. Once those six are in place, the agency wants Congress to fund six drones along the Canadian border and six more on Florida's Gulf Coast and the Caribbean, said Douglas Koupash, who heads Customs and Border Protection's drone program.

digital angel & the nat'l animal identification system
from gps daily: Digital Angel has discussed the goals of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and the Company's position in an effort to educate investors and consumers... Animal identification provides producers with a uniform numbering system for their animals and links livestock/poultry to their premises of origin. Animal tracing, the final component of NAIS, allows producers to choose a private or state animal tracking database and report certain animal movements that may pose a significant risk of disease transmission.

'the complex': the real-life matrix
from mother jones: At the beginning of Nick Turse's The Complex, we meet "Rick," an educated, antiwar, Daily Show-watching resident of the New York City suburbs. Rick wakes up to a Sony alarm clock, brushes his teeth with Crest toothpaste, and showers with Herbal Essences shampoo before catching a segment about Iraq on NBC's Today Show. If you asked him, Rick would tell you that his life has no connection to the military. But so far, everything Rick has touched has been produced by a company that does business with the Pentagon. The rest of his day will be no different.

fusion centers to data-mine suspect civilians
from kurt nimmo: Call it Stasi, the American version, circa 2008. “The government is rounding up your cell phone numbers, insurance claims, credit reports, financial records, and the names of your associates and relatives and sharing them with law enforcement officials nationwide,” reports John Byrne for Raw Story... In East Germany before our rulers decided the Berlin Wall must fall, the Stasi did much the same, although they didn’t have the sophisticated technology available to the mysterious “fusion centers” in the United States. But the idea was exactly the same - to ferret out dissidents and compile dossiers on every aspect of their lives. related: civilians handle minor duties for strapped police

street-sweeper cameras eye illegal parking
from washington times: D.C. officials have put cameras on light poles, police cars and government buildings. Now they're preparing to put them on street sweepers in the latest example of increasing surveillance of city residents. The D.C. Council yesterday unanimously passed legislation introduced at the request of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty that will let officials equip the District's tractor-sized street-sweeping machines with cameras that can scan license plates and photograph vehicles illegally parked in a street-sweeping zone.