Is this a political rant? I hope not. It caught my attention. I think it deserves a minute of yours.

Rick Weiss at WashingtonPost.com has written an interesting story about tiny flying surveillance robots, he calls them robobugs. I was caught by the way he handles the topic. In the face of glaring public privacy and civil liberties concerns, Weiss takes a gee whiz popular mechanics angle. The whole thing is a little disturbing.

Consider Weiss’ conclusion:

“Cellphone cameras are already everywhere. It’s not that much different.”

Right…

To be exact, those words aren’t Weiss’, rather his editor chose to use those words to neatly wrap up the story. The quote above is attributed to UC Berkeley roboticist Ronald Fearing. I doubt Fearing had any review over how this story would read.

From my perspective it reads very much like the editors of the Washington Post are making a clear assertion. It’s a political assertion. They’re not making an argument and they don’t appear remotely interested in the social implications of what they’re talking about. They do seem aware of the policy implications; this is happening in the context of the absurd wiretapping non-debate.

The Washington Post asserts that (a.) the public is ok with cellphone cameras; therefore (b.) the public will be ok with the American government using swarms of tiny flying cameras to spy on us.