Drones to Spy on US Citizens

These drones have the same limitations as a FLIR equipped police chopper. It only has so much flight time and costs money to fly and maintain. They are expensive pieces of equipment. The chances they are going to use them to snoop on joe citizen is pretty damn low.

^^We don't really have autonomous cars yet, so people-carrying drones are even less likely.

Question: is there anything these drones can observe that you couldn't also see with a spy satellite?

Spy Sats and Drones are completely different devices with completely different equipment.

Drones still have pilots, remember. At least for the time being. Of course, now it's all remote control, but it's not as if it couldn't be done.

It would just be kind of pointless, all things considered. If you're going to load soldiers onto it, you might as well have a damn pilot.

As far as I'm aware, they're basically flying cameras with fancy sensors, although that's not strictly true.

But still, one surrenders privacy (obviously, not full privacy) when one steps out of the home.

The drones have pretty much the exact same limitations as a helicopter. Except they need an airstip vs a heli pad.

And the frame of space where you are truly in private shrinks ever further.

All I can say is that if I see one of these things peeping in my window, I'm shooting it. Jailtime be damned.

Blixty: Be realistic. The chances of it peeping in your window are so tiny it is laughable. Your chances of hitting it with anything short of a dedicated Antiaircraft platform are also laughably tiny.

The devices can't go fly down and peek into your windows. They are flying above you.

edited 16th Dec '11 7:39:40 PM by TuefelHundenIV

That is because I misunderstood the kind of drone being used here.

I am still, however, not comfortable about it.

Understandable.

Even if they used the helicopter version of the UAV's you don't fly them where they can be spotted easily or damaged. Again these things are very likely to be used like FLIR equipped police chopper. Expect a department at best to have 3 or 4 of them.

At best you can view a wide area of any given city or selectively small areas. Hardly a threat to common privacy.

edited 16th Dec '11 7:46:47 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I'd like to point out that unless you live in a rural area, Blixty, you would be violating laws about discharging dangerous weapons in a populated area.

You know I really hate it when I have to point out that I'm deliberately exaggerating something.

@Google Street View: I've used it to find places I need to go to, and I have noticed that you can see other people's houses, but not once have I been able to see the inside of a house with it (sorry, I tend to be nosy about anything).

I could see this as pretty useful in larger cities for gathering intel. Drug busts, photographic evidence of murder, ect. Sounds more like a SWAT thing to me.

They would also be very useful in the SAR(Search and Rescue)Role

It's no different then police aircraft really, except they can stay in the air longer and have no crew. I don't mind em.

Street-viewing will happen. The technology is there, and if you walk down the street you can be photographed. That's fine; privacy law should be focused on protecting non-public stuff, and I say that as the guy who's fortress-paranoid about security. I don't advertise my life to the world like the rest of the Facebook Generation seems to like doing, and my right to not advertise should be protected, but whenever I step out of my condo to go for a daily walk...hey, the Google satellites are watching me.

I, for one, welcome our new robot cameras.