Developers from Japan have unveiled a project they are dubbing the “futuristic flying sphere.” And though the sphere cannot carry a person, it can go where no man had previously been able to go - and many places where people would gather. The developers engineered the device to be able to help in rescue operations, and provide surveillance of sensitive regions. But the relative cheapness of the device, coupled with a renewed interest in drone surveillance in the US has some rights advocates concerned. It is a flying sphere that can monitor movements and track people silently as it hovers around - and that’s only the beginning.
Surveillance drone technology has gone in interesting new directions - though some would call it terrifying. The drones are capable of flying through city streets, stopping on a dime, flying up staircases and with their new smaller size would be able to go through windows or even down chimneys to get an eyeful of developing situations police deem necessary to gather information on. While police throughout the US have long decreed that surveillance technology will likely not be used in this manner in the US and skeptics have long claimed that surveillance drones in the US is nothing more than a paranoid nightmare, earlier this year police in Miami Florida unveiled a new type of device that cost them only dollars to build and maintain and can do almost all of the things outlined in the worst paranoid nightmare scenarios. Fears over Big Brother style surveillance, it seems, are at least partially vindicated by the move by Miami police, and other drone programs are being talked over elsewhere in the US backed by new militarization techniques and the building of ever increasingly terrifying devices for utter domination and complete control over a given area.
But will the flying sphere be added to the arsenal of ever increasingly invasive surveillance devices overseas? Fumiyuki Sato, the inventor of the device, wants it to be used primarily for disaster relief purposes, urban warfare scenarios, and to help in anti-terrorism efforts. And with that in mind he has developed a battery that lasts only for a fairly simple eight minutes. The device in its current form will not likely be able to carry out extended prolonged expeditions into urban environments to keep track of the movements of all citizens there. Of course if the battery were replaced with an equally lightweight one with an extended charge, quite quickly this could turn the device into something akin to the surveillance drones seen in dystopian films and in videogames such as Half Life 2, where an occupying alien force uses something almost exactly the same as this one to monitor the movements of humans resisting an oppressive totalitarian regime.
But of course this is partially the staple reaction to any new surveillance technology in the year 2011. With body scanners and invasive procedures on the minds of a substantial and unwilling population, it seems privacy is on the minds of many people. And new devices designed to save lives and make the world a safer better place will sometimes carry with them the possibility of being abused in the name of security.
