An "eye" of Big Brother in the sky excites American police forces, who find an ally in the fight against crime, and provokes strong reactions from citizens and organizations who denounce another step towards the abolition of democracy and the control of private life.
Using technology developed for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, an American company has created a manned drone with 12 cameras, which has the ability to fly over neighborhoods, seeing and recording everything that happens in a radius of almost 65 square kilometers. "It is the answer to fighting crime, we will have data on every violent act, on every murder that happens on our streets," Ross McNutt, president of the company PSS, which presented the model, tells the BBC.
According to the company's announcement, the images recorded are low-resolution - no details are visible - and are only enlarged in case of need - for security reasons. "With a single pixel, even at low resolution, we can monitor the movements of an offender for at least six hours," says McNutt. And he emphasizes that during tests, which took place over a period of 9 days over the city of Compton in California in 2012, the "eye" witnessed 34 murders. It is noted, however, that the tests were carried out without informing the citizens of Compton.
But the PSS “eye” doesn’t just see murders and criminals – its cameras look into the streets, yards and homes where citizens go about their daily lives. “We are facing a new high-tech threat to democracy. The “eye” doesn’t just violate people’s privacy, it records the activities of entire communities,” says Jennifer Lynch, a lawyer specializing in human rights in the age of new technologies.
IOANNA NIAOTI
Source: enet.gr
