Viewer interest in Olympic skeet shooting soared among Miami Beach residents following the recent passage of a city ordinance mandating recycling monitored by remote-controlled drones.
Aerial drones the size of dragonflies fly neighborhood reconnaissance patterns to scan microchips embedded within recycling containers to ensure residents maintain compliance.
Privacy advocates expressed outrage over the ordinance and plan to file suit, although domestic drones are currently utilized within the United States. “What goes up can come down,” declared a civil liberties attorney, who asked to comment off the record.
“Think about it; they are inscrutable, flying, intelligent,” said Ryan Calo, director of privacy and robotics for the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. “They are really very difficult for the human mind to cleanly characterize.”
Patrons gathered at Shorty’s Beachside cheered U.S. shooter Kim Rhode to a first place win in women’s skeet, standing in ovation as she accepted the gold medal. Sam Haffnerve bought the house a celebratory round and toasted Rhode, suggesting the markswoman make Miami Beach her permanent residence.
When asked by this reporter if the rapt interest in the little-known sport was displaced anger by residents over the drones scanning Miami Beach trash, Haffnerve shook his head. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “But if I see one of those robotic bugs buzzing the end of my driveway, I’ve got my baseball bat ready.”
The American Civil Liberties Union 2011 policy paper “Protecting Privacy from Aerial Surveillance” predicted a dire future where “…routine aerial surveillance in American life … would profoundly change the character of public life in the United States.”
The City of Miami Beach offered no comment on the use of drones within the community, but did attribute the increased compliance by residents to no longer needing to separate recyclables into rock, paper and scissor bins.
Distraction media is perhaps the best kind of media. It’s like when all the torture was going on and Bush called Karl Rove a Turd Blossom. All of Bush’s detractors took the bait and focused on that instead of the actual news.
Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain.