Drones

They call them drones but they are not automatic mechanical devices resembling a human or an animal. Drone is the pompous name given to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to make them sound less threatening. UAVs allow surveillance and occasional attacks (with missiles) on the enemy. They have been in vogue in Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza. They spare costs, risks and to a lesser degree lives in the security forces using them but they have been highly criticized by human rights organizations who find the capacity of a bureaucrat to kill people in a different continent with a joystick, reckless and dangerous.
Everyone who lives in Los Angeles is familiar with the extremely noisy helicopter flights over the houses that bother people in the middle of the night and help create the XXIst century concentration camp mood of the city. Once, when someone broke into my building's garage and got inside my car the police had nothing better to do than to fly an helicopter over my building the day after the break in happened. I don't know if the thieves were scared wherever they were, but my neighbors were certainly bothered.  
When you study the history of empires, from Rome to America passing by Portugal, Spain, Holland and Britain, you learn that military technology developed to be applied on the far corners of the empire is always applied later on back home in the center of the empire. It is no secret that LAPD officials have recently travelled to Israel to get training and to purchase drone technology. Yesterday while walking down the street I spotted my first drone. Small and silent, I almost missed it. Big Brother is watching us a lot closer.
Things might not get safer but they will certainly get a lot less noisy.

Can you spot it?

Silent Big Brother in the sky.