A Drone by Any Other Name...

Gizmodo reports on the drones that aren’t:

The Illinois State Police was recently lucky enough to receive Federal Aviation Administration to use drones. But the police department clearly senses societal tensions over their use, because it’s trying very hard not to use the D word.

Indeed, Ars Techinca points out that the police department old the Sun-Times Media Wire that the word drone “carries the perception of pre-programmed or automatic flight patterns and random, indiscriminate collection of images and information.” Instead, the police will speak of its “unmanned aircraft system.”

I don’t care what they call it, but I would like to know more — much more — about this “indiscriminate collection of images and information.” Sounds to me like the state-level version of the NSA’s data mining, which one court just ruled isn’t authorized by the PATRIOT ACT or by anything else.