
China takes surveillance to new heights with flock of robotic doves - known
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2152027/china-takes-surveillance-new-heights-flock-robotic-doves-do-they
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dang
Url changed from [https://www.businessinsider.com/china-is-testing-creepy-
dove...](https://www.businessinsider.com/china-is-testing-creepy-dove-drones-
to-monitor-citizens-2018-6), which appears to be a shameful ripoff of this.

A reader helpfully emailed to point this out, but unfortunately we didn't see
it until later.

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jhatax
This made me think of the Black Mirror episode, Hated in the Nation (1). If a
bad actor gets control over these drones, it can wreak havoc.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation)

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fit2rule
I was taking a walk recently in a relatively industrial neighbourhood, around
which were fields often buzzing with recreational/sport drone flyers (pushing
us plane nerds to higher ground, naturally), and I have had the thought many
times that there are already opportunities for bad actors to do things with
drones in such places. The rec- flyers are but a hairs-width away from high
drama, alas. RC/multi-rotor tech has just gotten incredibly high-performance,
to a quite new market of people.. It will be interesting to see how much this
drone tech will be canned.

Its all fun and games until someone weaponises it at mass scale.

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alextooter
Everyday news:China is bad,it tell you what they want you know,then some day
they are going to have war with China,you will support that war.

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themodelplumber
So is there no negative news that can come from China? I am bombarded by good
news from China every time I get another low-price electronics package in the
mail. It's really quite out of balance. :-)

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Animats
30 minutes on a battery charge. They're going to have to come up with some way
for the birds to roost and recharge.

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tehlike
You mean, something like this:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0tCZKAh4H5cS01HWTcxSnFQV2c...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0tCZKAh4H5cS01HWTcxSnFQV2c/view?usp=drivesdk)
?

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Animats
Wants a login.

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singularity2001
Ray Kurzweil introduced the idea (to me) that aliens might roam and observe
this planet in the form of insects.

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fit2rule
And as octopus, perhaps dolphins, definitely tardigrades...

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qwerty456127
Countries are turning into concentration camps more and more...

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Pirolita
Birds aren’t real

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simplecomplex
Our daily anti-China clickbait!

Oh but it looks like US Military was doing this first... "Yet China isn't the
first place innovators have sought to build a device to resemble a bird: in
2013, the U.S. military acquired more than 30 drones from Florida-based
Prioria Robotics, designed to look like birds of prey. "

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Wowfunhappy
The difference, to me, is that China is doing this to spy on its own, civilian
citizens.

That doesn't make what the US military does _okay_ , but it does make it a lot
better.

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acct1771
Do you think most branches of the US military aren't involved in domestic
spying?

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bassman9000
The US-China attempt to moral equivalence is getting tiring. Far from perfect,
the US still has a vast superior Rule of Law, human/natural rights protection,
open internet, and it's not imprisoning a million people in "reeducation
camps".

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intuitionist
No, it's imprisoning two million people in prisons.

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chrisco255
Yeah for actual crimes not for talking shit about the Communist party or being
Muslim or whatever the Chinese government is up to these days. In the U.S. you
can talk all the shit you want about Trump, you're not gonna suffer legal
consequences for it. Good luck protesting Xi Jinping in Shanghai.

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jammygit
Actual crimes like possession of marijuana?

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Wowfunhappy
And yet, use of Marijuana is becoming legal in more and more states because
people the US have the right to protest and attempt to change laws they think
are unnecessary or unjust. Try having that conversation in China.

