

The Drone Zone - corywatilo
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/magazine/the-drone-zone.html?pagewanted=all

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ck2
Wait until every police force has a dozen little drones in 2015 and they start
paying for them by automatically generating (incontestable) speeding tickets.

If they WANT to write you a ticket, all they'll have to do is track you from
home to work, as long as it takes and it will be perfectly legal, completely
warrantless.

~~~
Cushman
Is it wrong to not be bothered by this? I'll be disappointed if fully
autonomous vehicles haven't started to hit the market by 2015. Stricter
enforcement of manual driving rules should probably be a part of that.

I'm not saying I'm down with the idea of a government robot following me
everywhere to see if I'm breaking the law, but I'm not very sympathetic to the
idea that we have some sort of right to violate traffic regulations without
consequence.

~~~
chernevik
Safe driving is hardly a matter of speed compliance. It is noticing
potentially tricky conditions 150 yards ahead and slowing down, or that you
are blocking someone's merge and speeding up. It is slowing down in slick
conditions, or in rain and congestion.

And I often find myself on empty highways in the early morning. With good
tires and brakes, and a rested driver, why _shouldn't_ I go 100 miles an hour?
Especially since I am off the gas well before anything that looks slightly
sketchy.

Cruise control has made most drivers far stupider, as they surrender speed to
the car and stop making the subtle adjustments to maintain or create buffers
needed to be safe. Worse, they camp out in the left hand lane simply to avoid
the necessity of those adjustments to accomodate merging traffic.

In theory, "autonomous" vehicles could drive faster and maintain those same
buffers better than any set of human drivers. In practice, I expect those
autonomies to be programmed to fit the preferences of a bunch of safety
nannies and police departments determined to maintain ticketing revenues.

~~~
Cushman
When you got your driver's license, you agreed to obey traffic regulations.
Not some of the rules, some of the time, not only when you agree with the
rules about what's safe, not unless you're in a hurry.

I'm not trying to say all the rules are right. Some of them should be changed
(and consistent enforcement is a great first step toward that). But this idea
that you have some right to not have them enforced because you find them
inconvenient is absurd.

~~~
chernevik
Yeah.

Say, when you decided to write in English, you agreed to obey the rules of
grammar, which state that every sentence should have a subject, an object and
a verb. Constructions such as "Not some of the rules . . . " etc break that
rule.

And when you decided to pick a fight with me, you agreed to not put words in
my mouth. Suggestions that I assert some right to not have the laws enforced
upon me, when I made no such statement, or any statement of any kind about my
rights, break that rule.

I'm not saying all these rules are right. But this idea (that is, that while
lecturing others, you have some right to break those rules because you them
inconvenient) is absurd.

~~~
Cushman
> But this idea (that is, that while lecturing others, you have some right to
> break those rules because you them inconvenient) is absurd.

Heh. Protip: When criticizing style as a point of argument, make sure you
don't accidentally a word.

I'd actually recommend against criticizing style at all, unless someone's
paying you to do it for them. It's hard to do in good faith. But thanks for
the help, anyway.

~~~
chernevik
Any reader will know what I mean, which for my style here is enough, because I
am not the one arguing for compliance.

And I'm not criticizing style "in good faith" but to make a point: the spirit
of a rule is more important than its letter. Your agreement is obvious in the
annotated violations of common rules of usage and argument.

I don't really care about your grammar. But putting words in my mouth
irritated me enough to craft a snarky response.

~~~
Cushman
Next time, try a little more craft and a little less snark.

------
Malcx
Although the title is link bait, this really doesn't surprise me.

Driving across the New Forest in the UK last summer I was "stalked" for half
an hour by a couple of Apache helicopters. Every few minutes they'd pop up
from behind cover or on the horizon somewhere, always pointing directly at my
car.

I see no problem with it at all.

~~~
pyre
No offense, but I can see that freaking some people out if they don't realize
that it's probably a training exercise (especially Apache helicopters!).

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tptacek
Bogus title; should be "The Drone Zone". The bit about tracking a civilian SUV
wasn't even the lede.

~~~
DevX101
I prefer descriptive titles. I don't know what an article called 'drone zone'
will be about.

~~~
corywatilo
I actually copied the title straight from Drudge. I wouldn't have read "The
Drone Zone" either.

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jessriedel
Ignoring corywatilo's link-bait title, it's worth pointing that

>within a year or so, the number of Air Force pilots flying unmanned planes
could be higher than the number who actually leave the ground

is true because the pilots being trained to fly drones _already_ outnumber
conventional pilots in training.

------
thrill
So? They're unarmed. It's about as dangerous as a TV helicopter videoing you
driving.

~~~
protomyth
Civilians tailing civilians is one thing, but military tailing civilians had
some legal problems[1]. I am not really happy they used one to execute what
should be an illegal search for some cows in ND[2].

1) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act>

2) [http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/crime/north-dakota-
po...](http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/crime/north-dakota-police-use-
predator-drone-catch-cow-thieves)

~~~
mc32
Isn't there an increase in cattle rustling in the prairie states?

Not saying the military should be directly involved, but I can see some org
dedicated to finding rustlers using this technique as an option, if it's
effective.

~~~
protomyth
North Dakota didn't see the rise that other states did. That is probably from
all the oil jobs in western ND.

The military is not supposed to be directly involved in civilian law
enforcement. Effective is not a consideration at that point. It would cut
crime a lot to have troops on every corner of Detroit, but that is not
something that is good long term for the citizens of the US.

------
Vivtek
The F-16 trainers out of Wright-Pat used to user our house as a target -
they'd circle it sometimes. It was pretty neat.

------
eragnew
In my view, the importance of this article is this question: 'Who watches the
watchers?'

What does that mean exactly? Well, it seems to me that there are some people
(authorities) in the US who would like to use drones for domestic policing and
surveillance. While that may not be a bad thing in and of itself, it could be
abused by someone who has a desire to abuse others.

So my takeaway is that transparency into domestic drone programs is a good
thing. And I, for one, will not trust any domestic agency that wants to use
drones without being truly transparent about what they want to use drones for.

------
tkahn6
> “Wait, you guys practice tracking enemies by using civilian cars?”

Um. Is there evidence that Afghan and Iraqi insurgents use anything but
civilian vehicles?

