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Comment by HoopleHead | Hacker News Reader

Came here to say pretty much the same thing. It's a familiar old pattern:

1: "Thing" is developed which enjoys benign use amongst small subset of geeks

2: Military discover "Thing" and develop a way to use it for evil and/or killing

3: "Thing" gains in popularity amongst general public

4: Government says. "General public can't be trusted with "Thing". Thing is capable of doing evil and/or killing people!"

5: News stories start appearing: ""Thing" could be used by 'Terrists' and 'Paedos', warns expert"

6: "Thing" restricted or outlawed —in response to "public concerns"

Rinse and repeat...

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I think in this case the story is different.

People have been flying models for a long time. But originally, model planes, etc. were expensive and relatively hard to fly. So people often knew each other and could have a mostly self-policing community.

Then quadcopter were made to be very easy to fly, and popularity made them cheap.

So now we have people flying them everywhere. Quads with cameras make people nervous. Quads flying over large groups of people, make people nervous. And quads flying very close to planes is just a very bad idea.

So it makes sense to have some rules. But governments go completely over board. And instead of investing in enforcement, they introduce painful administrative requirements.

>Quads with cameras make people nervous.

And yet people are fine with the government using the same if not worse. Based on those I speak with who hold such a double standard, there is a deeply held belief that it will never be used against them, largely because of their SES, race, and religion.

But there is a public perception difference (especially in the UK with our pervasive CCTV culture) between government surveillance and the somewhat inevitable tabloid "voyeur with a drone" thought process.

Constant state monitoring and Dirty Derek with a DJI are separate concerns.

From what I remember reading about the NSA, there are quite a few Dirty Dereks in the government.

How is everyone so sure that "Dirty Derek" doesn't work for the government and do this exact thing with no oversight?

If drone surveillance by government officials is routine, then civil libertarians should be even happier at curbs in civilian drone use over their private property. A clearer warning to dissidents they might be under surveillance, and an avenue to complain which might get "Dirty Derek" kicked off drone duty if he's actually just abusing the police quad to gawp at your neighbour sunbathing topless.

Snowden revealed, naughty pics from the surveillance database were regularly filched & traded amongst his colleagues.

So "Dirty Derek" does work as a spy.

1: "Thing" is developed which enjoys benign use amongst small subset of geeks

2: Military discover "Thing" and develop a way to use it for evil and/or killing

That ordering is not correct.

In the case of multicopters, it is.

Except military UAVs tend to follow the traditional fixed-wing format rather more, as you can't fly a quadcopter halfway around the planet and keep it airborne for years. Yet.

... warns "expert"

My issue with these stories, is that there generally is no go-to organisation for the new "Thing", so all the news articles end up quoting 'Jim , the self proclaimed expert on Thing"'

So... what would you call the AMA (http://www.modelaircraft.org/), these stories are generally just examples of shoddy journalism.

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