Drones Club

[ffutures]

Pointed out by numerous friends today - I've delayed posting until I could find the relevant strip:

This is suddenly a lot closer to home.

The spin on the first one that crashes embarrassingly, and how this is improving our safety, ought to be interesting...

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The use of drones in police and security work is fairly inevitable. I'm suprised there's an issue -- why and how is this different from having manned police patrols?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Hypothetical question; do you normally have police patrols taking photos of you sunbathing nude on the roof? Looking in your 10th-story window? Watching you with image-intensifier cameras at night?

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

No, but the reason why is that police patrols are normally ground-bound and relatively poorly-equipped with sensors beyond their own human ones. Obviously, as humans are increasingly able to fly and electronically-enhance their senses, police will increasingly be able to fly and electronically-enhance their senses, because "police" are a class of "humans."

Police already operate air patrols. What would you do about sunbathing nude on the roof or expecting privacy in 10th-story windows, say, a century from now when aircars -- and thus presumably air police cars -- become common? Or about the presumed anonymity of night when everyone and his cousin can buy ALE binoculars at the five-and-dime?

By this logic, applied a century ago, the police would be limited to riding horses and communicating by semaphore.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'll worry about flying cars when they happen. For now the police have a near monopoly on low-level flights over cities - and our hypothetical sunbather previously knew that a helicopter was around because of the noise it made.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

You think of helicopters as "noisy" because the ones currently in civilian service have relatively unmuffled engines. There are military choppers which are relatively silent, and the technology is very predictably going to filter down to civilian choppers over the next decade or two, because noise in any aircraft which flies over inhabited areas is generally deemed "pollution." Heck, I remember back when jetliners were much noisier than they are today, because some of the baffling technology is already in civilian use on large aircraft.

As for nude sunbathing on one's roof, I would consider it foolish if one cares whether or not one is seen naked, because of the number of low-flying aircraft already present around most cities.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Hypothetically, how would I know? Police copters occasionally fly around this neighbourhood, but I have no idea if the aircrew are sharing around pictures of me nude sun-bathing.

In fact, I understand that the previous tenant of this flat was arrested after thermal IR revealed the signature of his marijuana farm in the loft.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

You can hear a helicopter coming - it isn't the same invasion of privacy as a near-silent drone.