I've been flying RC planes since I was 7. I have built a few quadrotors as well, my first when I was 13 back in 2006 before drones were even a huge deal. And I've stuck all kinds of electronics into model rockets and even weather balloons. Robotics was the very reason I chose to go to school for electronics engineering and then to graduate school for it (just finished my first semester btw
). I've worked with a lot of the technology and believe me when I say it all has enormous humanitarian and commercial potential that we're only just beginning to scrape at, and it should be embraced, not feared.
I mean I guess you could look at this from a feminist issue, but she had no more reason to be concerned about inappropriate filming by the drone pilot than from the hundreds of people nearby who would have had smartphones. It's a technology issue, or rather how people respond to new technology.
People for some reason are terrified of drones. I think it has something to do with their association with the military, or maybe just the novelty aspect. But the fact is that people have been flying drones for decades in the form of RC model airplanes and helicopters and putting cameras on them from the minute it was possible to do so.
But onto the video...what the fuck?
First of all, she had that uncanny valley accent going...was it just me or was there something seriously off about her voice, like she wasn't all there? I'm going to go with drugs, just because I'm pissed off at her, but once I'm cooled off I'll be open to the suggestion that this happened because she has a mental health issue.
Second, just how that kid was being treated made my piss boil. She isn't defending herself, she knocks him to the ground, rips and claws at his shirt, tries to force her hand into his mouth and apparently pulls something out (I hope for his sake it wasn't a tongue stud or something...yikes..) and apparently hits him a few times. And we're not talking about an armed attacker here, we're talking about a 17 year old robotics nerd, typically not much of a physical threat. Even so, he was very wise in not hitting back (especially since that would make suing her a much more complicated situation) and using his free hand to record the assault. This is going to be open and shut, thankfully. She attacked him, he didn't hit back, and he has a video recording of the attack.
He wasn't taking videos of her either. She wigged out because he was allegedly taking videos of other people, and I'm sure just playing the footage recorded by the drone will make clear that he was not.
The US, and in fact the entire world, has a dire shortage of people who can work with technology. It's a rare skill for a teenager to be able to put one of these things together. Just one more way that the normalization of intellectual mediocrity makes people so hostile towards anyone with any unique talent. We can't be subjecting the rare people with these important talents to the threat of being attacked by a paranoid madwoman if they dare to use them.
The open source and Maker communities have been fighting off legislators and lawyers (there are a few interests that would be very keen to see products like Ubuntu or OpenOffice leave the market), and even more recently they've tried to use drones as a wedge strategy. Best case scenario, this case establishes precedent for protecting civilians' right to use drones and disarms that particular wedge strategy. And at the very least, it'll surely pay for this kid's college.
