For those of you that don’t know – a HERTI is a drone – a  ‘High Endurance Rapid Technology Insertion’ drone – Or a five-metre long, unmanned, remote controlled aircraft produced by BAE systems – the kind that the Ministry of Defence tested out inAfghanistan between 2007 and 2009.

BAE drones are programmed to take off and land on their own, stay airborne for up to 15 hours and reach heights of 20,000ft, making them invisible from the ground. Surveillance data is fed back to control rooms via monitoring equipment such as high-definition cameras, radar devices and infrared sensors.

I want one for my birthday (July – don’t forget the ‘buy me a gift link’ to the left!) so I can keep pace with Kent Police and other forces – who are developing a national drone plan with BAE – Drones will potentially be part of the massive surveillance and security operation surrounding the 2012 olympics – (to complement the 42000 security staff, warship in the Thames and surface to air missiles on standby – this is another blog post in itself)

Getting back to Drones – While they aren’t yet licensced to fly in British airspace, they are already in use in the states for combatting crime – only last week local police in North Dakota used a Predator B drone — the most common unmanned aircraft employed by the U.S. military to attack and kill “insurgents” in the Muslim world — to apprehend three men.

So should we be worried about the coming deployment of drones? – Given that they’ve been extensively tried and tested – mainly over Afghanistan and Pakistan – The U.S. currently flys over 7000 drones in such regions -surely it’s just a matter of time before our anti-civil-liberties government authorises their use by UK agents of social control?

Personally, I think we should be very concerned – while there are legitimate, crime-fighting uses – possible uses proposed by the police include detecting theft from cash machines, preventing theft of tractors, road and railway monitoring, search and rescue, event security and covert urban surveillance as well as fly-posting, fly-tipping, abandoned vehicles, abnormal loads, waste management – these drones can easily be put to anti-libertarian uses too.

It’s likely they will be used to increasing the extent of surveillance of protestors at places such as occupy – and there is also the potential to be use them to subvert flash mobbing during future protests. Even more worrying is that the larger drones can be retro-fitted with military hardwear – think tear gas grenades – or harder materials if deamed necessary –

So once in full deployment – these drones effectively give the state easy control over large numbers of ‘unruly citizens’ – which isn’t necessarily bad in itself – except when increasing numbers of citizens have got legitimate grievances against the millionnaire Toryboys and their billionnaire banker friends whose interests they look after!

This video provides an excellent overview of what Herti drone looks like… It could be teargassing you within 5 years!