Mycroft Holmes said:
Who says I don't? You're awfully presumptuous.
wait for it...
Is this the thread where we complain about every little thing we dislike? Because I thought this was a thread about the use of drones. If you want to bring up helicopters as a related topic in need of discussion then perhaps you should bring them up by asking my opinion about them rather than making accusations based on my imagined opinion of them.
wait for it...
I don't object to the use of helicopters
there it is! I made the assumption (and yes I know what they say about assumptions, but when you can only make conclusions based on small posts, we have to go by broad trends) that you don't object to helicopters because nofuckingbody who has thought it through objects to helicopters. YOu then get angry that I assumed you don't object to helicopters and then go right on to say that you don't, in fact, object to helicopters.
because they are expensive as fuck. They are large, which means they require a large landing pad nearby. They require constant maintenance which requires mechanics to work on it often. They use up a lot of fuel which costs money. You have to hire a pilot that has been certified and trained, often with thousands of hours of experience.
Conversely drones can be made relatively cheaply, require no crew beyond someone watching through a camera who needs minimal training and wont have a high salary. They can be launched from almost anywhere and so do not have a constricted range. And due to their small size they don't require much fuel or maintenance.
Looony has already said most of what needs to be said about this, but really, 'don't require much maintenance?' you realise that they don't fly by magic right, that beneath those sleek white exteriors there is machinery.
On top of this helicopters will often just radio information back to a base, drones send entire camera feeds. While you can listen in to police radios, you can not control what they are looking at or saying. If you hacked [http://www.dailytech.com/Team+Demonstrates+Ease+of+Taking+over+Automated+Drones/article25030.htm](or otherwise gained access to) a drone however, which is possible and plausible, you would be able to get a video feed to more easily violate privacy.
I remember this, they 'hacked' a drone that had no information security protocols.
There is also no legislation yet which outlaws warrantless spying by use of law enforcement drones. All attempts to pass such laws have been slapped down in congress and considering there's no public outrage there isn't likely to be such laws any time soon. Which is another thing helicopters can not do.
Are there laws, beyond the FAA, that dictate where police choppers can and cannot fly, what they can and cannot film?
There's also a proven statistical dehumanization factor in military use, which translates to a dehumanization for private sector use. The further away you are and the more mechanical and bureaucratic layers between you and your target(watching or shooting) the easier it is to treat that target as simply an object.
how is this a problem on an unarmed drone? In fact, when it comes to armed drones it is beneficial to remove the emotional response from the situation. A drone will not panic fire, it will not get angry at the loss of another drone and, due to the safety of the operator, we are less likely to see incidents similar to the police shootings that have occurred in this very case.
This all means comparatively they are extremely more efficient,
which, during a time of massive government debt is bad... how?
they can do what helicopters aren't legally allowed to in terms of spying(Which is fixable, but wont be)
show me what they can do, don't just say 'spying'. A good metric for spying, if the person conducting the activity could legally be doing it in person, it is not spying. It is not spying to surveill a crowded street, but it would be spying to put a drone in your bedroom without a warrant.
athey are still more likely to violate privacy even if such a law passed due to the prevalence of poor tech security.
I will agree that part of implementation of UAVs into law enforcement needs to be information security protocols.
The efficiency in particular becomes a problem because it means they are more likely to be used in greater number for greater amounts of domestic spying and is the primary reason why drones are worse.
See above as to why it is not spying, and why it is really no different from the cops doing it in person
The use of cameras to watch citizens is already distressing enough of a trend without hundreds of drones circling cities watching our behavior.
disagree, what you do in public is by definition not private. Why are you concerned about what people see you doing in the street.
It's the Chris Rock bullet argument. If helicopters are unwieldy and hugely expensive they are going to only be used sparingly and only when its extremely important. It does not mean they will necessarily be used in a more 'moral' fashion it simply means that it will be more difficult to do so.
so your solution is to make the US legal system more unweildly and less cost effective. that is just fantastic.
And if you really trust the US government then you either work for them, are stupid or haven't been paying any attention to the past 100 years of US history.
Yep those are the only three options, there is never one that says, 'they do bad shit, but on balance most of what they do is well intentioned and for the greater good' every one who disagrees with you is either a stooge, an idiot or being paid by the government.
