UAV RAISES CONCERN ABOUT SAFETY

It is the Orwellian era. Although some thirty years have passed since the gloomy scenario portrayed by George Orwell in 1984, the mushrooming presence of surveillance cameras and security procedures have invaded our privacy to an extent never foreseen by the author. With the increase in security threats due to religious and ethnic terrorism, we have all but acquiesced ourselves to this privacy invasion with mute protests.

A new entrant in the surveillance area is the UAVs. After having been successfully deployed over the mountains of Afghanistan to counter the Al Qaeda threat, the US government is mulling over the feasibility and acceptability of a programme that would allow unmanned aircraft to fly beside commercial planes in the US airspace.