I don't know how I missed it, but the Humane Society of the United Sates has been extremely successful at getting states, and now it looks like the Federal government, to outlaw Internet hunting via H.R. 2711, the Computer-Assisted Remote Hunting Act.
According to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal (subscription may be required), the Humane Society has been mailing people "an urgent message, underlined and in bold type":
Such horrific cruelty must stop and stop now.
No debate there - except, as the WSJ article points out, no one is actually hunting using the Net, even though the Humane Society's site implies that it is rampant.
Better safe than sorry, I guess.
However, there is story in the September 2007 issue of National Defense magazine about armed robots being sent into the streets of Baghdad this summer.
Based on the Talon robot platform built by Foster-Miller of Waltham, Massachusetts, three SWORD (special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system) robots outfitted with M249 light machine guns and remotely controlled by an individual soldier are being put through their paces hunting insurgent snipers and such.
I wonder if H.R. 2711, the Computer-Assisted Remote Hunting Act outlaws hunting using remotely controlled robots - if not, the Humane Society better get cracking - but I predict that it is only a matter of time before there is Internet insurgent hunting with or without robots.
