BUSH REGIME USES ARTIFICIAL INSECTS TO SPY ON DEMONSTRATORS

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RICK WEISS, WASHINGTON POST - Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at
an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month. "I heard someone say,
'Oh my god, look at those,'" the college senior from New York recalled.
"I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of
like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not
insects."

Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too. "I'd never seen anything
like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for
dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "

That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar
sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect
the insect-like drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps
deployed by the Department of Homeland Security. . .

No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy drones. But a number
of U.S. government and private entities acknowledge they are trying.
Some federally funded teams are even growing live insects with computer
chips in them, with the goal of mounting spyware on their bodies and
controlling their flight muscles remotely.

The robobugs could follow suspects, guide missiles to targets or
navigate the crannies of collapsed buildings to find survivors. . .

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have made a
"microbat ornithopter" that flies freely and fits in the palm of one's
hand. A Vanderbilt University team has made a similar device.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/
AR2007100801434.html


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