the Navy's Spy Blimp is Watching You

I am not a paranoid freak. But when someone asks stupid questions like, "You really want to move to a fuilly-fledged socialist country", I can't help respond firmly that while Canadia might be socialist, the USA is positively Big Brother.

I can tell you don't believe this sweet, innocent emily. So: here's a wild exhibit for your awareness.

Here in the demilitarised zone known as SoCal, the cover story of the 15 January edition of fahrenheit magazine is entitled Mind Your Ps & Qs: The Navy's Spy Blimp is Watching You. The article is about the blimp that has been floating over our lovely seaside town: it turns out that it is a spy blimp outfitted by Science & Technology Industries of Hawai'i (STI) for the Office of Naval Research (ONR), "and voilà, a fully-outfitted spy blimp is born."
The author of the piece continues to say, "The blimp's gondola section [...] is filled with STI's Littoral Airborne Sensor - Hyperspectral (L.A.S.H.). Without getting too technical, L.A.S.H. is basically a camera system on steroids. Able to see far more detail than the human eye, it has the ability to detect underwater vessels & camouflaged land objects."
This blimp was tested over San Diego for four months. However, this is more than just a little toy first field-tested for use in, say, foreign warzones.

Accoding to Steve Huett, Manager for the Airship Advanced Development Office of NAVAIR (NAvail Air Systems Command), it would be a really swell idea if, over every major city in the nation, we had two or three (depending on the size of the city) of these floating microscopes cruising overhead, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That may sound unlikely, but systems similar to this are already in place in other cities.

The ACLU has this to say about these all-encompassing surveillance systems in their January 2003 report on the "surveillance society":

Further possibilites for the expansion of video surveillance lie with unmanned aircraft, or drones which have been used by the military and the CIA overseas for reconnaissance, surveillance, and targeting. [snip] Now there is talk of deploying them domestically. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner said in December 2002 that he wants to explore their use in Homeland Security, and a number of domestic government agencies have expressed interest in deploying them.

Yes, I much prefer full-blown CANADIAN socialism to the ORWELLIAN version we're currently establishing here in the States.