Aerial photography ban proposed for all but government
agbeat.com
agbeat.com
Government should never get a pass on a prohibition just because it's the government. Au contraire: save for very narrow instances (ex.: nuclear weapons) handled with intense care and oversight, government agents should be subject to any and all restrictions inflicted upon the populace at large. People have rights and delegate them to government as granted powers, not the other way around.
Most people would agree that possession of nuclear weapons should be prohibited. Insofar as other sovereign governments do have them and threaten to use them, and insofar as on rare occasion their use may arguably save more lives than non-use, most people would also agree their government may be exempted from an otherwise universal prohibition on possession of nuclear weapons. Hence the purpose of using the subject as a "code phrase" to make a point without getting derailed. Seemed an obvious, simple, and understandable literary tool at the time.
Yes, the issue is somewhat moot as, until recently, nuclear weapons were something only governments had the resources to construct, maintain, and deliver. That civilian ownership is night unto impossible should have been obviously irrelevant to the point being made. That private manufacture IS becoming viable for the ultra rich (legal and societal prohibitions aside) makes the "but only governments are capable" point moot in turn.
If I presented my personal views on individual civilian possession of nuclear weapons, a flame war would ensue with a great many impassioned respondents failing to hold any interest in understanding my view.
In all levels, from local to state to federal, their constituency consists exclusively of special interest groups whom represent businesses at large.
Consumers are left in the cold with regards to influencing policy since they are disorganized and (more importantly) they lack the political and economic will to exercise control over their government.
Consumers rarely (if ever) contribute to campaigns, lobby, or propose legislation themselves.
If you do understand it then your proposal is simply a pipe dream since this iron shield is impenetrable to individual citizenry.
BTW: you're confusing "should" with "does". I'm quite aware of how the American government works, and realize it places self-interest above even lobbyists.
Possibly because they think of themselves as consumers rather than citizens.
But if you start thinking about yourself as a proud citizen, a part of a "community", you might feel a napoleonic desire to force others to do something for a "good of everyone". This does not end up well. You may become a president.
I'll stick with a peaceful consumer perspective, thank you.
This kind of attitude is... deep breath... calm down...
Well, it's bullshit, plain and simple.
I played a minor part in passing a law in Italy:
http://www.governo.it/Notizie/Presidenza/dettaglio.asp?d=690...
And I don't know if you've noticed over the past few days, but Italy is not exactly an easy place to get things done, with a smoothly functioning political system. Especially not for a foreigner with no connections and without oodles of money to spend on the issue.
By comparison, it's far easier for people to get involved in politics in the US if they want to work at it.
This sort of self-defeating "woe is us" attitude is garbage that will get you nowhere. If you're willing to do more than sit around carping online, there are plenty of ways of getting involved and making a difference.
You can influence legislation yourself easily. Hang out at the state legislature building with a well-researched, snappy proposal, and hang around trying to talk to legislators or their chief of staff. Its best if you have a list of people who support your proposal. You will get heard. You might not win, but odds are that if you don't it'll not be because some big company stuffed some campaign fund with a big check, but because they simply called up a legislator and said: "this will cost us jobs."
People campaigning for environmental laws somehow manage to have a lot of influence, yet they have none of the bargaining advantages of the tech industry. They don't have a ton of money like the tech industry, and half of politicians and voters have an intrinsic distrust of environmentalists because they think it's God's will to pillage the earth's resources. Yet somehow we continue to make progress on environmental issues.
The system isn't ideal, but it's isn't broken. Rather, techies are lazy, entitled, and arrogant. The very thought that their beliefs aren't universal, that legislators don't consider their opinions plated in gold sends them into a tizzy. The very idea that they may have to get down into the muck and engage in the political process with everyone else sounds of being beneath them.
We both know that we know the whole chain of threats. Doesn't my demand for your money equate with physical violence? If not, how short should be the chain of such persuasion until the gunpoint, so it's considered equal to threat of physical violence?
But they will get their money, one way or another. That point stands.
Assuming "him" is the government, no, he won't, unless you try to stop him violently. The government doesn't kill people who don't pay taxes. Your analogy doesn't work.
The Supreme Court said "Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife." In these cases, heavily armed agents raided homes for want of $200 in NFA manufacturing taxes; whether heavily-armored men crashing thru windows carrying automatic weapons actually fired the first shot, or baited the occupants into "threatening behavior", is irrelevant: the government killed people who didn't pay taxes.
The difference here is that I do not propose killing you because I have no idea how can that be justified (even in a self-defense case - I'll just have no choice, but when there is no choice, there is no capacity for being moral or immoral). But others think they can justify the violence and build the whole concept of justice on top of it. Which is rather immoral because their justification is very far from being 100% logical, solid and accepted by everyone.
Most democratic governments manage to work just fine without threatening to kill anyone. The death penalty is the exception rather than the rule in civilized societies.
Also, you will find that a vast majority of people accept the use of force by government in the vast majority of cases where it actually happens in practice (which is to stop violent crime).
Yes, government uses force in other situations. And usually, that is followed by a public outcry when it becomes known. And when the people actually agree that this use of force is inappropriate, laws do tend to change - see the history of civil disobedience around the world as an example.
What is relevant is a threat of murder when police/court requires you to do something. Pay a fee, pay taxes, go to jail etc. And this threat of murder is very real and is used in enforcement of every single law. Government never threatens you with ostracism and defamation. It always threatens you with death if you do not obey.
Obviously, if you barricade yourself in with machine guns or more, it might come to a stand-off where you are killed. But ask yourself this: If it comes to that, how many people will still think you were acting reasonably relative to any standard?
The only way you could possibly talk about a threat of murder by government (in countries that do not have the death penalty) is if you're essentially saying: "There is a possibility for me to behave in a way that is so far out of the social norm and involves my own use of physical violence to such an extent that some government agent may end up killing me. This is what I mean by 'threat of murder'."
But then the term "threat of murder" becomes entirely meaningless, because by that standard, virtually every person in the world threatens you with murder every day. Think about it: There is a possibility for you to behave in a way that is so far out of the social norm and involves your use of physical violence to such an extent that any random stranger may end up killing you - in attempted self-defense against your own violence.
So: Do you believe every person in the world is latently threatening you with murder? Because if you truly, genuinely believe that government generally threatens you with murder (independently of a death penalty), then you must logically hold that belief as well.
Now to be fair, I think I have some understanding of where you are coming from. I got acquainted with some far leftist/anarchist groups during my undergraduate. This feeling of being up against an all-powerful and overreaching evil can be a powerful social glue. This is what they felt, and I suppose it affected me as well, though to a smaller extent. But I grew up.
I sincerely hope for your own sanity that there is some part of your mind that recognizes how ridiculously extremist you previously stated position is.
You say I'm extending definition of "threat of murder" to everyone. That's true, but it's not their fault. If we both have a thing called "court", then even if I don't want myself to inflict violence on you, I'm not sure you won't use the court against me. Since the court has the last word and all the guns in the world, I have no choice, but to protect myself by either fleeing from the jurisdiction or using the court against you. It's absolutely the same with patents: Apple and Google are buying up patents because if one of them does not, they will be damaged by others. You could blame them only if they had voluntarily established such a destructive system for themselves, but they did not. Patent cross-licensing is an evidence that people do not like fighting with each other: by doing cross-licensing two entities expect to reduce amount of stupid fight. Of course, human nature is not perfect and some people who are born into this system, feel they have a full moral right to use it for their benefit. E.g. recent war of Apple against Samsung is mostly proactive use of violence that was sold via patents. But even here, the problem does not begin with Apple, but with those who controls the guns (Apple only hired some of them).
Without state some people can still voluntarily fund an agency with guns, courts, licensing and patents. But it will be very different from today's situation. Because today the violence is paid by taxpayers, not the actual users. So when some army of lawyers wants to press you for copying a file, it is not them who pay for prosecutors, lawmakers, prisons, police, propaganda, army and huge bureaucracy. Lawyers spend their salary not on guns and prisons, but on iPods and spa. So how about trying to build an army of policemen using private funds? What would be the business model? Who would risk putting money in the enterprise?
If you seriously fear that someone could earn a $billion and then risk all of it to build a James Bond-style corporation of evil, then you for sure cannot advocate the state - a monopoly on violence funded by forcible extraction instead of voluntary investment. Did you notice that all of evil guys in James Bond movies were either government-funded or absolutely economically impossible (how would you gather 1000 engineers to build a secret nuclear weapon without massive public propaganda that military spendings are good for "society")? All real big mafia structures exist with governmental support. And the bigger they are - the more support they have. Actually, the government is simply a name for the biggest organized thugs in a given region.
Ultimately, it boils down to existence of choice: those who have no choice are not moral agents. If someone attacks me, I will defend myself, but I cannot justify any violence and I don't need to - I simply have no choice. If we both are in a situation when court ruling will put one of us in jail, we have no choice but to play this game. Are we morally responsible for this? Not as much, as the prosecutor, who sure has a choice to not threaten either of us. Equally, if someone steals a wallet from you, and you do not expect any violent threat from this guy, would you think it's morally justified to catch him and put in jail? If he cannot give you wallet back without you breaking his neck, would you prefer to let him go and make sure he never steals again (using doors, locks, reputation, insurance, ostracism), or will you threaten him with physical violence? If latter, would you institutionalize this threat of violence (and accept a risk of getting hit by it), or you'd rather not give anyone ultimate power and seek more preventive solutions?
If you can hire a protection agency voluntarily, would you require maximum transparency of its operations and other proofs that they cannot kill people arbitrarily and would immediately lose a lot of money in case everyone withdraws their contracts? If you want to be an armed guard, you sure will have to prove to everyone how they will punish you effectively in case of a corruption. Without such proof, no one will hire you. If you would require such transparency and strict controls as a customer of protection agency, why is it okay to have a government who was not established with your consent and which cannot be affected directly and immediately in case of misbehavior, but on contrary is forcing you to fund it anyway? It is huge logical mistake to fear a violent guy in a free market and at the same time allow a system of monopoly of such violence that surely will attract people who'd love to use such power.
So it's okay to be locked up, but not murdered? What's the difference if you now act only in a very prescribed manner? What's the joy of life when there's no negotiation? It's only better than death relative to a chance of getting out. But then no one will revert the permanent psychological damage.
People generally do not like violence, do not like courts, police, guns and prisons. Only few people are happily using state violence for their benefit. Others simply have no choice: if you don't go to court, your opponent may drag you in. Or you cannot protect yourself because only official police has a right to do that, so you have to agree with their terms without much negotiation. In cases where people have no choice, there is not capacity for morality and I cannot blame them for using courts. It's still the state who has capacity not to use violence and hence can be viewed as moral or immoral.
Think of it in terms of ability to negotiate: when protecting yourself against theft, you can negotiate about installing locks and protection, about face-control, reputation points, ostracism etc. When you have a universal system of violence, there is no negotiation. You simply beg the court for appealing to you. They have much more power over you. Yes, it can be nominally limited, but not by you anyway. There is never a negotiated set of rules and protective measures against corruption that you have agreed to. You are simply born into the existing power structure and have to comply.
As for being born into an existing power structure: That's true, but inevitable. Complaining about that is like complaining about the laws of physics: utterly useless and, in some sense, a sign of immaturity.
By this I do not mean to say that just accepting the status quo is a sign of maturity. It is important to point out overreaches and to fight against them. But you have to understand that there will always be some kind of power structure, and what we have in most Western countries is extremely good when viewed in perspective.
I take issue with your claim that people do not like courts, police, and so on. The vast majority of people benefit from the fact that they can go through their lives without spending many brain cycles on their security. That may be an unusual way of phrasing it, but most people do seem happy about that.
If you are born as black slave girl in 1825 and have a lot of difficulties because of your origin, skin color, and gender, is it "overreacting" to say "slavery is absolutely immoral and beating wives and children is immoral too"? Is it moral to have 50% less slavery and brutality, but immoral to have 51% less slavery because it's too extreme?
Yes, people would like to not waste brain cycles on the security. And there are different ways to do so if you allow competition in that area. E.g. the government does not tell you how strong should be your door lock, therefore you have choice to buy the lock you like and not "waste brain cycles" on it. Same with computer security - you choose a password, stick with it and feel secure. If, on the other hand, government punishes choice and forces people to accept whatever police they set up, then people have no choice, but to accept it and further save their brain cycles. But you cannot derive from that situation that they have chosen this method because they are accepting it. It's like saying that you choose to pay your taxes because of the gov "services". If people were choosing to pay taxes, why need policemen to force them to?
Do you really believe that people somehow come together, debate and make collective decision? In reality, some people who want to debate about, say, taxes, come together and discuss where to spend them to (e.g. roads vs. military). Those who don't like taxes at all are not invited to the discussion because "they are unrealistic". Then, the first group decides somehow to do something, comes back to the second group and forces them to pay taxes "because people decided to". This is a mob rule and not justice in any sense. Do 99 people have a moral right to take away from 1 in a situation when 49 should not take the same from 51? Compare this with corporate bylaws: majority of shareholders may decide over the minority, right? But the difference here is that all of them came together and subscribed to these rules voluntarily beforehand, can exit at any time and are never threatened by murder, jail etc.
Imagine a society without use of violence, without any single "law", but only with contracts, network of dispute mediators and ostracism. Private guards will of course exist too, but they'll be paid only when they are transparent and heavily insured against. And will be used against rare random psychos. In this situation, the "common laws" will come out of negotiated mutual agreements between all the clients of mediators done through mediators. And the punishment for not fulfilling your obligations is ostracism: mediators will work on propagating info about your misbehavior to others, so you cannot participate in economic life until you either prove that you are not as bad, as your stupid mediator (in which case he quickly loses all customers), or follow the suggestion to work out your debt voluntarily. For those who do not want to waste their braincycles there is a simple rule: you can secure any contract where it is possible to prove who did what. If your contract is such that no mediator can prove to others that you failed or succeeded, that no one will protect that contract. Mediators and insurers will of course work together to give you the biggest choice of things you can be insured against, but in exchange you cannot have contracts that violate existing client's operations. E.g. you can secure your factory-building contract, but if some guys around are already protected against the pollution, you have to either pay them, or avoid pollution.
So the "laws" would naturally shape themselves in terms of actual, tangible agreements between particular people. No one could say that he was "born" into all these laws. You would only be born into your family, while the adults in your family have choice to re-negotiate the agreements, move out and back etc. (If no one is re-negotiating at the moment, it's because the current state is optimal and everybody's happy.) And as you grow up, you will be able to negotiate and re-negotiate anything. The only prerequisite is absence of physical violence or effective protection against it.
If the "no arial photography" law passes, flying a quadcopter around gathering imagery becomes illegal. When police show up to fine or arrest you for doing so, they do it in a manner & reputation implying physical violence will follow if you don't comply and persist in violating the law.
Ergo the question for legislators & citizens is: why is arial photography deemed harmful enough that doing so warrants threat, even invocation, of physical violence based on simple engaging in that activity outside of any other warranted factor? (To compare: why does NYC go so far as threaten, even carry out, physical violence against a restaurant owner for selling a 20oz soda?)
Viewed this way, one is reminded of the vital imperative of freedom & liberty. It makes sense to ask why a government is willing to resort to physical violence for enforcement, rather than "no harm done, let it go".
The idea behind government is that 1) it is occasionally necessary to impose some course of action on individuals or groups, 2) force or threat of force is a necessary component of said imposition, and 3) making the decision to use force is safer (under the assumption that there is in fact some 'correct' course of action) if you first discuss that decision with as many people as possible than if you decide by yourself.
Whether or not that all holds would appear to be up for debate.
As for the rest, people believing something certainly does provide evidence for that thing the strength of which scales with the number of people believing, if not nearly linearly. It depends on which people too ;) Fortunately we have plenty of other sources of evidence to base our opinions on (and remember that sources of evidence aren't necessarily independent; one can screen off another). Whether or not those other sources are leveraged in group decision making is one of the things that would appear to be up for debate.
That's true, but even though all laws are enforced by violence, there's still a notable difference between laws that prohibit violence ("don't murder or else we will use violence against you") and tax laws ("give us money or we will use violence against you").
You could also consider a well-funded lawsuit as the "use of force" by a private party.
So no, it's not moral to have a well-funded lawsuit by a private party because it replaces negotiation with force. Unless this private party has no choice by do so to protect itself from an equal threat from counter-party. In which case at least one or both of them are not moral agents because they have little choice. Only the court has choice not to enforce any ruling, so the court is a moral agent and can be said to be moral or immoral.
One of the first things that often happens when someone is planing a public or private development is that developer/architect/engineer commissions an aerial photo of the project area. It allows for more up-to-date photography of that specific (and surrounding) area than may be available from USGS or the state's GIS office and can help to identify and address any number of environmental concerns that come up in the permitting process.
Yeah, government users are unaffected, but I have a box and multiple DVD's full of aerial photography commissioned by private clients. Development would have been constrained on those projects without those photos.
We need better small government advocates.
Why is burden of proof is not on me? Because I don't stop the discussion by taking out a gun. If you don't agree with me you are always able to go away, or tell everybody to not talk to me because I'm not nice to others. No one kills anyone, everybody is free to agree to disagree. But whenever somebody gets angry that I disagree and takes out weapons, then it's up to him to explain why he is doing that.
Because you're arguing that representatives of the government's executive branch should not be able to use force to defend themselves when threatened with force. That violates the golden rule, which, being core to many moralities, places the burden of proof on you.
Example 1. Everyone thinks the Earth is flat, but I don't think so. Since everyone's senses indicate that it is flat and my idea is not self-evident, it is me who must provide sensual evidence. E.g. by showing that the horizon is limited and ships go under.
Example 2. Many people think the god exists, but senses do not provide any common (objective) perception. More than that, if you show them that by behaving badly you don't get mysteriously evaporated, it's now their job to prove how and why the god exists.
In other words, me and other people see a lot of evidence that some people kill other people, but we do not see a solid reason why some have a right to do so, while others do not. Then someone comes and says "it is democracy". Very well, but it is very far from being satisfactory answer and it has even more moral questions. E.g. how sudden increase of 50% audience by 1 person reverts their morality? Or what happens if older voters died and new were born? What are the "borders" within which you can use democracy, but outside - it's another jurisdiction? All of this stuff is 100% imaginary and outside of realm of sensual evidence. So it's your job to prove that these imaginary concepts have any ground. Quarks are imaginary, we cannot feel them directly or indirectly. So it's up to physicists to prove to anyone else that this imaginary model is useful at organizing all their real sensual knowledge in a coherent manner. And if they derive from quark theory that they can kill people - they have to prove it first.
No you can't, because I have not acted violently against you.
The state will not act violently toward a citizen in excess of the violence that citizen has displayed toward it: the government will not kill you unless you resist with deadly force its lesser efforts at punishment.
You must also keep in mind that violence need not be physical. (If you ignore non-physical violence; e.g. pollution or speeding or libel; you will have a very undesirable society in which to live.) Laws (purportedly; actuality may be less ideal) exist to prevent what society at large has deemed to be some form of violent intrusion on their safety/privacy/liberty/etc. Therefore, if you have broken a (just) law against some person, you have committed some form of violence against them, and violence (generally in the form of moving you from your home to a prison cell) is justified in their defense.
No they don't. Not at all. You're making stuff up.
Ignoring extrajudicial killings ordered by the Obama administration (which I believe to be immoral and illegal) and states with the death penalty, the government does not have the legal right to kill citizens for breaking the law.
If you violently try to resist arrest, yes, you will likely be at least tasered (best case) or shot (worst case). But it's disingenuous to ask for a government which does not respond violently when threatened with violence.
Or they use it as a general catchphrase to abuse the slightly schizophrenic attitude of most voters, who want less government spending in the abstract, but will actually favor more (or equal to current) government spending when asked about individual programs or departments of government.
Suggestion: try to prove that the people who are identified with "the government" have different moral rights than you. Why they can have nukes and guns, while you cannot. And before you have a perfect conclusive proof, abstain from using any physical violence upon anybody around you. If you find a person, who will be convinced that the policeman can shoot at him when he runs away, while the person cannot shoot back, then you can shoot that person. But do not shoot those who are not so much convinced yet.
Which government was that, and how'd they outdo the Soviets?
I'm not saying it was even possible to have anarchy back in 1796: the slavery and wife ownership was okay. But today we can learn from history and understand that it is possible to employ non-violent methods of conflict resolution using existing total connectivity. With internet, cheap and strong crypto, Bitcoin and social networks you can securely notify anyone you want about misbehavior of someone and use ostracism instead of prisons.
Crazy bills championed by people that either don't understand them, or are just posturing are semi-common. Just because it has been proposed, doesn't mean anything.
There've been too many cases where it seemed this way, then the bill passed (or was only narrowly defeated), for us to ignore anything that appears to have no chance of passing.
I think we'll be okay.
--cynic
This could be a ruse to get some iterations done - they start with a drastic one to measure the reactionary sentiment to see what they can get away with.
This is already 100% in place and has been for a long time.
I can order a very wide variety of quadcopters online, or build my own - including a camera gimbals with zero interference from any governmental agency.
These can be flown anywhere right now.
If you want a true "done", that is: something that flys autonomously, that you don't have to watch, you need to apply for a Certificate of Authorization (COA) from the FAA.
The people who are allowed to apply for these are major universities, and government contractors.
Here is a list: http://www.scribd.com/doc/114639754/COA-Sponsor-List-as-rele...
I guess you're correct that we should be careful about the lexicon we use to describe these things. Personally, I don't even like the term Drone.
I see it as an attempt to obfuscate the human element, especially when talking about military operations: i.e. they have a pilot who pulls the trigger - he is just not physically in the weapons delivery platform.
This is a very important, yet very delicate, area that needs to be extremely well deliberated over in the next short while.
I am not confident that politicians have the foresight and testicular fortitude to really make appropriate choices in this matter - especially given the vultures poised on the sidelines with watering mouths over the potential to sell such systems for domestic spying, control and TIA.
Completely agree. I don't know if there are any weaponized UAVs that are capable of fully-autonomous flight, (or if fully[1] autonomous strikes would even be allowed), but I do know that there are fully-autonomous surveillance "drones". Being pilot-less, to me, fulfills the term "drone".
[1]:Practically fully autonomous in the way that a guided missile is. Tell it where to go, and it figures out how to get there.
De facto, many people are already flying "true drones" without any authorization, as it's practically available not to "major universities and government contractors" but as a hobby for a teenager.
What is their crime and the currently prescribed punishment for doing this without government authorization?
Seems like a poor distinction to me - "identifiable" by what? A human eyeball, infra-red, multi-spectral analysis?
This would allow imaging of forests, fields, and streams, but not man-made objects like roads, bridges, dams, or the more navigable waters (might contain humans).
Perhaps the sponsor expects image-creators to blur out anything that might be a human or man-made object?
How would this affect the usage of self-driving cars? You could image a deer crossing the road, but not a human? (Note the prohibition is on image creation, not publication.)
I wonder how much of a stretch it would be to imagine some court ruling that trees could be considered man-made objects if they were planted by humans.
I would say this law would be a pain for farmers and ranchers that are taking the next steps in technology. Plus architects would get caught eventually.
It wouldn't. Puzzlingly, this law seeks to ban aerial drone surveillance while explicitly allowing any surveillance, by person or drone, conducted by a device or person supported by the ground.
So an aerial paparazzi drone would be illegal. But a veritable army of paparazzi ground drones, even ringing a property and photographing every inch of the same people and/or structures, would be legal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
A 21st-century Weber might instead identify the state as the entity claiming a monopoly on surveillance.
Where? What law? They're giving out the death penalty for misdemeanors now?
All laws should be enacted with asking whether such a grave (albeit extreme) consequence is preferable over not enacting that law. Prohibition of arial photography isn't.
You'd be better off not watching.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/rise-of-the-drones.htm...
Ignoring a problem usually doesn't make it less of a problem.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Transparent-Society-Technology-Bet...
And thankfully there's lots of hope in that (semi-old) David Brin essay. Technology is a multi-faceted dice and although the government is very powerful and lobbyist manage to get ever more restrictive laws passed each day, they simply cannot stop technological progress.
"Police and thieves in the streets, scaring the nation with their guns and ammunitions" are getting filmed, photographed and arrested thanks to technology (even if the government desperately tries to ban that).
There's hope and David Brin saw it a long time ago.
I live on a small farm in (obviously) a rural area. There are people whose business model consists of coming to the front door to show you a small aerial photo of your house and asking if you want to buy the framed 18"x30" version.
Not my cup of tea, but has it even begun to cross the minds of legislators in the mostly rural state of New Hampshire that there are many legitimate businesses that need to do aerial photography?
Just when you thought you'd finally seen the bottom of the stupidity cup, you find there's still more to go!
Crazy to think that it would be banned, but the map right next to that - which has an outline of every building and labels - wouldn't be. Which in turn makes me wonder whether this will give reason to ban maps of school campuses too. After all, school shootings happen so the solution could be to ban maps of schools :|
making drone - probable talk with FAA
making anti-drone rocket - probable vigorous discussion with FAA, SWAT, ATF, DoD, and FBI with vacation in Caribbean
Saving that I will just laser your optics. I think disrupting technologies are orders of magnitude cheaper and more mobile than any government spec surveillance technology.
Arming any type of aircraft is going to get you sent away for a very long time and lasers are a particular no-no with the FAA. We'll skip the basic "willful destruction of government property" and move right up into all the laws based on military grade weapons and terrorism.
Now as for the poli e response - the day kids nicking cars are arrested for terrorism by the FBI is the day I get out my old placards and march on parliament. The old saw about "when they came for me there was no one left to speak out" does hold resonance.
As to the arming issues - you are not arming an aircraft, just flying it into another unmanned vehicle. To stop it monitoring my illicit drug factories. I suspect most people who proactively want to brim down police drones have activities that will get longer jail terms than drone destruction.
Overall, I stand by my contention that when its ten fold cheaper to attack a drone than build a drone, airspace is about to get very contested - FAA operates on consent of all concerned - when the airspace can be violated for a few hundred bucks, things will change. Maybe not for the better.
I am not saying this is good, just likely. Then again maybe our cities will be peaceful and policing by consent will be the order of the day.
Edit: tidying up
In other words, "intent".
It's not trolling just something I have noticed growing on HN
Oh and where do you live ple
I trust (and know) the people in my neighborhood more than I trust the Ministry of Truth.
This is a state-level proposal in one of the smallest states in the United States. All of the comments about the "federal" or "United States" government in this thread apparently aren't based on reading the fine article. Moreover, the text of the proposed bill, "A person is guilty of a class A misdemeanor if such person knowingly creates or assists in creating an image of the exterior of any residential dwelling in this state where such image is created by or with the assistance of a satellite, drone, or any device that is not supported by the ground. This prohibition shall not apply where the image does not reveal forms identifiable as human beings or man-made objects. In this paragraph, 'dwelling' means any building, structure, or portion thereof which is occupied as, or designed or intended for occupancy as, a residence by one or more individuals," could reasonably be construed as a privacy protection. (That's the context I would expect from New Hampshire, where the state motto is "Live free or die.") The first person quoted as a specific opponent of the bill in this article (which is more balanced than the comments in this thread) is a real estate photographer. Well, yeah, maybe I as an individual don't want multiple real estate agencies flying planes over my house to take photos, possibly when I am in my yard in view of airplanes and helicopters. Reasonable minds could take either side of this bill, but don't react to the link-bait headline, but to the actual text of the bill and its context among current business practice and other legislation.
From the website's description of itself:
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Oh, so the link-bait headline comes from a group of real estate agents who want to spread alarm at their business actually being subjected to the rule of law. What a surprise.
That's a bit of a stretch in terms of things to be concerned about, don't you think?
I frequently have low flying airplanes (someone around here owns a really pretty Piper Cub), ultralights, helicopters and hot-air balloons (there's a local business offering flights) passing close enough over my house that I can hear the occupants talking.
It's par for the course of living out in the country: they're in relatively empty airspace away from the city. Except for the fact that the helos are noisy if they come too close at night, there is nothing bothersome about any of them.
I'm much more concerned that if I decided to take up aerial photography from an R/C plane or balloon as a hobby, I'd now be breaking a law.
The ad hominem argument also isn't persuasive; judge the legislation based on your ethical compass, not on dislike for a specific profession.
How do you arrive at that conclusion? The language of the bill specifically excludes from prohibition images not containing "forms identifiable as human beings or man-made objects" (emphasis mine) - yet the writer of the article came to the same conclusion you have: ..."possibly implying that if no human is in any photo or video taken, it is acceptable."
What am I missing?
* right to awareness of surveillance Surveillance is just sooo pervasive that trying to ban it is useless. Just require that any time anyone is able to identify or track an individual through video, data mining, or any other process, they are required to publish this within $time period - publish the date time location means and data used, along with the identifying data.
* ?
* ?
This would seem to criminalize GoPros on RC airplanes, strapping a camera to a balloon and recording its journey to the edge of space, and a bevy of other harmless applications. At best, this bill is ill thought-out.
1. Prohibition does not work. It has been tested many times over many decades. If people of New Hampshire are afraid of aerial photography how about this: When anyone (incl. government) wants to take pictures from drones over some area in N.H., they need to tell in advance and concerned property owners can permit or prohibit the action.
2. Sponsoring bills is a very strange practice to me (I am from Europe). I dont understand how this is democracy.
3. Government should be more restricted in what it can to than its citizens. Not the other way around.
The world needs new law-making system(s). More democratic and rational.
This is yet another unenforcable law.
Why can't they make more sensible ones in NH like this nugget of gold? http://www.dumblaws.com/law/630
I wonder what the thinking was behind that law.
Edit: On second viewing, that's a highly suspect site. For example, for the UK it has 'Divorces are Outlawed'. For a start, they're actually not - that's the whole thing about the creation of the CofE, but more to the point, the 'Source' for the law is listed in its totality as "BBC 17 Nov. 1999", as if that would help us verify it.
If this goes more widespread, the government will be severely crippling my hobby, and some of my supplemental income.
What you are doing now is likely already quite illegal.
http://fstoppers.com/using-drones-faa-approval-photos-or-vid...
This is wrong.
They should just simply decide to follow this law preemptively and eliminate all aerial imagery of New Hampshire tomorrow. Let the uproar from the public sort the law makers out.
I do believe in the 90's some extremely green (in many ways) congress-critter wrote a law that would basically make farming illegal in the USA and require quite a lot of buildings to be torn down (like the whole states of SD,ND, and WY). Bill did get some co-sponsors (tells you a little about the world there). One house rep pointed out due to the wording that all building within a mile of Central Park would have to be torn down. So ended the bill.
Yet another case of "who watches the watchmen?"
Drone use should actually be a bigger citizen's rights issue than guns.
I doubt they'll use F-22s to take out little drones taking photos of someones backyard.