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Gatwick drones pair 'no longer suspects'
- Normal_gaussian 8y agoI'm sure the two of them are enjoying having their faces plastered over the sunday news (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs/the_papers https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs/the_papers) and sorting through all the lovely messages they've received over the last day or so.
- huffmsa 8y agoThe retraction never spreads as much as the accusation. Her Majesty's Christmas gift to these two appears to be Scotland Yard routing thousands of bits of hate mail their way.
- ajb257 8y agoWhilst a free press is important, I would argue that 'a man and a woman have been held in connection with the Gatwick Airport drone incident' would suffice. Kudos to the BBC for recognising this. It's not in the public interest for us to know exactly who they are unless they're actually found guilty of a crime. Publishing their names and pictures before _even being charged_ does nothing but open potentially innocent people up to danger. Whoever caused the Gatwick chaos needs to be brought to justice, but this is beyond reckless
- zozbot123 8y ago> ... It's not in the public interest for us to know exactly who they are unless they're actually found guilty of a crime. ... On the contrary, the commonly-acknowledged right of habeas corpus essentially requires the government to make the fact that someone is being detained public, at least if the prisoner himself so chooses. Privacy is a red herring here - habeas corpus is about preserving basic freedoms.
- hugh-avherald 8y agoIt's risible to claim that the press published the names because they were concerned about habeas corpus.
- hopler 8y ago> at least if the prisoner himself so chooses is the missing part in most cases.
- dahart 8y agoWhat do you mean when you say habeas corpus essentially requires a detention to be made public? Habeas corpus provides for a review of the legality of a detention for the requester. How & when is any information given publicly under habeas corpus laws? What makes you think habeas corpus and privacy can’t co-exist?
- hopler 8y agoWithout public knowledge and pressure, there is no check on authoritarian abuse and the law has no teeth.
- dahart 8y agoMaybe, but that's not what I asked. Don't habeas corpus laws provide public access to a (perhaps private) legal review? When do laws require sharing results with the public, as the GP comment claimed? Can there be checks on authoritarian abuse that don't require public dissemination? Is the threat of publicity exactly the same thing as a requirement for publicity?
- wbl 8y agoImagine a country where the police arrest people and they vanish in the middle of the night, with no way to determine what their status is.
- HarryHirsch 8y ago
- Carpetsmoker 8y agoI would argue that publishing the names at all isn't particularly news-worthy. The right to privacy exists, too. In the justice system it's the judge which rules a sentence. Years – or even decades – of public shaming doesn't seem fair to me. Committing a crime doesn't mean you're no longer dealing with a person with real feelings. Publishing names and photos strikes me as "2 minutes of hate", and not "news". Also note that it doesn't just affect the person(s). Family members or even completely unrelated people with similar names can get threatened.
- starbeast 8y agoEven just being in a crime reconstruction video as an actor is apparently risky. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-34218343 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-342183...
- hopler 8y agoThat's horrid. The BBC producers admitted they knew they were putting him in harm's way by republishit the video, and they intentionally went ahead anyway instead of taking a few minutes to fix the video.
- Carpetsmoker 8y ago> Det Insp Helen Evans, of Lincolnshire Police, said it would be "remiss not to thoroughly investigate every solid piece of information" and he will be given an update "in due course". I will never seize to be amazed at the capacity of some people to not think for themselves.
- jacquesm 8y agoThat's one very effective way to get people to no longer want to act in reconstruction videos.
- closeparen 8y agoThe facts entering public record are what distinguishes "arrested" from "disappeared." Do you want to live in a world where people are yanked off the street and not heard of for months or years, with no ability for the press/friends/family to find out about the situation, "out of respect for their privacy?" If the police refuse to disclose whether they've grabbed someone, I'm going to assume I'm in Soviet Russia.
- DanBC 8y ago> It's not in the public interest for us to know exactly who they are unless they're actually found guilty of a crime. The press always say that naming people who've been arrested is an important measure against authoritarian regimes. It allows the public to know whether police powers of arrest are being misused or not. They appear to have lost this argument, because this is in tension with people's right to privacy and rights to a fair trial by the courts not by the media. There's some interesting info here about different approaches: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10063422/Police-should-name-arrested-suspects-that-are-already-identified-by-the-press-Theresa-May-says.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/100634... https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/21/press-intrusion-name-suspects https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/21/press-intrusio...
- hopler 8y agoThere is an obvious difference between protecting people by tracking their identities in captivity vs harming people by publicly shaming them by immediately parroting the authority'sallegations.
- caminante 8y agoYou're missing his point. Your distinction still places the trust in the discretion of the police/press. If they don't disclose the name, then it's harder for character witnesses to come forward (e.g. the couple's neighbors in this case).
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoI don't think it works like that. Character witnesses are organised in private by a defence lawyer, who - of course - knows the identities of the accused. Not by a public announcement in the press. Front page headlines along the lines of "The police believe these people are criminals who caused huge inconvenience and suffering to hundreds of thousands of people - would someone like to say a good work about them?" probably aren't the best way to guarantee a fair trial.
- danso 8y agoI think the right to privacy vs. printing public info about the actions of our police is always going to be in tension. Of course, there's no argument that innocent people should have their privacy invaded, but ideally, innocent people shouldn't have been arrested at all. The flip side is when famous/powerful people are arrested but not charged, and the public not being able to know whether they got off because strings were pulled. And there's the overarching problem of people being disappeared with the public/press having no idea whether they were arrested, and for what reason. Which has led to some absurd situations in China recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/world/asia/china-fan-bingbing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/world/asia/china-fan-bing...
- snuxoll 8y agoPublic information about ongoing investigations and arrests wouldn't be problematic if our society didn't have such hilariously broken views on criminal investigations and trials. Get arrested in connection with some well talked-about crime, but were released or found innocent at trial? Doesn't matter, you're still guilty in the eyes of the public. Hell, look at jury boxes in the US - you as a defendant are assumed guilty against the spirit of our constitution, because people suck. Either we as a society need to fix our fucked up perceptions, or we need to have a serious discussion about the right to privacy up until the point that a verdict is delivered. Unfortunately, there's no evidence that we are going to fix the former in a timely manner.
- mattmanser 8y agoWhile it's not clear, the NYT seems to be saying that the local MP (politician) accidentally named them thinking the police had made them public, while the police would not confirm them and never named them. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/world/europe/gatwick-airport-drones-arrest.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/world/europe/gatwick-airp... I think it's a very British whoopsie, they're plastered over the papers and they didn't do anything.
- chatterbeak 8y agoJust as in the United States, you're guilty if the Public thinks your guilty.
- cosmojg 8y ago>Whoever caused the Gatwick chaos needs to be brought to justice Absolutely, along with all of these clowns who are perpetuating the chaos.
- Carpetsmoker 8y agoBeing accused is the same as 100% guilty, and being guilty is always reason for pubic shaming and unlimited amounts of vitriol. Good ol' British press logic. I wonder where they get their journalists from. Is there an education to be a heartless bastard with no sense of ethics? Or do they train them in-house?
- pasabagi 8y agoThey recruit them from the alumni of the same boarding schools they went to. I wish I was joking.
- huffmsa 8y agoIt's why there's so much outrage in America when differences between the verdict of public opinion and the verdict of the court happen.
- KineticLensman 8y agoWell it depends on which part of the British press you read - it's not a homogeneous entity. The BBC (original article) and the Guardian [0] didn't name them at any point. Some of the tabloid press did, including names and photos of their friends, families and employer. (I won't link to the naming articles because that would of course name them!). At least one of the major online papers that did name them has at least said that they have been released without charge (in the process calling them 'the accused'), but still with a mass of personal details. Really sad - I'm guessing that as drone users they will now receive the inevitable nut-job drone hatred. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/23/gatwick-drone-chaos-arrested-couple-released-without-charge https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/23/gatwick-dron...
- pjc50 8y ago"You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to." -- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Humbert_Wolfe https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Humbert_Wolfe , 1930 The lack of ethics is definitely imposed from the top, by people like Rupert Murdoch and Piers Morgan.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 8y agoA lot of them death threats, others suggesting life prison and torture. Side note, this shows, in the lowest common denominator, the true nature of people on the internet.
- setquk 8y agoBelieve me it’s not just the internet. Those people are just as vocal about it among friends and family. If you think the average British person is nice, you’ve probably just been lucky so far.
- hopler 8y agoPlease stop with the chauvinist stereotyping. Brits aren't special in this regard.
- dang 8y agoPlease keep nationalistic or ethnic or whatever-this-is slurs off HN. We're trying for better than that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tolien 8y agoDifficult to imagine a jury would have been found which hadn't seen their faces in order to give them a fair trial. The press could have been responsible for the two of them walking free even if there were evidence they had done it.
- e40 8y agoWhat happened to the UK law or practice of not naming suspects? That's the way it was a decade ago (or more?), right?
- tobylane 8y agoThe police and CPS don't name them, but MPs do for political reasons. Even if everyone couldn't, MPs can say things in Parliament more freely than outside.
- incompatible 8y agoIs there a chance that their suffering will be compensated by big libel wins?
- jstanley 8y agoThere must have been some motive for whoever did this. AFAIK, no environmental or terrorist groups have claimed responsibility. Is it possible that this has been done by someone within the police or intelligence community in order to create a pretext for pushing through drone licensing laws?
- voltagex_ 8y agohttps://twitter.com/GlytchTech/status/1076715652843487232?s=19 https://twitter.com/GlytchTech/status/1076715652843487232?s=...
- kiliantics 8y agoDidn't the drone disappear to recharge/replace batteries and return multiple times? I thought this meant it must be intentional and not accidental. Though, the accidental explanation is arguably more ominous/terrifying. It reminds of the episode "Autofac" from the "Electric Dreams" series.
- voltagex_ 8y agoHah, that's the first time I've heard "disappeared/reappeared". It's plausable, but are there multiple witnesses/reliable video?
- CydeWeys 8y agoCould just be some immature troublemaker, like people who shine lasers at planes. There doesn't need to be some real motive.
- ngngngng 8y agoNot an expert, but this really seems like something a teenager that recently acquired a drone and was showing off to his friends would do.
- malka 8y agoIt could have been done for the sake of lulz
- stackola 8y agoWhat if the while thing was a product demo? A group showing off their DDDOS (distributed drone denial of service) services?
- jswizzy 8y agoI work with small drones, sUAS, and back in the day some of the guys were too lazy to go to the airfield to fly them and would just go to a beach park instead but it was close to an airforce base and an medium size airport. Anyways they were flying pumas and had the entire police force of the city show up. Luckily the drones they had were fixed wing and designed to just fall out of the sky so they brought them down really quick and got away. I'm sure no one ever figured out who was flying drones in their airspace.
- duaoebg 8y agoI assumed they were the wrong suspects as soon as I found out they were hard core hobbyists. Pulling a stunt like this would be social death and would kill the hobby for them. No-one would want to hang out or work with them again.
- aaron695 8y agoExcept she didn't use drones at all, and he wasn't really interested anymore. So, does that now make them perfect suspects? For me a "perfect suspects" is a hard core hobbyist or someone who does it for a living. What's the next step after perfecting a hobby or being bored because it's a forced job other than taking it to the next level? Given the limited info it wasn't just a kid popping a drone over given how hard it seemed to be to catch them so that leaves someone who knows what they are doing. Who cares about "social death" over prison time? If anything it makes them heroes to many/most people, a good FU to the system.
- scottmf 8y agoConsidering how well organized the attack seems to have been, I assume those behind it know a lot about airports/drones. I wonder if it could be a government researcher worried about a lack of funding/preparation for this kind of attack (similar to the FBI's conclusion regarding the anthrax attacks)? It doesn't seem like a protest, so unless it's economic terrorism or a state-backed attack, what else is it likely to be? A former pilot with a grudge?
- flycaliguy 8y agoOr a potential government contractor selling anti-drone technology.
- pjc50 8y agoHas this story been updated? There's now a "may not have been a drone at all" in the middle?
- jstanley 8y agoDaily Mail have this video: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1828378/Video-Drone-spotted-flying-Gatwick-airport-London.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1828378/Video-D... Although I have no idea if it is real.
- dTal 8y agoSerious question - is there any actual evidence that there was ever a real drone? There are no available pictures of the supposed drone, which seems odd if it was 'buzzing the tower'. It also seems odd that it kept 'popping up' in random places, yet nobody managed to follow it with their own drone, or track it on radar. And now the police are arresting people with no connection to the incident and clearly still have no idea what was going on. The most parsimonious explanation would appear to me to be that somebody reported a drone once, possibly mistakenly, and once the extremely costly call had been made to shut down Gatwick, it snowballed into a mass hysteria / UFO sighting scenario, with everyone seeing 'drones' all over the place. Of course, it's possible there is in fact ironclad evidence for the official story that we're not being told. But it seems to me there's lots of incentive for the police to share all they know, and huge incentives not to admit that it was all a cock-up.
- clay_the_ripper 8y agoI was wondering the same thing. Given the amount of press this generated, I still haven’t seen a photo of one of the drones which seems odd. Has anyone seen a photo?
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoThe official story makes no sense at all. Why announce that you have arrested a couple of people if you have no hard evidence against them? Either this is all monumental incompetence, or the real story isn't being released. Coincidentally, Birmingham airport was shut for a couple of hours today after an air traffic control failure. If that's the end of the story, it's fair to assume there's no connection. If there's a spate of air traffic control and/or other failures over the next few days, it's going to be hard not to wonder if something else is going on.
- megaremote 8y ago> The official story makes no sense at all. Why announce that you have arrested a couple of people if you have no hard evidence against them? For lots of reasons. To make it seem like they are making progress, to make it seem like it is safe to travelers, to assuage their bosses, pick one.
- chatterbeak 8y agoAlso, the drones may never have existed.
- lifeisstillgood 8y agoThe front page of the Daily Mail was "Are these the Morons who shut Gatwick with a Drone?" I await the out of court settlement with interest