CBS affiliate WJZ TV in Baltimore reports:

Soon, Maryland will be the home to a couple of new landmarks. Actually, sky-marks.

As Mike Schuh reports, two large blimps will soon rise over Harford County and stay put.

Radar blimps like these have been used on the battlefield to track the enemy, and in the Caribbean to intercept drug runners. . . .

What will they be looking for? Anti-ship cruise missiles, unmanned aircraft and swarming boats.

These blimps are a lot like a toy balloon. They are unmanned and are held in place by a very long tether. . .

With a range from Richmond to Staten Island, privacy experts have concerns.

"That kind of tracking technology raises privacy concerns, and if the military wants to test hardware they should not be testing out on the American public," said David Rocah, ACLU staff attorney.

Aberdeen’s spokesman says that’s not happening.

"There are no cameras aboard the payloads of either of these aerostats. We are not going to be hovering around our neighbors around Aberdeen Proving Grounds, seeing what they are doing in their backyards; no cameras, no spying," [Aberdeen spokesman Kelly] Luster said.

But who is to say cameras and other spy equipment would not be placed onboard these balloons -- and other devices like them -- in the future, especially in a country already bossed about by a federal establishment that has untethered itself from the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution, which lay out principial and political grounds for human dignity and respect?

Loss of privacy already abounds in America -- think of NSA wiretaps, IRS prayertaps, Obamacare's invasion into our daily lives, abortion's invasion of the womb to seek and destroy millions of pre-born human beings.

But America is not alone in this. Think of the millions of human beings slaughtered by their own governments, an estimated 262 million in the 20th century.

But whether alone or not, we see that a machinery of oppression already exists in the "land of the free." This the brave question. And the brave who would be free resist.

Let there be no doubt: Sometimes what looks a lot like a toy balloon could be a toy balloon. And sometimes not.  

Related
Homeland Security Buys 2,717 Armored Vehicles
Extremism In, Extremism Out: Obama’s Soldiers for Secularism