Robotic "bugs" might be spying on you

Eric Wilson passed along this... strange... story: apparently there are teeny-tiny robotic cameras that are flying around disguised as bugs. And they seem to have already begun to be deployed...

Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.

"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."

Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.

"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.

Eric has a great idea: "Now this might be a good way to incorporate Insecticons into a Transformers sequel w/o being hokey!!" :-)

For the rest of the story mash down here.