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Comment by pj_mukh | Hacker News Reader

Just as in Gatwick before this, the police and the airport are not able to produce even grainy footage of a drone that is supposedly "buzzing" the tower.

Gatwick reported "67 sightings", but couldn't confirm if some (all?) were their own drones [1]. And now Parliament is tabling new powers for the police [2]. Was there ever any evidence presented that there was ever a drone present? Is there any evidence that this was actually a drone at Heathrow?

Are we sure this wasn't a plastic bag again [3]?

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/29/gatwick-drone-si...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/08/police-ha...

[3] https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/22/11486256/drone-collision-...

P.S: I'm insinuating terrible preparedness to verify drone sightings leading to wonky regulations, not a conspiratorial power grab

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I flew out of Gatwick a few days after the supposed drone sighting(s). I saw a hawk hovering over a runway, which made me wonder whether someone who can't tell a hawk from a drone raised the alarm and all other sightings were of subsequent police drone activity.

Edit: it was a kestrel for those of you who are ornithologically inclined.

Given the authoritarianism of the current Prime Minister, as well as her history as Home Secretary, I'm not sure an accusation of conspiratorial power grab would be particularly controversial.

Since I began to become aware of politics as a late teenager in the mid 80's, there was conspiracies of power grabs that mostly all came true in hindsight.

It doesn't seem controversial to say that nothing has changed other than improved technology to further their power grabbing goals.

IMO the odds of this being a mass hysteria event are at least 3:1 versus an actual drone being intentionally flown to disrupt air traffic.

I would say it’s less likely an intentional misinformation campaign to get new police powers, but even that is more likely than an intentional drone attack, again just my opinion.

It’s absolutely incumbent on the authorities to provide incontrovertible evidence of an illegal drone. The fact that they launched a bunch of their own drones in response is sheer lunacy.

I have a first hand report from someone who works at gatwick that there was a drone hovering near the control tower for a while but I'll admit there seems a shortage of photos.

The question posed is not whether anyone reported seeing drones, but whether the reports are accurate. The fact that you got a first-hand report personally doesn't mean it's any more reliable than the first-hand reports the police received.

The claim that they saw it hovering "for a while" actually makes this particular claim less believable. They witnessed it hovering by the control tower for an extended period of time but never bothered to get their phone out?

This is what I find astonishing.

If a car is on fire in a normal street, half the people just stop to take photos or start live streaming it (this happened in Melbourne recently).

How did no one pull out their phone and take any pictures?

People takes photos of airports and planes all the time because it’s so different from day-to-day stuff.

It seems implausibly unlikely that both no one took photos and no one shared them online.

Aren’t ATCs not allowed to have their cellphones in the tower?

They have to be off. But Controllers still Snapchat at times.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/268495-rep...

But more to the point, the poster I was replying to did not claim that the witness was working in the control tower. Merely that they observed a drone hovering near the control tower. Of course, they might have been far enough away that they couldn't capture a photo. That would indicate that they likely were far enough away that they couldn't definitively ID a drone, too.

The problem is that once people are told there is a drone they will look for one, and some of them will see drones that aren't there. This could easily be triggered by one genuine drone sighting.

It might be better if people aren't told about the drone in the first place. Of course they will demand to know why their flights are delayed, but they might be better off if the hysteria is prevented while the authorities go look for the drone.

The same phenomenon could be witnessed during the right wing terror attack at Munich OEZ. There was only one shooter active in a rather distant part of Munich, but there were a LOT of reports of shooting sounds from all over the city. One panicked dude jumped through a glass bar window for safety and injured himself, and cops had basically the city on lockdown as they had to verify and clear ever more locations.

It was the probably most stressful event in younger Munich history for both public and police/EMS.

Accurate except for: "right wing terror attack". WTF man? It was just one kid going postal.

Read their bio. They are propagandist.

> Read their bio. They are propagandist.

Not really, or do you accuse the independent reviewers for the City of Munich government to be propagandists? https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/amoklauf-oez-muenchen-1...

> Accurate except for: "right wing terror attack". WTF man? It was just one kid going postal.

Three external reviewers hired by the city government disagree: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/amoklauf-oez-muenchen-1...

The only one not agreeing is the Bavarian government because they do not want to admit that after the Oktoberfestattentat and the NSU there has been more right-wing terrorism in Bavaria.

In addition, dubbing terrorists and "school shooters" simply as having "gone postal" is about the most ignorant framing that's possible as it totally ignores the factors that led to the attack (be it mobbing, feeling "sexually underserved" or Nazi propaganda or Islamist propaganda).

We used to have better name for this sightings, "UFO", now it's "drone" ;) I'm curious of near ground UFO signting numbers, they must have dropped down to zero, even if they're controlled by little green/gray things from other planets.

They were not all of their drones, because reports were coming in before the police had launched any drones.

Among the people reporting drone sightings before the police turned up at Gatwick were pilots

Remember when a pilot at Heathrow said a drone crashed into his plane a few years ago? After an investigation and lack of any evidence, I think the consensus was that it was probably a plastic bag.

* the people reporting drone sightings before the police turned up at Gatwick were pilots*

Considering that a passenger jet on final approach has a speed > 300 km/h and that a household drone is something like 30 cm wide you wonder how many of these drones were in fact hovering kestrels on the hunt for voles. How can you distinguish the two?

Kestrels tend to not be lit up after sunset. Also note this was not a household drone, police believe it was to "industrial specification" based on visual description from ATC staff who saw it. (That's also likely as a lot of drones e.g. DJI have geofencing around airports)

Kestrels also call a lot. We have a kestrel family on a tall chimney nearby.

We must remain vigilant against deadly drones equipped with advanced holographic cloaking devices, making them appear as ordinary plastic bags!

Britain is covered in CCTV. Surely if there's a drone it will be visible in camera footage?

Yes, CCTVs in busy streets, sometimes in shop entrances. Not in Random places in the middle of an airport.

In a world with terrorism, I promise you that every inch of that airport is covered with CCTV feeds monitored by probably armed security.

Fences, entrances, etc. and pointing at ground level - sure. Middle of the field, pointing high enough to get lots of sky, and with resolution high enough to tell a bird and a drone apart? - unlikely. But I'm happy to be proven wrong. Quick searches show even the external, globe cameras pointing primarily down and with the mount limiting any sky view.

Also my comment was responding to how Britain is different in CCTVs. Standard airport monitoring is going to be similar, regardless of country.

> In a world with terrorism, I promise you that every inch of that airport is covered with CCTV feeds monitored by probably armed security.

It's really not.

Sounds like that's the first step...

CCTV cameras tend to point down.

Does Heathrow bear a resposibility to prove anything to you or any other random person on the internet? You seem to be insinuating some conspiracy by asking vague questions.

Err, yes, yes they do if it's going to be used as justification to pass sweeping new police powers.

Isn't the responsibility on the law makers who are using the issue at the airport as justification, not the airport itself? Heathrow isn't somehow trying to pass laws themselves are they? (Caveat: Maybe I just don't understand how British law works?)

The responsibility is on the airport to confirm sightings.

The responsibility on the police is to confirm sightings before arresting people for flying drones over the airport (the police arrested a couple for flying drones over Gatwick when there was no evidence of drones over Gatwick).

The lawmakers should support their power grab with evidence but they are more interested in grabbing power.

This happened today. Can we not even wait for the incident to conclude and for them to get some planes off the ground before we start blowing the conspiracy whistle?

They bear a responsibility to the flying public (i.e. us).

if they're going to use it as a justification to pass new powers, then yes they absolutely do

They do have a responsibility to intending passengers who are being inconvenienced and put out of pocket solely on the basis of a corporation being over-reactive.

There's really no disadvantage to airport authorities acting like this and only positives for them in protecting themselves from financial risk in the case that there is a drone. Plus, perhaps new powers will be passed that prevent them having to actually invest in anti-drone technology. Double-win!

How can you say there’s no disadvantage?

Even if their contracts with airlines don’t lead to penalties then an airport that gains a reputation for drone shutdowns will lose passenger and airline business over time.

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