Comment by soylentcola | Hacker News Reader

Comment by soylentcola | Hacker News Reader

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That's an important distinction IMO because we've already got police helicopters and such in many cities and they're clearly useful when you quickly need to get an aerial view of an accident or someone running after committing a crime. There is still potential from abuse but whether the craft is manned or not would likely not change that.

At the same time, I guess on a personal, gut reaction level, it seems a bit more threatening or overreaching to think about any aircraft, manned or not, constantly flying around just recording everything for reference under the argument that it could help identify other crimes or locate individuals.

It may be illogical to be OK with a police chopper but not other surveillance craft but I think the potential for abuse and overreach skyrockets when you have the ability to find and track individuals at any time or create a record of their actions and travels for later analysis. I guess my emotional reaction stems from law enforcement responding to reports of crime versus just recording everything in case there's a crime. In the latter case, it wouldn't be hard to find something to nail someone on if you had a long enough record of their lives and activities and that's what unsettles me.

What are your crimes, citizen?

Wanting to be free from persecution and have privacy. He must be a terrorist.

Seriously though, I started thinking about this a lot after hearing this episode of RadioLab last year: http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/

From a tech angle it's impressive and, sure, it seems great that they're able to use this sort of tech to track down seriously dangerous people responsible for brutal crimes.

At the same time, I can't help but be a bit uneasy with the potential for abuse. When you've got a complete aerial recording of a (city/town/etc) for days or weeks in a row, all you've got to do if there's someone you're after is "rewind" far enough before you catch them doing something you can nail them on.

Taken to extreme, imagine you're an a public official or law enforcement agent with an authoritarian bent. There's a pesky blogger or activist or reporter that's been making your life difficult and you'd like them out of the picture. How far back do you need to rewind before you catch them speeding or running red lights? What will the public think when you've got video of them visiting their secret lover or they learn how this person goes to the bar or liquor store every night to get drunk? Or how about the easy unmasking of their confidential info sources you're able to track backwards from their meetings?

I'm not necessarily one to kneejerk against any application of tech because of the potential for abuse because it misses the potential for very positive outcomes. At the same time, genies don't go back in their bottles willingly and I think it's important to identify these abuse potentials so they can be addressed early and decisively rather than after the abuses have become par for the course.

Not illogical at all. Cost makes a huge difference.

Police helicopters aren't easily configured to launch Hellfire anti-tank missiles.

So, the problem isn't the use of drones, it's how readily the drones can be equipped with weapons?

You think people would be cool with the military operating Apache gunships for police enforcement as long as the missiles and rockets were removed?

Personally, I think its one of things that sounds scarier than it is. I mean, sure, I would be nervous if there was evidence that armed helicopters/drones are flying over the US in the situations we are talking about here. But as long as they are unarmed, I'm not too worried.

Even if the government used a specific fleet of non-combat related drones, that wouldn't stop them from switching over to combat-ready drones tomorrow if they so wished it.

Like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8DQlqemkcQ

Only because the police don't have the funds to purchase them regularly. A lot of police helicopters are surplus Hueys, Blackhawks, or Kiowas. They may not have the targeting packages in them any more, but it doesn't take a ton of ingenuity to up-arm them, as was done in the early stages of Vietnam, before the specialized gunship helicopters were developed.

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