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Drone as first responder makes a tremendous amount of sense -- Police already use helicopters, which are exceptionally expensive, limited in coverage capability

• titzer 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • nicbou 3y ago
    This is not reddit. Pay attention to the community guidelines.
  • CrampusDestrus 3y ago
    Yes, when civilian lives are at risk, having complete situational awareness is extremely important
• cheeseomlit 3y ago
  Yeah obviously there are safety benefits. There are also safety benefits to having surveillance cameras on every street corner. And think of the lives we could save if everybody was implanted with a tracking chip at birth so we could instantly know if they're in distress. Sometimes the juice ain't worth the squeeze.
  • davidu 3y ago
    Surveillance cameras on the right corners are a really good idea. Excellent way to make policing more objective. I wrote about that here: https://a16z.com/2021/07/13/investing-in-flock-safety/ https://a16z.com/2021/07/13/investing-in-flock-safety/ Turns out, marginalized and minority communities, counter-intuitively, tend to prefer it the most. As for tracking chip -- we don't do it at birth, because we don't need to. Most people over the age of 15 keep a cell phone on them which provides tracking capability / cellular triangulation. It's used to save lives and apprehend criminals constantly. The privacy issues are actually more marketing based and have nothing to do with the GPS / triangulation issues, and people don't want to solve those, unfortunately.
    • wahnfrieden 3y ago
      Shameful copaganda from a16z. I can see some optimism for crypto but cop tech is just sad to see. The material effect of this is dramatically extending cop surveillance capability, regardless of the intent. That’s not a non-controversial thing to post neutrally and expect to be celebrated without criticism. Less polite society has a word that describes that called bootlicking. The “let’s be practical here” attitude of “well we just gotta give the cops more to see them do better” is an endless cycle. Note that davidu is in his bio anti-anarchist (libertarian), meaning he fights the enemies of the law and the state and the enemies of capital. Common enough around here but want to point out he proclaims a mission of supporting the state and law enforcement. lol. Just want to give Disclaimer to the political mission.
    • zmgsabst 3y ago
      Why would that be counter-intuitive? Poor, marginalized communities suffer disproportionately from crime — and accordingly tend to promote pro-police policies. The only people who don’t recognize that are bourgeoisie who associate those communities with crime — and due to their own biases, assume they don’t want more police from a place of (near) total ignorance. Or who have their privileged sensibilities offended by the fact communities which suffer disproportionate crime also have disproportionate criminals — so try to sweep it under the rug with biased enforcement. But those are luxury beliefs, reinforced with manufactured consent by bourgeois institutions: people actually suffering from crime tend to have considerably more practical beliefs.
• flashback2199 3y ago
  Letting the police install video cameras and microphones inside your home would also have many benefits. They could catch burglars, or call an ambulance if you have a heart attack. What could go wrong?
  • ben_w 3y ago
    In-home surveillance would be slightly less invasive than sharing all browsing history without a warrant, IMO. And yes, everything can go wrong.
    • Fricken 3y ago
      We can talk about everything that can go wrong, but as it is a cop can kill you if he decides to. It comes down to whether or not the forces that be decide to. Possibly police will be less likely to use lethal force if they avoid taking what they may perceive to be a lethal risk by using drones.
      • throwaway290 3y ago
        First give police the right to kill with impunity, then introduce pervasive surveillance as a feature that makes them kill less. Nothing can go wrong
        • ben_w 3y ago
          I have no good answers. I'd like a world with as much freedom and as few restrictions as possible; yet I also know that it's increasingly easy for someone working alone to cause enormous damage and loss of life. I want a legal system simple enough that at least half the population know all their rights and responsibilities without any danger of unwittingly violating the law, because "ignorance of the law must not be a legitimate excuse" but it clearly is an excuse in a world where lawyers laugh in your face if you ask them if anyone knows all the laws. I want punishments that have no vengeance, punishments which only serve to be deterrence for the sane, and where the insane are humanely kept out of harm's way; for these to be effective, I suspect (but don't know for sure) that the best way is to have near 100% accurate fines almost immediately upon detection, which in turn have to be small — framing example: you drop litter, 30 seconds later a notification of a fine for $1.00 appears on your phone, which you can also make go away by picking up what you dropped. I don't know how to prevent that from becoming a totalitarian nightmare thanks to the apparent popularity of ever-escalating punishments for all offences. I don't know how to watch the watchers. "State secrets" may be an excuse for the powerful to hide behind, but it's also, not only. I don't know how to square that with the embarrassment that people have over so many aspects of themselves, that makes the right to privacy an absolute necessity. And this kind of privacy issue is "easy mode" compared to what happens if we get mind uploads.
• wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Why not just give them brutally omniscient unlimited power over us, by your logic that would be radically beneficial to our health and safety. You’re starting from the misguided idea that police actively save people from crime’s dangers, and speak nothing to concern for giving power to armed thugs over us besides cheering it on. Just baseless copaganda and shameful to see celebrated. How does the logic work that giving more tech and power and resources somehow reduces power Those who rush to analyze objective stats on this fail to recognize how little oversight and accountability there is for police, numbers often don’t meaningfully exist. Like asking for numbers from China, it’s just a bow to authority. The critical analysis and objectivity of that is performative.
  • unethical_ban 3y ago
    There is always a line somewhere that divides a topic. When safety and security are worth it vs. when privacy and safety from authority is more worth it. You seem to think that line should constrain authorities' permission to send up eyes in the sky for little to no cost. I think it could actually reduce government spying if it substituted for camera on every corner.
    • ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      a good place to start would be statistics on how often cops abuse their power, and how often and to what degree they are held accountable to it with that information, we can make an informed decision on whether they can be trusted with more power if they can be trusted with it, we can discuss the benefits and drawbacks of entrusting them with it
• nradov 3y ago
  You shouldn't be down voted. While using drones for spraying fire retardant in urban areas is rather fanciful with current technology, the drone as first responder concept makes total sense for observation. The drone operator can brief the human responders while they're en route so that they arrive fully prepared to deal with the situation. The Campbell, CA police department recently started such a program. And no one is seriously proposing mounting weapons on civilian drones. That is essentially already banned by ATF and FAA rules.
• brightball 3y ago
  A couple of years ago, I probably would have argued with you but now I'm 100% on board with the approach described in this article. > Unlike Baltimore’s aircraft, Brookhaven’s machines won’t fly unless an emergency is reported. Their cameras won’t film, or even point down, until they are at the scene. All footage is destroyed after 30 days unless it is being used in a criminal investigation or for training purposes, and all the flight logs are public. IMO, this is a completely reasonable approach that provides a pathway for better engagement, less ambiguity and a more authoritative perspective than bystander recordings that may be selectively edited for clicks. Body cameras are great, but they miss perspective of watching the officers.
  • Freedom2 3y ago
    So they say. As we've learnt over the years, what can we truly trust? How can we verify that these promises are kept? I read a good HN comment before, which could be inspiration for a comic or TV series: "Who watches the watchers?"
    • bradgessler 3y ago
      Activity that falls outside of the specified parameters needs to be deemed as illegal. The ultimate way of getting there is people need to vote on sensible privacy laws on what can or can’t be used for prosecution. If a prosecutor tries to use footage that falls outside of those parameters then it can’t be used as evidence.
      • alpinisme 3y ago
        It needs to be stronger than that. There ought to be penalties for activities outside the specified scope (preferably criminal in cases that exceed some minimal threshold of severity). Just stopping it at the trial level is inadequate if we want the policy-sketched privacy to be meaningful.
    • ROTMetro 3y ago
      Go watch Cuffani's testimony today. The IG is who watches the watchers. He admits he routinely just deleted the text messages on his government phone despite record keeping requirements because 'he didn't do government business on his government phone'. It is also pointed out to him that half of his staff feel it would be unsafe to be whistleblowers. He and his staff are the people that whistleblowers report to. But sure, let's trust them this time. The constitution is the highest law in the land. Government officials regularly break the law and violate our constitutional rights, and all that happens is a 'we'll try better next time'. Routinely break the highest law in the land and nothing happens. Try that with driving with expired tags, try habitually driving with that and respond 'my bad, I didn't realize'. Or try the 'I didn't know it was illegal' defense they use, or the 'good faith' defense they get. All to protect them from any consequence when they break THE HIGHEST LAWS OF THE LAND within the Constitution that all our other laws stem from.
• clairity 3y ago
  no, helicopters in LA (and "eyes in the sky" in general) don't contribute at all to effective policing or safety. they actually entice showboats to create a spectacle so they get on tv. this creates more public danger. and there have been a number of chases where the suspect was lost even so. but all you need in these instances is an incontrovertible photo of the suspect and the car/license plate, witnesses of the crime, and effective investigation, just like any other criminal case. the helicopter is there for cops to show off and waste disproportional money better spend on investigation. first responders are trained to assess situations quickly, so "situational awareness" has very marginal benefit (not zero, but also not much) in all of the use cases you cite. the extra overhead is simply not worth it in most cases. like legged robots, drones are a technology looking for a market, but there really isn't much market out there. we don't need more surveillance tech. we need more dogged and trustworthy investigators and first responders.