Letters to the Editor
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Dragonfly or Insect Spy?
According to an article in today's Washington Post, near the stage at the rally preceding the antiwar march in Washington on September 15, strange sightings were made:
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."
Robotic fliers have been used by the military since World War II, but in the past decade their numbers and level of sophistication have increased enormously.
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 insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.
The article then goes on to discuss what is known about the state of the art regarding miniaturization of spy drones.
Yet, despite the assessment that the current technology probably isn't quite there yet for a drone the size of a large dragonfly, the details reported at the end of the article suggest that somewhere, someone has indeed advanced the technology:
So what was seen by Crane, Alarcon and a handful of others at the D.C. march -- and as far back as 2004, during the Republican National Convention in New York, when one observant but perhaps paranoid peace-march participant described on the Web "a jet-black dragonfly hovering about 10 feet off the ground, precisely in the middle of 7th avenue . . . watching us"?
They probably saw dragonflies, said Jerry Louton, an entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History. Washington is home to some large, spectacularly adorned dragonflies that "can knock your socks off," he said.
At the same time, he added, some details do not make sense. Three people at the D.C. event independently described a row of spheres, the size of small berries, attached along the tails of the big dragonflies -- an accoutrement that Louton could not explain. And all reported seeing at least three maneuvering in unison.
"Dragonflies never fly in a pack," he said.
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice said her group is investigating witness reports and has filed Freedom of Information Act requests with several federal agencies. If such devices are being used to spy on political activists, she said, "it would be a significant violation of people's civil rights."
Link:http://tinyurl.com/2r653m
I realize this reads more like UFO sightings than reporting in the WaPo. Also, I was there and spent quite a bit of time near the stage area since our bus arrived very early. I didn't see anything like the "dragonflies", but I also didn't hang out in the specific area I think they are talking about, which is where the final plans were being drawn up for the "die-in". I did see lots of surveillance from several helicopters flying overhead and provided a one finger salute to someone manning a video camera on the Capitol steps as the police were massing to start making arrests.
Next time I'm there for a march, I think I'll attach a net to the stick along with my sign. It sure would be fun to come home with a souvenir.