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[Devling]

Obviously we should all take notes from Lawfare, and instead of using them for surveillance use them for sick air battles.

[GlyphGryph]

Licensing & zoning are regs.

Licensing serves one of three purposes: To insure operator skill (driving, doctoring, lawyering) so as to avoid damage to others through unskilled use, to serve as a protectionist method for increasing the power and benefit of those who can get a limited number of licenses as compared to others (barbering, fishing), or to serve as a tax on the activity and guarantee a revenue stream to the governing body, often ostensibly to offset costs.

I don't see how any of these would apply to successful drone regulations in a positive way.  The second subverts the whole reason I would want people to be able to use drones at all (power equalization), the first could certainly be applicable for dangerous drones but most civilian drones probably wouldn't be, and the last doesn't serve much of a purpose and is easily abused.

So yes, licensing can be regulation, but effective regulation does not necessarily involve licensing.

And the zoning rules you've claimed as a possibility (no drones in parks) are exactly the reason why I would oppose them outright. Some area limitations will probably be needed if only for airspace concerns (no drones flying around the runway, no dropping zones in people's backyards staring through their windows without permission) but even those would probably be better served by more focused regulation than the blunt tool that is zoning.


Also, reasons one might want to use a drone instead of a camera (though really for good coverage you'd probably want both, since cameras have perks over drones as well):
The drone is harder to confiscate or halt filming.
The camera can only see what you see (or only in one direction from your person), the drone can see things you cant.
For plenty of creative, media, reporting, and documentary purposes, a drone cam would be far more valuable.
A camera can't help you get a feel for your surroundings.

[GlyphGryph]

The problem is surveillance grants more utility to authorities than it does to the public.

But it's going to happen, and we can't stop it. Every rule and regulation you put on private owners (which will be conveniently exempted for those in authority) serves only to widen that gap. Most of the issues you've described aren't even a problem of surveillance, and counter-surveillance offers the only real opportunity of popularizing and fighting against some of those injustices.

[SalmonGod]

Yeah.  It is happening, and nothing's going to stop it.  I'm not arguing against private operation of drones, either.  I'm just giving in to my tendency to rant, and I like to hope that with some anticipation-building, people will notice and react more when they do go into full effect.  Maybe someday the will to take serious action against the nature of our hyper-authoritarian oligarchy will materialize.  I keep wondering just how close we have to get to a hollywood-perfect image of cyberpunk dystopia before something finally snaps.

[10ebbor10]

Here's a good idea for those who want to maintain their privacy. Invest in microwind energy

Turbine blade vs drone =

[Devling]

Oh Salmongod, with your zany predictions of a dark future/present!

[MetalSlimeHunt]

SalmonGod, you are forgetting something very important. While we are likely to see increased surveillance in the future, the nature of modern technology means that increases in surveillance will by definition increase sousveillance as well. Since the beginning of the age of nations only governments have had the resources to commit to surveillance, but now this is no longer true. They may well gaze into the public, but now the public will gaze back into them.

This will not lead to dystopia. This will lead to a more realistic treatment of our laws and governments, when they can no longer be sure that the people are not watching.

[SalmonGod]

No, I'm not forgetting it.  I already addressed that.  Even if levels of surveillance rise equally in both directions, this doesn't mean both sides will equally benefit.  I still believe authoritarianism stands to gain much more.  Their surveillance will be more complete (did you read the part about the Gorgon Stare?), it is motivated by a pro-active agenda (consolidation of power) rather than a passive one (personal defense), as much of its records will be kept hidden from the public as possible (remember they can even lie about the existence of a record now when denying a freedom of information act request) while the public's records will be public, and not all of the public will be staring back.  We've gained access to massive floods of information about government/corporate activities over the last few years, but very little of that information reaches traditional outlets from which most people still get their information.  This is changing, but slowly.  Meanwhile, power grabs continue to accelerate while public awareness is not united enough to do anything about it, even though our return surveillance has put the information out there.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Authoritarianism doesn't have anything to gain. They already have the tools of surveillance, and have for centuries. "Traditional outlets" are not that traditional. Everything that holds that title is dying to the internet. TV, newspapers, all of it. The only thing that is even breaking even is radio.

Most of the abuses that are allowed only happen because the public is ignorant of them. Either they don't know at all, or they don't know enough to care, or they know but the reality of it cannot be conveyed through words. All of that is changing with increased sousveillance. That Wikipedia article I linked mentioned an experiment to see how law enforcement would be effected by giving them shoulder cameras they can't turn off while on duty, and found that it reduced both violence by police and complaints from the public. Cameras are in many ways a great equalizer, because they don't lie. No matter how much the public may trust the police, it would take some extreme fanaticism indeed to ignore the objective reality exposed and stored by cameras.

You are freaking out over the government getting a tech upgrade to something they already do while the public is getting ready to change the face of how the world operates.

[i2amroy]

Authoritarianism doesn't have anything to gain. They already have the tools of surveillance, and have for centuries. "Traditional outlets" are not that traditional. Everything that holds that title is dying to the internet. TV, newspapers, all of it. The only thing that is even breaking even is radio.

Even radio is losing, albeit slower then other methods. Almost all the buses at my campus and many of the newer cars all are equipped with pandora or other various online radio methods.

But I agree here. More surveillance works as an equalizer, and the government is going to be informed of most of what happens anyways. The only thing that will be changing is the ability to lie about what happens, and since this tactic seems to be used by governments more often then by civilians I'd say that more surveillance is a benefit to civilians more then one to a government.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

First of all, @salmon & gryph:
Just what kind of drones are we talking about here?! Are we talking about current technology, which would require actively piloting the freaking drone that's following you around? Or some futuristic space-tech that has yet to come into being?! I'm guessing the latter- it's silly to base our attitude towards current tech on these hypotheticals- at least in such specific terms.

On drones:
All drones would be inherently dangerous due to their nature: they're flying chunks of metal. Nowadays they're pretty big too- (when they say 'carried in a backpack' they mean 'carried on your back'). Plus they're manually-controlled- of course we would need licenses, especially if you're wanting to operate them in public areas.
Yeah, I was saying that it is a form of regulation.

We're examining the bluntness of a variable tool here. Zoning would be necessary because of their inherent danger & threats to privacy, like you mentioned. Zoning is a means to accomplish this regulation, and can be as blunt or fine as the regulators specify.

Not really- manual drones are pretty much dependent on your control. And anyway, playing keepaway can be obstruction of justice just as easily with a drone as with subpenaed corporate documents. 
Yes, Like spying on neighbors, trespassing and harassing others from range. Sure, useful if you're exploring a jungle where you want to see what's in a cave or something, but uses in urban environments? Limited, I contend.
Yep, filming & creativity would benefit.
Wouldn't one be getting a feel for your surroundings with one's own eyes though? Having a drone seems redundant.



Yeah, except we can stop it. Remember what happened with sopa/pipa? Sure, other legislation did go through...but those two bills which got the spotlight were shelved indefinitely.
Also, I doubt the police would be able to have unlicensed, inexperienced pilots fly chunks of deadly metal around the city.
'Counter-surveillance' by civilians, the dedicated watching of police using aerial drones, sounds like a very very hairy situation, filled with prejudice-inducing attitudes and rife with conflict. I am totally against this. Using hidden cameras and always-on video on one's person and those of the policemen, I can go for. Again, upload to the cloud via mobile 3g, and as someone said on this thread: a cop taking and/or smashing your camera will only accomplish giving you a video of a cop taking and/or smashing your camera.


Salmon is talking about more advanced tech and he is correct in saying government agencies and/or those with more resources will stand to benefit more from this surveillance technology, (since they'd be able to access it, and greater power to use it), but I still disagree with him on just how imminent this threat is.

[GlyphGryph]

Civilian drones tend to be rather small and light, and look like this:


Definitely fitting in a backpack, and easily. And they are generally flying chunks of ultralight plastic rather than flying chunks of metal. (though there's still enough of it to cause injury if crashing into someones face, of course)

And automating this is easy and not uncommon, at least among groups who are into it and the researchers that seem to like them. Have you seen any of the swarm robotics demos, like the quadcopters playing games of catch or musical instruments? That stuff definitely isn't manual. Following around a person and avoiding obstacles is trivial stuff - I had robots a half dozen years ago that could do that just fine. this isn't futuristic space-tech - this is existing tech for which there currently isn't much of a market, beyond use in the military (which makes heavy use of autonomous drones already).

In all honesty, even hobbyist drones/aircraft are generally autonomous if they spend any time in the air (like the TAM-5), which flew across the Atlantic 10 years ago, with manual overrides.

Drones are already being used for reporting - Tim Poole used a Parrot AR.Drone to cover the occupy movement for a live feed. This is a popular drone model used today, and one that actually works fairly well autonomously (though I don't think Poole used an autonomous drone for his reporting).

This isn't science fiction. It's new, it's rare, but it is already here.

So far, the average civilian mostly seems to use them to play ARGs though, hah.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Hmm, fair enough on the size bit, but it still poses a threat to traffic, and to a lesser degree the public. Also, given the tech I just looked at, it seems unfeasible to expect a personalized drone to avoid becoming confused about what it's following, and obstacle navigation would be iffy. Have any videos in particular?

[GlyphGryph]

Civilian tech is generally a ways beyond military tech, since those interested tend to be mostly students, but there's a few (mostly with small quadrotors in indoor locations, admittedly) but they demonstrate it's object avoidance:

Thes are mostly a couple years old:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyGJBV1xnJI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmWD76jwjbQ

I think this from the last video is one of the coolest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=QmWD76jwjbQ#t=84s

There's some more recent stuff around that is a bit harder to find, and the actively tracking people doesn't work ... that great, for civilian drones yet (esp. with wind thrown in the mix, or the need to navigate internal areas like hallways), but it's certainly possible to get something decent very quickly if there ends up being a demand for it at some point. The open source Parrot competitions have had some drones that can pretty effectively take off, locate their landing area, and fly through objects to to get there without impacting them.

[SalmonGod]

So the trailer of this movie I'd never heard of before is making internet rounds now... from 1998.