The Everywhere Store: Civil libertarians welcome Amazon’s drone army

[unhappycamper]

http://pando.com/2013/12/07/the-everywhere-store-civil-libertarians-welcome-amazons-drone-army/



The Everywhere Store: Civil libertarians welcome Amazon’s drone army
By Yasha Levine
On December 7, 2013

Some raised alarm over safety issues and compiled photo slideshows of gnarly hobby drone accidents, with flesh and fingers and noses sliced and mangled by drone props. Others worried about the threat to privacy posed by swarms of flying Amazon delivery drones. And plenty of commentators called into question the viability of the drone technology altogether, with most agreeing that Amazon’s drone announcement was little more than a cynical PR stunt designed to draw Black Friday attention away from criticism of Amazon’s working conditions.

But for all the cynicism, there were plenty of people cheering the coming Amazon drone army, too. And the funny thing about these boosters: many of them were the same people who’ve been the loudest critics of domestic drone use by the government. People for whom government drones represented the final step on the slippery slope to 1984… but private sector drones? Hell, open the gates and let them swarm! What could go wrong? Just make sure to keep pesky government regulators out of the way!

Eli Dourado, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center, which is part of the same sprawling advocacy complex that pushed and backed Senator Rand Paul’s anti-drone filibuster in March, got all mystical as he talked about “the promise” of Amazon’s drone scheme . He also sounded a warning about government intervention, warning that “preemptive rulemaking” would snuff out “private sector innovation.”

Buzz Brockway, a liberty minded Republican State Representative from Georgia who’s at the forefront of the fight to outlaw government drone use in his home state, gave Amazon drones a five star review and warned about regulating drone use. He pointed out that at a recent meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the rightwing legislation mill that’s responsible for churning out “Stand Your Ground” vigilante laws that resulted in Trayvon Martin’s murder, both the Koch-funded Cato Institute and American Civil Liberties Union agreed: government drones are the problem; private sector drones are the solution.