Gatwick drones pair 'no longer suspects'
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Of course, it's possible there is in fact ironclad evidence for the official story that we're not being told. But it seems to me there's lots of incentive for the police to share all they know, and huge incentives not to admit that it was all a cock-up.
Either this is all monumental incompetence, or the real story isn't being released.
Coincidentally, Birmingham airport was shut for a couple of hours today after an air traffic control failure.
If that's the end of the story, it's fair to assume there's no connection.
If there's a spate of air traffic control and/or other failures over the next few days, it's going to be hard not to wonder if something else is going on.
For lots of reasons. To make it seem like they are making progress, to make it seem like it is safe to travelers, to assuage their bosses, pick one.
As suspected eco terrorist you would hardly operate from your backyard near the airport. But the brits do have surveillance cameras all over so they will find something sooner or later.
We'll see what it amounts to.
> "We are [..] carrying out a forensic examination of a damaged drone found near the perimeter of the airport.
Sounds like some evidence of at least one drone. But regardless this is still likely a culmination of panic over a potentially one-off sighting.
The cynic in me suspects that the result of this will be zero convictions, but legislation taking all but the smallest drones out of consumers hands.
67 independent reports and a damaged drone near last sighting.
Yes: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1828378/Video-D...
It's not in the public interest for us to know exactly who they are unless they're actually found guilty of a crime. Publishing their names and pictures before _even being charged_ does nothing but open potentially innocent people up to danger.
Whoever caused the Gatwick chaos needs to be brought to justice, but this is beyond reckless
On the contrary, the commonly-acknowledged right of habeas corpus essentially requires the government to make the fact that someone is being detained public, at least if the prisoner himself so chooses. Privacy is a red herring here - habeas corpus is about preserving basic freedoms.
is the missing part in most cases.
This is the key.
In the justice system it's the judge which rules a sentence. Years – or even decades – of public shaming doesn't seem fair to me. Committing a crime doesn't mean you're no longer dealing with a person with real feelings. Publishing names and photos strikes me as "2 minutes of hate", and not "news".
Also note that it doesn't just affect the person(s). Family members or even completely unrelated people with similar names can get threatened.
I will never seize to be amazed at the capacity of some people to not think for themselves.
Do you want to live in a world where people are yanked off the street and not heard of for months or years, with no ability for the press/friends/family to find out about the situation, "out of respect for their privacy?"
If the police refuse to disclose whether they've grabbed someone, I'm going to assume I'm in Soviet Russia.
The court of public opinion is utterly unforgiving compared to the legal system these people could be sent through. We're not talking about neighbours reading an outrage piece in their daily paper; we're talking about nutjobs on the internet finding their Facebook profiles, their Twitter accounts, their emails, their physical addresses, and then doing their best to make those people's lives hell. Because that's what happens and the mob operates on a hair trigger.
The number of people being truly disappeared in our Western societies is vanishingly small, compared to all of the people who have their mugshots and criminal records indexed on Google, and all of the people who were indicted by newspaper editors before a jury even got a chance. That's before the internet keyboard warriors start shipping out their death threats or fabricating hostage situations for SWAT teams.
The press always say that naming people who've been arrested is an important measure against authoritarian regimes. It allows the public to know whether police powers of arrest are being misused or not.
They appear to have lost this argument, because this is in tension with people's right to privacy and rights to a fair trial by the courts not by the media.
There's some interesting info here about different approaches: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/100634...
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/21/press-intrusio...
Your distinction still places the trust in the discretion of the police/press. If they don't disclose the name, then it's harder for character witnesses to come forward (e.g. the couple's neighbors in this case).
Front page headlines along the lines of "The police believe these people are criminals who caused huge inconvenience and suffering to hundreds of thousands of people - would someone like to say a good work about them?" probably aren't the best way to guarantee a fair trial.
Again, this sub-thread's premise is that "naming people who've been arrested is an important measure against authoritarian regimes."
The point is, you wouldn't get a "fair trial" in an authoritarian society. Knowing whether you're in one is tough (It could be as low-level as local law enforcement.) Given these two points, it's a values-based argument that more information is better. That's all.
Of course, it's horrible when someone gets wrongfully accused. I don't know where the sweet spot is. I'm outsourcing much of my trust to other citizens.
Not really. If the cops want to drag you off and detain you secretly for indefinite amount of time (what the law is trying to prevent), then all they have to do is charge you with some embarrassing crime like "sex with underage minor", to force you to waive that right.
Not like the KGB of old would tell a reporter the truth when they ask if the nameless detained man in a gulag somewhere requested his name be reported and let them blow open the fact that the government is arresting non-criminals for political purposes. I mean in that situation, Soviets already knew--it's not a perfect analogy. They'll just say he exercised his right to privacy.
It only works if the announcement of identity is public by default, unfortunately. Neither option is great at all, but I don't think I'm qualified to come up with a better plan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/world/asia/china-fan-bing...
Get arrested in connection with some well talked-about crime, but were released or found innocent at trial? Doesn't matter, you're still guilty in the eyes of the public. Hell, look at jury boxes in the US - you as a defendant are assumed guilty against the spirit of our constitution, because people suck.
Either we as a society need to fix our fucked up perceptions, or we need to have a serious discussion about the right to privacy up until the point that a verdict is delivered. Unfortunately, there's no evidence that we are going to fix the former in a timely manner.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/world/europe/gatwick-airp...
I think it's a very British whoopsie, they're plastered over the papers and they didn't do anything.
Absolutely, along with all of these clowns who are perpetuating the chaos.
Good ol' British press logic. I wonder where they get their journalists from. Is there an education to be a heartless bastard with no sense of ethics? Or do they train them in-house?
I wish I was joking.
Really sad - I'm guessing that as drone users they will now receive the inevitable nut-job drone hatred.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/23/gatwick-dron...
But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to."
-- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Humbert_Wolfe , 1930
The lack of ethics is definitely imposed from the top, by people like Rupert Murdoch and Piers Morgan.
Id like that to be the case as it's more interesting, but in this case I suspect a couple of pranksters having a laugh amongst themselves.
Perhaps the saddest part of this whole business is knowing that there are so few British journalists committed enough to get murdered: you could silence most just by breaking the fingers they use to do select all, copy, paste. Nobody’s going to flay you to death just for barking offers of money through the letterboxes of recently bereaved parents, or trawling for offensive tweets with your free hand. Of course, there are a lot of good journalists. Perhaps journalist is now just too broad a term, in much the way the word actor encompasses everyone from Meryl Streep to Sooty.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/22/frankie-boy...
The press could have been responsible for the two of them walking free even if there were evidence they had done it.
So, does that now make them perfect suspects?
For me a "perfect suspects" is a hard core hobbyist or someone who does it for a living.
What's the next step after perfecting a hobby or being bored because it's a forced job other than taking it to the next level?
Given the limited info it wasn't just a kid popping a drone over given how hard it seemed to be to catch them so that leaves someone who knows what they are doing.
Who cares about "social death" over prison time? If anything it makes them heroes to many/most people, a good FU to the system.
Is it possible that this has been done by someone within the police or intelligence community in order to create a pretext for pushing through drone licensing laws?
Though, the accidental explanation is arguably more ominous/terrifying. It reminds of the episode "Autofac" from the "Electric Dreams" series.
I bet you could get cover for Gatwick with TDoA equipment for less than $10k easy, say another $10k to have it installed.
Hell, you could probably get some amateur radio people to install it for free, but paying $10k is more CYA.
Anyway, my point is that now they sure as hell will prepare, so next time (well... give it a year for them to get their thumbs out of their asses) it will not work as well.
One of the article was giving a £16M figure for a 6 pack of the Israel Dome system.
I'm saying the hardware is yes about $10k for sufficient coverage, COTS, and maybe you're right that a proven company would charge 100k and up. But you could hire someone competent for $300k/y to just implement it, and then deploy everywhere. (300k would get you someone competent enough)
But yes of course with aerospace certification needed it's... bad
Drones and UAV can cost more than $10k in hardware alone. I'm not familiar enough with the sensors and the technology on the detection side but wouldn't assume that anything comes cheap.
There are no product selling in the $10k price range. You will need to go through procurement with numerous sales meeting and demonstrations to make a sale, which automatically push the price to $100k and above.
It's low volume, meaning few units to recoup the development costs. Let's keep in mind that it takes a lot more than a guy in a year to develop a product.
I said TDoA, not radar.
> I'm not familiar enough with the sensors and the technology on the detection side but wouldn't assume that anything comes cheap
I'm not assuming.
But it could also just be some random asshole. There are a lot of random assholes all over the place.
I await the out of court settlement with interest
I wonder if it could be a government researcher worried about a lack of funding/preparation for this kind of attack (similar to the FBI's conclusion regarding the anthrax attacks)?
It doesn't seem like a protest, so unless it's economic terrorism or a state-backed attack, what else is it likely to be? A former pilot with a grudge?
Although I have no idea if it is real.