Robot Insects Spying on Protesters?

It sounds far-fetched, but a number protesters swear they’ve spotted robotic insects hovering around anti-war rallies. The government denies deploying robot spies, but it’s known that the U.S. military has had robotic flies, such as the one at right, since World War II.

Washington Post:

“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.

Others think they are, well, dragonflies — an ancient order of insects that even biologists concede look about as robotic as a living creature can look.

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