Hacker News Reader

Comment by striking | Hacker News Reader

But then again, what if people start harvesting people's identities from the drones through the identifier? I think it's a neat idea, but it straddles the 4th Amendment line and could potentially expose your identity to people who don't like drones.

View on HN

...really? Because both aircraft and road vehicles today have identifiers painted or printed on them. What about driving around with a license plate or flying with a tail number? What's the difference?

Aircraft and cars kill people daily. Constantly. Cars more. Aircraft sometimes more tragically.

It would make sense to expose an identifier, rather than the person's identity. I may have misunderstood the comment.

Would it be correct to think that you would be shocked to learn that the FAA has a publicly-accessible aircraft registration database?

http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Inquiry.aspx

You don't have a right to privacy in public spaces. You can be a weirdo and wear a baclava and only travel by foot or use cash to use public transit, but that behavior in itself de-anonymizes you.

Yum, baclava! Or perhaps you're thinking of a "balaclava"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaclava_(clothing)

Haha autocorrect strikes again! Walking around with baclava would make you popular if you shared though!

> You can be a weirdo and wear a [balaclava]

That's actually illegal in Virginia: http://law.justia.com/codes/virginia/2006/toc1802000/18.2-42...

Well if you're flying a real plane or copter, you have its registration number widely visible. No difference there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com