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Comment by everettForth | Hacker News Reader

"How would you feel if your neighbour went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their back yard. It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?"

Pretty much the same way I feel about Google Streetview? Or Google Glass?

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Or, perhaps even more pertinent, Google's commercial observational satellite[1], which already flies over our houses all day.

[1] http://www.informationweek.com/applications/google-launches-...

You raise a good point: it is in Google's interest to maintain a monopoly on as much data as they can.

It just dawned on him that perhaps Schmidt's Google should have focused on improving drone technology instead of driverless cars.

Perhaps they could have made a ton of money, launching drones as a service for the likes of Amazon and the postal. Perhaps they should have monopolized the skies if the hobbiest drones werent interfering with the commercial prospect this technology offers.

Google is still in a good position to integrate this technology with their maps...

(Just thinking loud..)

and Google self-driving cars would become a niche product - for trucks only - once drones will en masse appear able to carry 200kg, i.e. 2 persons. eVolo is just a humble start. Self-flying versions of it, especially considering their roots in RC drones, is different tech than cars.

Considering that Bezos understands drones and Google is competitor to Amazon and has been missing the quiet revolution coming, this isn't a surpising salvo.

Schmidt has been talking about this long before Amazon made their announcement[1]

[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/private-drones-pose-privac...

It's silly that this is the top comment. Your examples aren't even analogous. The proper comparison would be the Streetview car sitting outside your house filming continuously, or someone wearing Google Glass standing outside your front window looking in while recording. These things would bother you far more than a Streetview car driving by or meeting someone wearing Google Glass.

However, as other's have noted, we already have remedies for those sorts of things, and things like someone filming via a telescope pointed at your house (you call the cops). I can get the slippery slope argument Schmidt is making, but you could make the same argument about just about any already-available concealable tech device, from radio transmitters to spy cams to the web cams in every laptop with exploitable software. We do have growing pains with all of those things, and so we inevitably get people that exploit them who the law isn't fully able to deal with (or even catch), but with all the benefits they also bring, it isn't worth trying to ban these things over that fact.

If everybody has Google Glass on their heads, is there a difference between whether it's a drone buzzing above our heads and whether it's face-mounted cameras?

Mobile phones are already used as spy devices -- do you really think the camera and microphone are off? How do you know?

Most people plainly place their phones on tables after sitting, but would it be so shocking for them to carry a tape recorder everywhere?

Uh, that's exactly my point. We are surrounded by devices that can be and sometimes are abused for this kind of surveillance. We've judged them useful enough that it warrants using existing systems to deal with abusers, even while acknowledging that many of them can be used so surreptitiously that we're not going to catch everyone who is abusing them. Drones have so many uses I would say they fall in that same category.

How would he feel if someone flung a dung through his open window or doors?

Drones are so fragile. I can imagine lots of possible countermeasures. Hacking, jamming, shooting (slingshot will suffice), throwing a net over it spraying it with water, glue or abrasive powder, EMPing, blinding with laser, burning with laser, deploying counter drone.

Than again what can you do about flung poo?

I thing we should ban people from excitement handling. Let corporations wipe your ass.

One might wonder what kind of neighbors Eric Schmidt has.

I disagree with Eric Schmidt that the solution to the problem is banning drones. There are many, many methods of surveillance or recording that can compromise a persons expectation of privacy/safety/security.

There is plenty of legal precedence for civil and low-level police enforcement of complaints between neighbors. e.g. "Peeping Tom" over the fence would be actionable.

The fact that a drone is the tool used to commit the privacy breach doesn't change existing law with regard to expectation of privacy.

The "potential to 'democratise the ability to fight war'" point is misguided. 'war fighters' have been able to design and build various Remote Control Weaponry for many decades, and certainly predating WWII. The availability of a drone design on the internet might make production easier, but I don't believe internet publication is an enabling factor for weaponry.

Pretty much my first thought too, add in knowing where I browse, and what I search for.

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