Civilian Use of Drone Aircraft May Soon Fly In the US 196
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the Seattle Times:
"Drone aircraft, best known for their role in hunting and destroying terrorist hideouts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, may be coming soon to the skies near you. Police agencies want drones for air support to find runaway criminals. Utility companies expect they can help monitor oil, gas and water pipelines. Farmers believe drones could aid in spraying crops with pesticides. 'It's going to happen,' said Dan Elwell, vice president of civil aviation at the Aerospace Industries Association. 'Now it's about figuring out how to safely assimilate the technology into national airspace.' That's the job of the Federal Aviation Administration, which plans to propose new rules for using small drones in January, a first step toward integrating robotic aircraft into the nation's skyways."
FTFY (Score:2, Insightful)
"Drone aircraft, best known for their role in hunting and destroying houses and children"
hand size copters for media and protestors - (Score:4, Insightful)
The small copters should be autonomous and stream media to wifi.
Get it to follow a reporter/protestor into a situation like a Occupy eviction.
My camera, its up there. The foottage of you punching me in the face, that's already on google.
Re:and who carries the liability coverage? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're looking for facts and data, you're obviously not spending that time thinking of the children. Won't someone think of the children!?!
Re:I don't see what's to stop... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you also smash speed limit signs? Torch cop cars? Maybe you don't like TV, so you dig up and cut cables? To hell with all the anarchists who want society to be like the wild west. Believe it or not, we already have flying machines that can do all these things. Drones just make them cheaper and more accessible to everyone.
Go ahead. Shoot one down, if you want. If you're that violent a person, society will be better off with you in prison.
Every commercial airliner already is a drone (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't see what's to stop... (Score:5, Insightful)
taking pot shots at them
Cops routinely round up numpties that point lasers at pilots. You go firing at a UAV that is most likely returning real-time video of your brilliant self to the operator and you can bet they'll be at your door inside an hour with a picture of you drawing a bead someone's expensive aerospace equipment.
Have you not seen the video out of Iraq or Afghanistan of individual insurgents being hunted down by UAVs? Just replace the Hellfire with a patrol car and you've got the picture.
Been thinking about this for years (Score:4, Insightful)
firefighters need a temp profile of a building before they get there, send the drone
cops need eyes in the sky to find a perp, send the drone
high volume roadway monitoring, send the drone
video taping sports events (highschool, private, college, racing, etc), send the drone
monitoring wildlife/forestry/national park outdoorsey stuff, send the drone
weather monitoring and remote sensing in harsh environments, send the drone
Anything that requires helicopter eyes in the sky but doesn't need to transport human or heavy payloads (air fuel is not cheap)
many more than not 4th amendment violations, send all the drones you got baby.
With all the good that could come of this technology, I guarantee the loss of civil liberties and privacy will be ten-fold larger. First to market will make lots of money once they pay off the FAA and get through the red tape. Lockheed/Northrop/Boeing/large DoD contractors have the lock on the drone market for the gov't now, once a large demand is created in the non-government sector, we'll see more of these stateside once the red-tape and matters are worked out. Where drones are better at some things overseas, they will be utilized that way here as well (hopefully, but not guaranteed, to be ordinance free). Naturally drones are nothing new, the barriers to entry are cost, FAA regs, demand. But once contractors get the lock and private firms/governments see/feel/create the need, drones will become another fact of life here in Panopticonland.
Re:FT"FTFY"FY (Score:2, Insightful)
"The US military, best known for their role in hunting and destroying houses and children"
Re:I don't see what's to stop... (Score:5, Insightful)
...people from taking pot shots at them, be it with firearms, slingshots, toy rockets, what have you. I suppose that the best way to prevent this from happening is to make them so hideously expensive to insure or operate that no one bothers.
Discharge of firearm in a populated area: bad, jail bad.
Slingshots: good luck hitting a small, erratically moving target 20 stories up.
Toy rockets: you got a gyro guidance system with optical tracking on that thing?
What have you: apparently you have nothing that can take out a drone, even the guns aren't going to be easy, trying to hit a 2' target at 100+ yards with a major elevation change.
Insurance: is based on risk, it's a business. The only way risk will be increased by lawmakers is if the chance for lawsuit is increased. Since most applications are downright illegal right now, drones are un-insurable. As for liability after they are legal, how much damage can 2 lbs of plastic do falling on whatever? O.K., now, how much damage does a Cessna do when it crashes while flying low for pipeline monitoring, crop dusting, etc.?
People hate change, drones are change. Don't hate the drones, they really are better than what we had before.
Go ahead and hate the people who will misuse them, but remember that you don't need to fly to install cameras on every intersection, automatic license plate readers in every squad car, or facial recognition cameras at the entry to every store.
Re:Fourth Amendment (Score:2, Insightful)
You certainly do have an appropriate name. "Crime levels have been falling, yet we're spending more money on policing". Hmm, I guess there's zero possibility the second has anything to do with the first eh?
Re:Every commercial airliner already is a drone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:FT"FTFY"FY (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a relatively new technology: it makes sense that it's being used more and more as time goes by.
That said, it's a f**king killing machine, and using it amounts to murder. But's that your today's Amerika.
Other uses (Score:4, Insightful)
1) intimidating crowds of protesters
2) mass delivery of casual pepper spray
3) spying on any person/house/field
4) following vehicles remotely
5) issue speeding tickets remotely
6) back-up air support for raids (Branch Davidian debacle)
Until I see law enforcement acting responsibly with the power they already have I am not a fan of giving them more.