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[ long painfully-tortured never-gonna-happen scenario ] Yeah, whatever. I would be fine if a politician came back to us later with a revised bill that include

by crusso 14y ago

[ long painfully-tortured never-gonna-happen scenario ] Yeah, whatever. I would be fine if a politician came back to us later with a revised bill that includes very specific exceptions for situations like the one your example described and maybe something to allow for keeping images taken of aliens from outer space. For now, though, the liberty we're giving away 99.9999% of the time is our right to prevent illegal search and seizure plus we're giving away our implied rights to privacy. No thanks. Domestic drones should be shut down forcefully until we as a society think through the ramifications (which we obviously haven't because they're being allowed by default). > What's special about drones here? If you can answer the question of why the Govt wants to use the drones in the first place, you have my answer to why that's a bad thing.

tzs 14y ago
> If you can answer the question of why the Govt wants to use the drones in the first place, you have my answer to why that's a bad thing. Some obvious places state and local governments will want to use drones: • Search and rescue. For the cost of one manned aircraft, a whole fleet of drones could be deployed, allowing for a wider search. • Fire monitoring. A park ranger who spots a remote fire could check it out much faster with a drone than on foot or horseback or ATV. • Traffic monitoring and crowd safety monitoring during high turnout events. For instance, major sporting events, or the informal large street celebrations that happen when the home team wins a championship. • Damage assessment after natural disasters or severe weather. A fleet of small drone helicopters could check power lines after a severe wind storm to find places where trees or branches have fallen into lines, for example. • After a snow storm, a school could send a drone to fly over the school bus routes to determine if they appear safe to send out the school buses, or if school needs to be cancelled. So how are these bad things?
- ekianjo 14y ago
  These are bad things if there are no limits: - Search and rescue could easily become "search and track" whoever the police suspects. - Crowd safety monitoring could become a tool against demonstrators, used to prevent large groups of people from getting together by precise police intervention. - Traffic monitoring could lead to actual registration of individual plates leading to massive privacy concerns. Why is the government allowed to know where I am going? There's always a very narrow gap between something that is useful and something that causes harm. Without any clear provision, and by blinding trusting government, you easily end up with crowd controlling policies. The State is like Sauron's Ring: it wants Power.
- crusso 14y ago
  So there's your answer. You're describing "features" that give more power to the government. They want it because it empowers them. I don't care how you candy coat it by cherry picking some neat special features of that power. I've been around long enough to know that the features used to sell you a product or service don't ever tell you the whole picture of what you're buying. Government tends to take authority given to them for ostensibly noble purposes and abuse that authority [1]. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" I prefer to consider the totality of what granting this extra power to the government would entail... and it's not all search and rescue. [1] http://www.humanevents.com/2012/06/11/epa-power-grab-to-regulate-ditches-gullies-on-private-property/ http://www.humanevents.com/2012/06/11/epa-power-grab-to-regu...
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I like how message board libertarians write as if their comments were addressed to history instead of to other people on the message board; "the eternal vigilance of the stridently worded objection" is a noble thing indeed. The reality is, 'tzs started this thread by pointing out why Senator Paul's bill was flawed as a matter of policy: it precludes obviously legitimate uses of remote-controlled aerial devices, which are obviously going to be a commonplace technology in 10-15 years and are used with little regulatory drama by private industry today. Naturally, the Libertarian Paladins of the Comment Thread want to turn 'tzs workmanlike point --- which, unlike the glittering pronouncement of principals favored by your fellow Paladins, actually involved reading the bill --- into a discussion of drones used to shoot hellfire missiles down the chimneys of anyone who would write an unfavorable comment on a message board about Romney or Obama. But that's not the discussion 'tzs invited. He simply said: "this is a poorly written bill, so much so that it is obviously not going to get passed, so obviously that Senator Paul had to have either known that or be incompetent, and let's stipulate that he's not incompetent". Can you address your comment to his actual point, rather than conjuring up some authoritarian demon that shoots drones armed with Wikileaks-seeking missles out of its butt? Because 'tzs is not that demon.

by crusso 14y ago

tzs 14y ago

> If you can answer the question of why the Govt wants to use the drones in the first place, you have my answer to why that's a bad thing. Some obvious places state and local governments will want to use drones: • Search and rescue. For the cost of one manned aircraft, a whole fleet of drones could be deployed, allowing for a wider search. • Fire monitoring. A park ranger who spots a remote fire could check it out much faster with a drone than on foot or horseback or ATV. • Traffic monitoring and crowd safety monitoring during high turnout events. For instance, major sporting events, or the informal large street celebrations that happen when the home team wins a championship. • Damage assessment after natural disasters or severe weather. A fleet of small drone helicopters could check power lines after a severe wind storm to find places where trees or branches have fallen into lines, for example. • After a snow storm, a school could send a drone to fly over the school bus routes to determine if they appear safe to send out the school buses, or if school needs to be cancelled. So how are these bad things?

ekianjo 14y ago
These are bad things if there are no limits: - Search and rescue could easily become "search and track" whoever the police suspects. - Crowd safety monitoring could become a tool against demonstrators, used to prevent large groups of people from getting together by precise police intervention. - Traffic monitoring could lead to actual registration of individual plates leading to massive privacy concerns. Why is the government allowed to know where I am going? There's always a very narrow gap between something that is useful and something that causes harm. Without any clear provision, and by blinding trusting government, you easily end up with crowd controlling policies. The State is like Sauron's Ring: it wants Power.
crusso 14y ago
So there's your answer. You're describing "features" that give more power to the government. They want it because it empowers them. I don't care how you candy coat it by cherry picking some neat special features of that power. I've been around long enough to know that the features used to sell you a product or service don't ever tell you the whole picture of what you're buying. Government tends to take authority given to them for ostensibly noble purposes and abuse that authority [1]. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" I prefer to consider the totality of what granting this extra power to the government would entail... and it's not all search and rescue. [1] http://www.humanevents.com/2012/06/11/epa-power-grab-to-regulate-ditches-gullies-on-private-property/ http://www.humanevents.com/2012/06/11/epa-power-grab-to-regu...
- tptacek 14y ago
  I like how message board libertarians write as if their comments were addressed to history instead of to other people on the message board; "the eternal vigilance of the stridently worded objection" is a noble thing indeed. The reality is, 'tzs started this thread by pointing out why Senator Paul's bill was flawed as a matter of policy: it precludes obviously legitimate uses of remote-controlled aerial devices, which are obviously going to be a commonplace technology in 10-15 years and are used with little regulatory drama by private industry today. Naturally, the Libertarian Paladins of the Comment Thread want to turn 'tzs workmanlike point --- which, unlike the glittering pronouncement of principals favored by your fellow Paladins, actually involved reading the bill --- into a discussion of drones used to shoot hellfire missiles down the chimneys of anyone who would write an unfavorable comment on a message board about Romney or Obama. But that's not the discussion 'tzs invited. He simply said: "this is a poorly written bill, so much so that it is obviously not going to get passed, so obviously that Senator Paul had to have either known that or be incompetent, and let's stipulate that he's not incompetent". Can you address your comment to his actual point, rather than conjuring up some authoritarian demon that shoots drones armed with Wikileaks-seeking missles out of its butt? Because 'tzs is not that demon.