Evolution to more control is natural to government

Let’s say a company manufacturers a robot dog and makes a lot of “Ain’t that cute?” videos. Let’s say the company pitches Robo Pooch to po-leece departments. Let’s say a po-leece department in Honolulu wants to buy a Pooch, but $150,000 is a tad high. Let’s say HPD got some money through one of the COVID relief bills. HPD forks some of that COVID money and gets itself a brand new Pooch for patrolling homeless camps. But just up and introducing Pooch into the camp is not good PR, so HPD comes up with a solution to pesky 4th Amendment (search and seizure) problems. “Pooch is monitoring homeless camps for COVID infections,” HPD announces. Oh, well, then. That’s okay. Whatever a po-leece needs to do to keep track of COVID. And, says HPD’s Lt. Mike Lambert, “’The ideas you can come up with would be endless as far as its future potential use beyond the pandemic.’” Lambert  “suggested using the robot to enforce social distancing on city streets and conduct search-and-rescue operations.” 

Robo, robo dog. First it came for the homeless, but I didn’t say anything because I was not homeless. Add on and add on and etc., and soon you will have Super Robo Pooch, able to leap tall hedges in a single bound and clamp (literally) onto fleeing automobiles or individuals.

Info from Gun Free Zone, with long story here:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx5xym/honolulu-police-used-a-robot-dog-to-patrol-a-homeless-encampment