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I kind of agree. Personally I have no problems with drones being used where police helicopters are now. It's cheaper, safer, and probably more effective too. H

I kind of agree. Personally I have no problems with drones being used where police helicopters are now. It's cheaper, safer, and probably more effective too. However, and this is a big issue, drones are thus cheap making it possible to use them much more than police helicopters are now. It's just hardware, you can buy a lot of it. I dread thinking about a future where drones will be swarming everywhere, collecting information aspecifically, to collect and process and find every tiny violation, obliterating any sense of privacy. I agree that's not a technology problem. And regulating technology won't solve it. But it should not be ignored either. Advancing technology does open a lot of debates about what we want life to be really like. A much-heard argument against a 1984-like scenario in the 80's used to be "it's too expensive". It isn't anymore. And drones are only a small part of that.

_djo_ 14y ago
Agreed. As I said I think the problem is one of persistent surveillance. This is only going to get worse as technology develops and it becomes possible for governments and police departments to deploy hundreds or thousands of insect-sized drones through our cities. That's why I think focusing on drones obscures the real issue and makes it more difficult to have the serious and very necessary debate about whether we want to live in societies where the state is able to track you persistently in any public space. We already have the beginnings of something similar in cities like London, where thousands of CCTV cameras are every bit as invasive of our privacy as a police drone flying overhead would be. In other words this battle against the police use of drones like the Predator could be 'won' and it would probably not make any difference to the police's ability to track you with video and audio surveillance.
- wladimir 14y ago
  Yes, I think the underlying reason that drones are brought into these kind of discussions is because people are terrified of armed drones, especially autonomous ones. They make war cheap in the same way as CCTVs make surveillance cheap. But that's a completely different issue and shouldn't distract from the domestic surveillance one which is (at the moment) much more pressing.

_djo_ 14y ago

Agreed. As I said I think the problem is one of persistent surveillance. This is only going to get worse as technology develops and it becomes possible for governments and police departments to deploy hundreds or thousands of insect-sized drones through our cities. That's why I think focusing on drones obscures the real issue and makes it more difficult to have the serious and very necessary debate about whether we want to live in societies where the state is able to track you persistently in any public space. We already have the beginnings of something similar in cities like London, where thousands of CCTV cameras are every bit as invasive of our privacy as a police drone flying overhead would be. In other words this battle against the police use of drones like the Predator could be 'won' and it would probably not make any difference to the police's ability to track you with video and audio surveillance.

wladimir 14y ago
Yes, I think the underlying reason that drones are brought into these kind of discussions is because people are terrified of armed drones, especially autonomous ones. They make war cheap in the same way as CCTVs make surveillance cheap. But that's a completely different issue and shouldn't distract from the domestic surveillance one which is (at the moment) much more pressing.