NIBBLING AWAY AT OUR CONSTITUTION!

There is a little-known move afoot to use excess military drones in the surveillance of our civilian population. Not just to observe criminals, or areas with inordinately high crime rates, but to watch everybody, everywhere! Yes, the government will be overhead... watching your pool parties and cookouts, and they are capable of peering into your bedroom.

It has some people concerned about privacy. They don’t like the idea of local and federal governments and police departments using drones to watch us.

As of last week, the Federal Aviation Administration has approved 348 unmanned aircraft for domestic use. Most of the applications were from the Defense Department. 7% were from law enforcement agencies, and 24% were from universities, which are researching their use in disaster response, agriculture and other areas.

The use of surveillance drones on Americans would be a violation of the 4^th Amendment, because it would be subjecting us to searches without their ascertaining probable cause and obtaining a search warrant. But thanks to the war on terror and the destruction of the 1^st Amendment, the government can easily bypass the 4^th Amendment. And it’s this kind of thing that is the reason we have the 2^nd Amendment.

The government is eating the (Constitutional) elephant - one bite at a time, as they must. Legislators of several states have introduced bills at the state level to severely restrict the use of drones to monitor the general population. I would suggest that all who read this contact your state and national representatives and demand that they take action to protect the citizenry from this expanded governmental intrusion into our daily lives.