I'm sorry, drones were not in the public consciousness in 2002, let alone 2010, when the military was still mostly using helicopters for this type of search. Drones were used for bombing, and they are probably 10 times as large as consumer drones.

There was no way he expected the police to have this technology and a desire to use it against him specifically.

He also didn't read HN- he's barely able to communicate in his native language according to the article.

> Predator drones were deployed in the middle east in 2000 but were in use from 1995 in the Balkans. Quadcopters are new though.

Quadcopters wouldn't have even been possible without serious advances in battery technology and radio infrastructure.

There was no reason for him to expect the police would've had access to these kind of resources.

> 17 years and people were living online lives. With Web 2.0 which began a couple of years later around 15 years ago. There's not much that has changed fundamentally which could cause a psychological shock.

Even just the invention of the smartphone would be alien to him. I think you may have lost perspective on how different it is. People did not expect to be connected like we are today. It's obvious in hindsight but nobody could have predicted it.

I think Shawshank Redemption showed it pretty well.

It’s 5 years, not 10. (But it’s 5 years in early-2000s China, so it might as well be 10.)