Fake Signs On Bay Area Highways Say Drones Looking For Speeders | Hacker News Reader

Fake Signs On Bay Area Highways Say Drones Looking For Speeders

sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com

143 points1337biz139 comments

Strikes me (no pun intended) as being a very good way to get the general public to think about the consequences of the creeping use of drones.

"Think its just terrorists targeted? Well, it could now be you".

OK, terrorists get a missile, and drivers get a ticket, but do people want an army of drones monitoring them for motoring offences, and more?

Or it could be a good way of desensitizing the public...

I'd much rather the drone monitor things and just give me a ticket in the mail than a potentially power tripping cop.

This is the worst (although power tripping cops are also pretty bad). Imagine you are driving 5~10 mph over the limit for a long time, distracted by life and generally unaware. How many tickets do you think you would get? You were never stopped and corrected, how were you supposed to know?

Given the tendency of some courts in the SF area to make you pay the ticket before you can contest it (read this somewhere, not sure 100% on truthfulness of it), this sounds like a nightmare shakedown scenario.

Where theres spy theres always counter spy. If ticket giving drones get more widespread it will make economic sense to launch a drone service to monitor the ticket giving drones.

It is cute that you think there's any chance in hell that such a service would be granted permission to fly drone-spotting drones by the FAA.

In any case, a single 1.8 gigapixel ARGUS-IS can cover a huge amount of surveillance area and within a few years that technology could be commonplace, so the answer could easily always be "yes, of course there is a drone watching your car right now", making that information basically useless.

The FAA would prohibit amateur RC planes where drones are operational?

No, the FAA wouldn't prohibit amateur RC planes, but how exactly do you implement a drone-spotting operation using amateur RC planes? Even ignoring the complexity of coordinating such a thing, the short range such planes have and the need for constantly re-powering the planes, what sensor do you mount on amateur RC sized planes that is capable of spotting a drone flying at up to 30,000 feet?

> ...some courts in the SF area to make you pay the ticket before you can contest it (read this somewhere, not sure 100% on truthfulness of it)

Yea, that's false.

Not really. You have to pay the bail amount up front. Options are:

-Go to court and plead not guilty: send the bail amount, wait for your court date. If found not guilty, you get some $$ back. If guilty, pay the fine amount (less bail).

-Plead guilty/no contest via mail: send them the bail amount, they keep the $$ (bail forfeiture).

In some jurisdictions there is a discount if you pay before a certain date - but if you wish to contest then the time it takes to do that will expire the discount period.

It's cleverly and obviously intentional practice that plays on people's time to defend themselves being worth more than the discounted price.

And in some of these jurisdictions, the clock restarts when you are informed that your appeal was unsuccessful (even if the collecting agency likes to pretend otherwise.) So check the rules first.

If this became an issue then the laws would have to be changed to accommodate the new technology. We shouldn't reject new technology because our current laws aren't suited for it.

A drone won't shoot your dog.

Right. 4 shots. A man will never do that. He would have kicked the dog slightly and tell the owner to put him back in the car...but 4 shots. The governments security are merciless.

If we're talking about the same incident, the owner was handcuffed, and watched helplessly as things unfolded.

This would be trading one set of problems for another.

I routinely drive around 80 mph (15 over the speed limit) on the freeway here in San Diego, just like virtually everyone else (when there isn't traffic). Cops here don't even blink when it comes to this sort of speed on the freeways. But drones would, presumably, issue tickets at any technical infraction regardless of the "situation on the ground".

To be honest, I'm not sure which situation I'd dislike worse, the occasionally arbitrary power-tripping cop or the completely clinical and technical rule following of the drone, both are pretty bad, IMO.

I'm not saying this is a good thing, but what if the drone gave out more warnings than tickets (ignoring the issue of delayed feedback) and based infractions on average speeds. If the tickets were reserved for seriously reckless offenders, I'm guessing the public backlash would be reduced.

I ride a motorcycle, and may or may not do 3 figure speeds when the roads are clear and safe. Would that count as reckless?

Yes.

People routinely overestimate their driving abilities and underestimate the risk.

People also routinely do much faster than low triple digits on the track, with exactly the same machine that they ride on the street. And when the road is clear, the risk is all mine.

I guess they could just fire a few rounds in front of your car as a warning, that would make you slow down. </joke>

And what do you expect would happen if 90+% of the people driving on that freeway got a ticket?

The local government (or whoever collects fines) would make a lot of money, behaviour would change, and possibly, just possibly, speed limits would rise.

But the increase in revenue raised would make it too tempting not to use, IMO.

The speed of drivers would go down and normalize at maximum 65mph. This falls in line with the idea of a speed limit (not a speed suggestion).

I fail to see how this is a bad thing.

You have a failure of imagination, then. Many times an ill-advised overtake started out below the speed limit but needs to go a bit over to be made safe, and that's not just my opinion, but that of many traffic police officers over here in the UK.

And think about what a low speed limit like 65mph would do to the economy.

Then businesses would clamor to have the speed limit raised, huh? Here in Michigan, we were taught in drivers training that passing another car can only be done legally at a speed differential greater than 5mph and only if you stay within the speed limit. Such as, if the car in front of you was driving 50 and the speed limit was 55. You could pass at 55.

A lot of the discussions I hear on this fall down to "it's inconvenient to drive the speed limit". Man that sucks, but the speed limit is kind of a legal limit.

California would have some money to spend on their lousy roads?

More likely state troopers would be making $300K a year.

French drivers used to be insane. As little as five or six years ago, you'd regularly see people pulling moves that would make a rally car driver blush. Then, they installed speed cameras EVERYWHERE, and sent out mass amounts of tickets, even for going a couple kilometers/hour over the limit. Since that time, people actually stay under the speed limit. Amazing, the difference an oppressive regime of automated enforcement can make on people's behavior.

The courts would be clogged with people challenging the tickets.

Possibly a brief spike in civic participation in the local government process, lasting for exactly as long as required to yank automated enforcement tools back out of local cops' hands.

You (and I) shouldn't be driving 80mph on 65mph streets. This is one of those laws we all routinely break that we've all become expert at rationalizing, but unlike the laws we break by, say, trading bottles of Dark Lord for Pliny The Younger across state lines --- laws which have no victims --- we're probably wrong about the speed limit situation.

The faster we drive, the less time we have to react to a fast changing situation on the road, and the more dangerous collisions become.

I'd be really unhappy if speed limits were rigorously enforced too; I'm pretty routinely 5-10mph over them too. But I'd adjust my habits eventually, and so would you.

A much better situation would be to increase the speed limit where the road is good enough for that. That way, you are not getting annoyed that you are limited to 65mph on a straight road, and yes, while it increases reaction time it also makes you more focused on the road. I live in a country where the legal speed on motorways is 90mph, and frequently drive through Germany where I regularly go 120-130mph for long stretches of the Autobahn. And from my own experience(YMMV) driving 90-100mph makes you very aware of road waaaay ahead of you, a thought of looking anywhere else(phone, radio) but the road does not even cross my mind,because of how fast I am going and how much more intense of an experience that is. And then when I drive in the UK where the speed limit is only 70mph long drives get incredibly tiring and it's hard to remain focused, I have to stop regularly. Obviously, each system has its advantages and disadvantages, but none of them is ideal.

I'm not concerned about you or I, but the woman who just barely passed her drivers test on the third try and is trying to corral 2 kids in the back seat, drink her mocha frapuchino, and talk to her sister on the phone.

There is also the fact that the unrestricted portions of the German Autobahn were designed deliberately to accommodate 80mph traffic, unlike much of the urban US interstate system.

Of the 11-12 figure transportation projects the US could undertake in 2013, making it easier for people to achieve dramatically lower fuel efficiency by driving 10-20mph faster seems like a poor investment.

But that woman should not be driving in the first place. So if your training/testing system allows irresponsible people like that to get behind the wheel, then that's where the problem is,and not with the speeds on freeways. Most EU countries have massive fines for eating/drinking/talking on the phone while driving so most people don't do it - that's one problem solved.

This is a kind of "New True Scotsman" argument where, presumably, any example of an unsafe driving situation will be countered with with some failure of driver certification. Be specific. How many people do you think we should try to get off the road, in order to increase the speed limit (implicitly, by not enforcing the one we have now)? How should we select those people?

By looking at how other countries do it. In Germany you actually have to drive on the motorway at high speeds as part of your training . I have a friend who was told to drive at 120mph during his training, and the instructors argument was "the road is empty, the weather conditions are appropriate, and there is no speed limit on this stretch of the road,so you should know how to handle the car at those speeds". Yet in my own country I know people who have never driver faster than 40mph during their training, yet the legal motorway speed is 90mph. Are they ready for driving at those speeds? No, they are not.

And the argument "what about woman driving while talking on the phone, eating and tending to children??" is completely pointless, just like "what about drunk people driving??" - both of these groups of people should be banned from driving, as both pose a danger to safety on the road.

Sounds great. Tell me again how we ban the kinds of drivers who are likely to talk on the phone, eat, and tend to their children?

We don't ban them when they are likely, we ban them when we catch them doing it. Psychological tests complimenting the practical driving test would also be a good idea.

Though speed limits on most roads were set long ago, improvements in automotive suspension, steering, and brake technology in the intervening decades have raised the effective safe design speed of many highways. Eg. a 1970 highway with cuts, fills and curves spec'd for a design speed of 75mph is easily and safely navigable at far higher speeds today, even in comparatively low-end vehicles. This fact is very rarely noted in legal circles.

I'd argue in my case I should in fact be driving 80 mph a lot of the time, because everyone else is, and it is safer to go with the flow of traffic than it is to follow the letter of the law. As I'm sure you're aware, non-head-on collisions become more dangerous when the delta between speeds of the colliding objects are divergent more so than they are impacted by absolute ground speed of the colliding objects. In fact, even the DMV tells you to disregard the speed limit if it is at odds with the natural flow of traffic speed.

FWIW, I only ever drive 80 mph in 65 mph zones on large 5+-ish lane freeways. On non-freeway roads, I don't speed.

The issue is, speeding fines are in place so that cops can stop you and make the motorway safer. A drone or a camera has no way to stop you and thus does not fulfill the duty of making the motorway safer. In any case, I don't think there would be a way to monitor your speed to any kind of accuracy from a moving object. Not to mention, it would be much cheaper and easier to just setup a camera on a pole somewhere.

>>The issue is, speeding fines are in place so that cops can stop you and make the motorway safer.

Not really. They exist as a revenue source for the police department. This is why people routinely drive 10-15 mph over the speed limit and yet don't get pulled over - except when the police need additional revenue.

>>In any case, I don't think there would be a way to monitor your speed to any kind of accuracy from a moving object.

It doesn't have to be 100% accurate. There's a certain margin after which the small inaccuracy that results from measuring speed of moving object A from moving object B becomes inconsequential. If the police vehicle is driving at 65mph (the limit) and you're 10mph faster, that means you're over the speed limit.

The whole idea of measuring the speed of moving object in any given moment is not an optimal solution. It is much better (and easier) in many cases to measure the time in which it took a car to travel some distance. You just set up ALPR cameras every few kilometers and record travel time. If the limit is 60km/h and you managed to drive 20km in 15 minutes, you were clearly over the limit at some point, and therefore you should be fined.

I think France uses this system. Also there was a huge uproar on the news of potential introduction of it in Poland. Mostly because it's so effective.

EDIT:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPECS_%28speed_camera%29

What's the difference between using a manned aircraft and an unmanned aircraft to do speed enforcement?

Scale and cost. You can't have hundreds of thousands of manned aircraft watching everything - it's too expensive. You can have drones do it though. Especially if their cameras work like the recent ARGUS demonstration (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5273000).

Modern unmanned aerial vehicles like the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 and the General Atomics MQ-1 cost in the millions. Cessna and helicopters do not.

Granted there are cheaper UAV out there, and generally its unlikely they could carry a payload sufficient for the level of surveillance necessary for traffic enforcement.

BTW - my intention isn't to advocate for drones, just to question the rationale of making a distinction between manned and unmanned surveillance, when in fact it might make more sense worrying about being aerial surveillance more generally.

You could jury rig as Cessna in an afternoon. The high costs of defense UAVs are almost wholly due to defense contracting rent seeking and a severe lack of competition. Drones do not cost what you think they cost. People are expensive. Robots aren't.

Local law enforcement doesn't need million dollar drones or a sizable payload. There are already many small cheap drones available for local use. All that is really needed is a functioning camera.

My point is that they don't need drones for aerial enforcement. Its been going on for years and in some ways, the "do it with a drone" element is a bit of a red herring.

The very real question that needs to be considered is whether or not law enforcement should be doing aerial enforcement at all. How they do it is less interesting to me than the question of whether or not they should.

"Granted there are cheaper UAV out there"

In other news, there are smaller ships than the Queen Mary 2...

"Generally its unlikely they could carry a payload sufficient for the level of surveillance necessary for traffic enforcement."

Having been nailed with a speeding ticket from a Cessna: All they need is a camera with someone watching it that can say "blue car, coming from half a mile away". You don't even need radar or any sort of speed tracking, you just time the car between to landmarks (the same way that local police do it in states that only allow state police to use radar guns). The type of drones your local hackerspace whips up for fun on a weekend are damn near sufficient.

Kind of funny when you think about it. We all love to complain about how inefficient the government is... and then we love to complain about how efficient they try to be.

It's not about the efficiency itself. It's about the constitutional questions that were punted, back when inefficiency made them implausible and thus unnecessary to consider.

So it's not the increased efficiency itself, it's that the efficiency has put the problems we tried to ignore directly in front of us.

And thus we can't sit back and allow "logical extension of the old system" as justification for allowing it, because, again, the old system was only allowed because the scale necessary for abuse was implausible at the time.

The government is the enemy. A lot of people couldn't properly live with themselves if they ceased to believe this. There would be a libertarian-shaped hole in their hearts.

It appears that they excel at bad things (fining us, taxing us, conducting wars, etc).

That's because in this case and many other cases, "efficient" is another way to say "completely bypass the legal system." People want the government to make itself more efficient, not completely bypass the civil protections we have in place.

A drone giving a ticket in exactly the same manner as a cop giving a ticket is not really bypassing the legal system. As long as you're able to contest it, it's exactly the same.

My thought too. If one plane with a person in it is not bypassing the legal system, then 2 should be fine. And 10? Or 100? Scale should not have anything to do with whether the legal system is bypassed or not. Either none can do something or all can do something.

The notion that scale is irrelevant in terms of surveillance operations fails to recognize serious issues raised by the advent of new technologies.

In the past, actual manpower has been a meaningful limit on the size of surveillance operations. The government simply cannot have every person in the country be monitored and watched. Instead - theoretically - the government only has enough resources to surveil those who it actually suspects of a crime.

I direct you to Justice Sotomayor's insightful concurring opinion on United States vs. Jones: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/10-1259#writing...

These quotes, in particular, are extremely releveant.

"And because GPS monitoring is cheap in comparison to conventional surveillance techniques and, by design, proceeds surreptitiously, it evades the ordinary checks that constrain abusive law enforcement practices: 'limited police resources and community hostility.'"

"The net result is that GPS monitoring—by making available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track—may 'alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.'"

In my view, this opinion sheds much needed light on how the perception that technology and scale does not influence the legality and constitutionality of government practice fails.

As a footnote, Sotomayor also discusses privacy in a digital age, and she provides a refreshing outlook on how new technologies can force a society to re-think its beliefs on the expectation of privacy.

"More fundamentally, it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties . . . This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks."

I guess the difference I see is this: are the drones monitoring a person watching for them to commit a crime OR are they monitoring a road looking for anyone committing a crime? I think this distinction is important and you may not. That is fine.

Any freedom that you feel you enjoy based on solely on scale and cost is a tentative one at best.

Cameras have got to be cheaper than drones though, although cameras are easier to avoid.

In California, it doesn't matter, since it's already illegal to give speeding tickets from a manned airplane (even though they still have plenty of signs to warn you that they might do just that.)

>OK, terrorists get a missile, and drivers get a ticket, but do people want an army of drones monitoring them for motoring offences, and more?

Depends... Could the hybrid drivers cruising 20mph under the speed limit in the left-most lane also get a missile? Because if that were the case, that might bring me over to the pro-drone camp.

The only time I've ever been pulled over in NJ was for driving too slowly in the left lane.

I seriously wish this happened more often. I don't care how fast you're going, if there's no one to the right of you and you're not exiting to the left within the next mile or two, you need to get over. Not only is it disruptive for faster drivers to be dodging slower traffic left and right, but passing on the right is much more dangerous than passing on the left (since the blind spot is so much bigger).

Too often I see cops pass on the right when what they really should be doing is ticketing the driver in the left lane.

Yup. Everywhere should be like Germany where you can actually lose your licence for passing on the right(because it actually is really dangerous) and get a multi-thousand euro fine for driving slowly in the left lane. Every time I drive through Germany somehow people know how to use right-most lanes properly.....

In Washington state, the law says you must stay right except to pass.

This attempt at humor distracts from the discussion.

Given that this concerns behaviour on public roads and driver-less cars are around the corner, I'm not too concerned about being dump-trucked by the California Highway Patrol. More worrying is the ability to retro-actively mine mobility, social interaction, and private actions on private property. More reason why the NSA's behaviour needs to be properly scoped today before the issue metastasises.

There's an easier way to solve the problem of drivers getting tickets. Lift the speed-limit laws.

Actual result: People drive 10 over the new limit.

He meant lift as in get rid of, I'm assuming, unless you're saying they're going to drive 10 over the speed of light.

Thanks for that. I seem to have misunderstood.

Drones are the new Gods; in more ways than one it would seem (watch everything/arbiters of life and death/random collateral damage).

I remember that when I was a kid, adults would always tell me not to do anything wrong, lest I incur God's or Santa's wrath, and that they were watching my every move, every minute, of everyday. Which was complete bullshit, and struck me as extremely creepy behavior at the time, but that's besides the point.

I guess it's time for the adults to watch out now, because the drones are coming, and they can see (and kill) everything.

The robots are, or rather will be, watching you; so you better be nice, because ARGUS (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5273000) has a kill list (http://www.infowars.com/colbert-warned-he-may-be-on-governme...), and it won't won't be checking it twice (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6061816). Robot Santa Claus is coming to town (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AizNTA3q7Fk).

Welcome to the future, kiddies.

Transcript for people too busy to watch the video:

> He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're on the can, he'll hunt you down and blast your ass from here to Pakistan. Oh, you'd better not breathe, you'd better not move, you're better off dead, I'm telling you, dude. Santa Claus is gunning you down!

From here to Pakistan huh? Wasn't Futurama prescient. Merry Xmas everybody.

We need secretly funded personal security startups to counter all the bullshit of the government. None of this cute website photo startup bullshit. Serious hardcore hardware engineering.

The nerds, geeks, and engineers will soon run this world if we play our cards right.

The revival of the Pinkerton Agency? Seems like all this technology is making us go _backwards_ in society, not forwards.

"The revival of" private security companies? G4S is the third largest company in the world.

>Seems like all this technology is making us go _backwards_ in society, not forwards.

It's never the technology. Technology is amoral. It's the people. Technology may have enabled the people, but people are responsible.

The difference between an omniscient, omnipotent God and an omniscient, omnipotent government is that God forgives.

Nah. The real difference is that God, if one exists, really doesn't give a shit. The problem with governments is that they care way too much.

Still compatible with what I said. After God forgives you he ceases to give a shit about what you did. Governments never forgive you and keep on giving a shit about what you did, forever.

I love the denial...

“Along with not having drones we definitely do not have any drones that would fire any type of weaponry.”

Somehow I think the second class is already covered by the first class. A conspiracy nut would have a field day with how this parses ;-)

"Also those drones definitely do not have any MSG-31 equipped. And their speed is definitely not above the state limit. Well not by much anyway."

Damn, that makes for some fine ass comedy.

I'll take a stab at it! Let's zero in on the use of "any".

It's worded in a way that's true - that technically all the drones they have don't fire a range of weaponry. By that statement then, there might be a specific drone they have, which fires a specific type of weaponry.

I can't find the Any Drone!

It is a bit like the two statements I've seen about the UK government having accessed information via PRISM: they have both denied using it at all, and stated that when they did use it such use was within the law.

Common grammatical mistake. This is similar to the phrase "let alone," and is supposed to be used to underscore the first point by raising a second, even broader point. Ex: "I don't like burgers, let alone red meat." But a lot of people get the phrasing mixed up.

police dry humor at it's finest.

They're definitely a distraction? Excellent! Let's start getting rid of roadside advertising, billboards, obnoxious fast food signs...

Don't be facile; surely a picture implying that the government is going to blow you up with a Reaper for going 10 over the limit is more distracting than a picture of a Big Mac. Especially in a state that (I hear) is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Given American levels of obesity, Im not sure you are correct.

So the bad news is that Big Macs kill more Americans than drones, and the bad news is that we're closing the gap.

Have you driven I95 near Philadelphia lately?

I think the contingent of electronic animated, image-changing, and even occasionally flashing billboards carries a slightly higher distraction factor.

It's beginning to remind me of Fahrenheit 451.

And, to be successful, billboard advertising necessarily must distract you.

Fun fact: In Vermont, billboards are illegal.

America would be so much more beautiful if we had fewer billboards and cables were underground instead hosted on poles. I think it's patriotic to oppose billboards and telephone polls.

Anchorage has a law that in order to do any work on above-ground cables (other than emergency repairs), you must put them underground at the same time.

NYC, or at least Manhattan, has had a law requiring underground utilities since 1888!

Its substantially more expensive to run cables underground everywhere in the nation.

A price that's probably worth it in many cases.

On the topic of fake road signs, there's the famous story of Los Angeles artist Richard Ankrom making and installing a perfectly-crafted modification to a freeway sign on the 110 to provide better directions to I-5. For months nobody realized the sign was "fake". Caltrans ended up liking the sign and left it up for 8 years before replacing it with a "real" one.

http://www.laweekly.com/2009-12-31/la-life/richard-ankrom-s-...

We can only wish authorities would have to invest in fueling and maintaining drones, visible in the sky, to enforce speeding law. The signs could say:

  SPEED ENFORCED
  BY TRACKING YOUR 
  MOBILE PHONE

...or even...

  SPEED ENFORCED 
  BY REVIEWING LOGS
  OF GOOGLE MAPS 
  INTERACTIONS

Eventually navigation apps could offer both an "estimated travel time" and a "don't make the trip in less time than this, or we'll have to report you for a speeding citation".

There are signs along I-4 here in Florida (between Orlando and Tampa) that say that there is aerial surveillance looking for speeders for several years now. Though, there's a picture of a cessna-type plane on the sign, heavily suggesting it's a human pilot :P

I've seen this same thing along I-71 in Ohio.

Those are real. The pilot times how long it takes you to travel between two lines painted on the road. If it takes too little time, he radios to one of his buddies in a patrol car. You then get a "reward" for being a fast driver.

This is an art project by Stephen Whisler; there are pictures of him installing them here: http://stephenwhisler.net/Sculpture/Pages/Speed_Enforced_by_...

It's sad that I can read that, miss the word 'fake', and not be surprised at all. I was a bit too far away to be 100% sure but I'm pretty sure I saw a drone taking off from Moffett Field the other day. I've been meaning to look into whether or not there are publicly-acknowledge test-flights happening there or anything.

edit: publicintelligence.net says there are "future" plans by the Army for launching drones from Moffett Field.

I've been seeing this recently (past month) as well on 237, along with another coworker.

I had difficulty parsing that title.

At first I read it as '"Fake Signs On Bay Area Highways" Say Drones Looking For Speeders'

i.e. there are already drones enforcing the speed limit, and they are reporting (or being confused by) fake signs (maybe installed by pranksters for that purpose.)

People will laugh it off until the next Snowden will release the slides and it suddenly becomes a reality.

I saw a pair, the one sign said "Speed Checked by RADAR" and the drone one said "Speed Enforced By Aircraft". The one I saw had been hand painted over the regular sign. I thought it was quite funny, wondered if it broke some law. Clearly it does which is understandable I suppose.

But what about those signs that say "Speeders are Losers" in various neighborhoods, are they too subject to citation?

If you're on the east coast, those signs are on I-81 through Virginia. I haven't seen them in any adjacent states.

I like the idea, simple and effective.

You like governments spending your money on lies to make people paranoid?

I was talking about the pranksters that made the signs...

Sorry. I didn't do a good job on my reading comprehension.

Does this notice, found at the end of the article, imply it is illegal to post the article on HN? Or is it ok since we are redistributing the link and not the article itself?

A link is merely a way to direct someone's attention to something someone else has posted online. Sharing a link, unless it is a link specifically generated for an individual who licensed a copy of something and got a unique link to obtain it at, is not a copyright violation.

The important phrase is "This material". A link is no more "the material" than a phone number is a conversation.

Isn't that the same justification used for collecting meta-data?

“The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.” - Abraham Lincoln

I'd kind of like to see drones that automatically ticket anyone going 0.1mph over the speed limit or break any other of a dozen silly traffic laws. I think it would lead to both saner traffic laws AND safer roads.

Haha, that's not the only place they are. I've seen them on the east coast too. I can't remember the exact highway, but I'm pretty sure it was in North Carolina.

I thought they were legit at the time, and it sparked a pretty interesting conversation about privacy.

Reminds me of the NYC Street Art that created some creative awareness surrounding drones:

http://hyperallergic.com/61192/street-artist-behind-nyc-dron...

Wow... someone has a real sense of humor and ability to execute the details.

If you look closely at the sign, you can see it has just fired a missile (in front of the port wing leading edge). Now that's speed enforcement!

When flying cars take over- I wonder if speed enforcement by drone use will make the sky look like a Star Wars aerial battle/chase? Don't drive too fast Luke- your father will nuke you

I have a guess at the perpetrators: http://nonchalance.com/

"Along with not having drones we definitely do not have any drones that would fire any type of weaponry."

Doth protest too much?

Tickets require the driver to be identified. There's no law about wearing a mask while driving.

There are already laws popping up that criminalize masked protest.

Getting this one passed will be child's play.

Sadly, the signs although being humor could easily become reality in the next few years.

what's a fake sign?

A sign that's... fake? As in, not real?

In this case, it means that the signs were not posted by the authorities.

That sign is real.

"A sign that's... fake? As in, not real?" don't think about that too hard, you may have a seizure.

"In this case, it means that the signs were not posted by the authorities." well, i think in this case it really means a sign that lies, because if they were posted by the authorities or not, if they tell the truth, who would call them fake?

but then, a sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie...

i think i just had a seizure.

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