Amateur UAV Pilot Exposes Texas River of Blood 388
Presto Vivace writes "Carlton Purvis of Security Management News reports that a tip from an amateur UAV enthusiast 'is what led Texas authorities to open a major criminal investigation into the waste practices of a Dallas meat packing plant.' The photo shows a river of blood."
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Bet you a nickel the police would need a warrant before such surveillance.
In fact, I kind of hope they do, public benefit notwithstanding.
Is a UAV necessary? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Columbia+Meat&hl=en&ll=32.751275,-96.787695&spn=0.001405,0.002068&sll=32.802955,-96.769923&sspn=0.47903,0.576782&vpsrc=6&t=h&z=19
Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Thermal imaging has attracted a number of court cases: cops in vehicles or aircraft go hunting for anomalously high longwave IR emissions that suggest a building may be being used as a grow-op. It can certainly be argued that IR radiates away from your house just the same that visible light does; but it doesn't do so well under the 'what a member of the public might observe from the street' test.
I'm assuming that cheaper drones, fancy terahertz imaging technology, laser mics, and other sci-fi stuff will continue to nibble at the question of what standard, exactly, 'observation' constitutes... Is it "absolutely anything I infer without physical trespass" or does it have some relation to what the 'ordinary man' could be expected to notice?
Re:If libertarians had there way (Score:3, Interesting)
So if everybody owns the land, we are enslaved, but if individuals own all the land we are not... right. Freedom is slavery, up is down, libertarianism isn't batshit insane stupidity. I'm not sure how I really feel about this little game.
Take a close look at the Google images... (Score:5, Interesting)
In the GOOGLE MAP [google.com] where the creek joins the river, it's pretty obvious.
I'm wondering how this could have been going on for so long, long enough for Google to have images (so obviously it's not a one time or sporadic event) event, without anyone noticing, does no one boat up that river? Fish on it? No nearby land owners?
Odd...
Re:What would be the libertarian solution? (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't hurt yourself too much. Pure libertarianism is about as viable as pure communism. Both have the laudable goal of freeing the common man from oppression.
I wonder if it isn't the common man's lot to always be oppressed to some extent; and money and power will always be worth, well, money and power.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Nowadays is it reasonable to expect viewing from Google Maps (and streetview etc)? :).
http://g.co/maps/zqf5u [g.co]
3rd world nation (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Extra power consumption, with a hot room or plume of heat from an extra air conditioner, is enough probable cause for a warrant.
Now this has me legitimately concerned. I have a home networking lab that I use to validate various network configs for training, and for customers. A rack of routers, switches, and servers pulls quite the electrical draw, and generates quite a bit of heat. Not as much as grow lights, I'd imagine, but still...
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Holy shit. As soon as you look, it's immediately apparent. The creek above the plant is white where there's turbulence, and green where there isn't. At the plant, it becomes maroon. Down where that creek flows into a larger one, you can see a clear tail of the maroon water flowing into the larger green creek.
So even if they had to slap the "UAV" guy on the wrist and throw out the info, anyone looking at Google could have made an 'anonymous' complaint afterwards.
Re:If libertarians had there way (Score:4, Interesting)
Oceans are pretty big, and an ocean wouldn't be owned by a single entity, any more than a whole continent is (I'm not counting governments, I mean property owners). Furthermore, certain aspects of areas might be owned: shipping rights, fishing rights, mining rights. If an adjoiner's polluted water is killing fish in the area where I have fishing rights, I sue him.
Food is valuable, and fish is high quality food. The economic power of a large, well-organized fishing company should be enough to force a polluter to behave better.