The balloon is only dangerous if you try to cross the border going south. Stay in your strange, primitive land, continue to send us better writing and beer, and all will be well.

It has clearance to fly to 1,000 feet and can read the name of a ship from nine miles (14 kilometres) away. Its owners hope to draw interest from U.S. Homeland Security.”

So it’s a privately-owned device not affiliated with any US Gov entity? What’s the difference between this and if some random company put up a camera on a post pointing into my backyard?

I just read the piece in BB about the blimp, and I thought I’d share this with you.

I was driving along one of the streets paralleling the river about a week ago and I caught a glimpse of this bloody great big balloon on a tether on the other side of the river.

At first I thought it might be one of those ‘sale here now’ kind of balloons you see over car dealers, until i realized the scale of it – huge! Within two days the rumors were flying. Someone’s mother thought it was a UFO. Someone told me it was Homeland Security’s and it could read the name on a boat 12 miles away, but ‘would not look across the international boundary or into the city’ (the boundary runs down the middle of the river) – yeah sure!

How many times have you heard about CCTV’s being used to track busty women down the street etc.? Want to bet that if there’s a nude sunbather on a condo balcony facing the river (There’s 6-8 condos along the river) that someone won’t take a high resolution peek?

I can actually see the damn thing from the upstairs back window of our house, and I guess they can see me too. I don’t go around in the nude very much, so I’m not too worried, but why should they be allowed to photograph us at all, going about our business on the street, or in our homes. We have a boat, and we take it out on the river now and then. I don’t do anything illegal with it, but why should I have to put up with being spied on?

There’s a pretty strong climate of opinion here that this is a ridiculous intrusion by the Americans. We’re pretty pissed off. I certainly don’t advocate shooting at the balloon, because any idiot who did would be shooting into downtown Port Huron.

What I think is pretty likely is that they will not get it cranked down in time during one of our sudden intense thunderstorms (and we’ve had a lot lately) and it will either be cooked by a lightning strike, or yanked off it’s tether by a 80 mph gust and wind up sailing off over the peninsula towards Georgian Bay – if that happens it will be a VERY serious hazard to aircraft, especially at night.

When I read the piece in BB I was amazed to learn that this is not even a real government initiative. Homeland Security is a pretty scary agency (the name is unfortunately reminiscent of Germany during the war). Bad enough if they did this, even worse that some civilian contractor is spying on us on spec.

Maybe we can get a bunch of people together to a game of “war” (you know the kind we played as kids with fake guns running around the neighborhood yards). It would probably start an international incident.

Gosh.

I’m not the mooning type, but if I get energetic maybe I’ll write a sign in big ‘ship-name’ letters for them to read.

Like gay porn.

or barring that, couldn’t some hunter have a bullet go astray….or something?

It’s Sarnia, they already burn plenty of oil and other nasty crap there.

- monitoring our hospital wait times?
- trying to understand how to make beer?

Don’t you Americans have better things to do?

Doubtful that it will catch anything. You can see it from distance and take appropriate camouflage actions. Another fine example of spending our childrens future, may they appreciate servicing the debt.

Sarnia’s my hometown–I’m scheduling a visit home from Toronto to coincide with the Moon. There really is no place like home when you’re from Sarnia : )

According to international law, would the Canadians be allowed to down said aircraft if it strayed over Canadian soil?

Given that:

1. Canadian air defense it dependent on the United States via NORAD, making it difficult for Canada to down the aircraft without the U.S.’s OK…

2. The United States is Canada’s largest trade partner and Canada’s economy is completely dependent on U.S. trade…

3. Given that this is a legal, unarmed, civilian aircraft and it would be a complete violation of all international laws to shoot down…

and

4. Given that most TV news helicopters are already equipped with comparable sorts of equipment, and that the only novel thing is that this is attached to a self-guided blimp.

…I would say it is a bad idea. I mean, I know that Canadians lack a central unifying identity, and so anti-Americanism is the easiest way to drum up feeling of nationalism is Canada, but I think the political leaders know it is wise to stick with completely token and useless forms of anti-Americanism that won’t endanger the well-being of the nation.

And while the mooning probably won’t alienate the otherwise self-loathing crowd of American’s on Boing Boing, those of us that want to seriously influence the U.S. government to not waste money on spy blimps are now going to have to deal with the fact that you guys turned it into an “us vs. them” nationalism issue. Yeah, thanks guys, now we get our issue to be associated with childish pranks and anti-Americanism, thus dooming our cause to failure. But yeah, I guess the whole mooning thing was funny.

Just be sure to do it from behind a bush. Possibly someone else’s bush. Wearing a big hat.