2021-04-23T18:13:50+02:00

An article from The Economist mentions how drone technology gets transported from the battlefields of Iraq to American cities:

The notion of putting cameras on orbit­ing drones to catch malefactors was born on the battlefields of Iraq, where American armed forces wanted to nab people leaving bombs on roadsides. Ross McNutt, a for­mer air­force engineer, founded Persistent Surveillance Systems (pss) to offer the same service to American cities (and oth­ers, such as Juárez) struggling with high murder rates. PSS drones flew over parts of Baltimore, most recently in May­-October 2020. St Louis, among America’s most viol­ent cities, also considered but is poised to reject PSS’s services, which raise difficult questions about how much surveillance Americans are willing to tolerate in ex­change for the promise of safer streets.