
A Use Of Drones Nearly Everyone Will Like - nickcobb
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130213/12295221966/heres-use-drones-nearly-everyone-will-like.shtml
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apawloski
My freshman and sophomore years in college, I worked in the big cat house at a
fairly prestigious zoo in the US (mostly feeding them and cleaning up their
shit). But in addition to the cats we took care of, we had many programs
around the world to protect animals from poachers and environmental
encroachment. In almost every poaching context, the most successful
experiments were always the simplest:

Pay the poachers to be rangers instead.

We found that the primary motivation for poachers was profit, so we approached
them and essentially said "We'll pay you more if you protect the cats instead
of hunting them." The 180s we observed were remarkable, and the money they
made from poaching was usually so small that beating it was almost trivial for
us. So while the price of drones (and program maintenance) are decreasing, I
can't help but wonder how many ranger salaries could have been paid instead.

~~~
_djo_
That approach has been tried and although there's limited success it's not
workable for rhino poaching. The huge amount of money being made by criminal
syndicates means that the people doing the poaching are being paid far, far
more than the state could ever afford to compete with while the extra money
means the poaching operations are more sophisticated with their own
helicopters and pilots, paid-off veterinarians and other high-skilled and
well-paid people.

Nonetheless there's a large reward incentive offered in South Africa and
neighbouring countries for information leading to the arrest of a poacher or
the head of a poaching syndicate, amounting to $10 000 for the former and $100
000 for the latter. It's too early to say how well it's working, but it is
being supplemented by military patrols, drone and aircraft operations and
sophisticated sensors and early indications are promising.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Seriously?

How much does Rhino Horn go for?

And, since its matted hair, and since it does not actually increase male
virility when mixed with water, why do the criminial syndicates not just stop
poaching and hand out ground up hair. I mean, they are criminials. Its not
like they are opposed to lying.

Edit: 60-80K/kilo it seems - in bitcoins.

~~~
_djo_
Over $65 000 per kg, significantly more valuable than Gold.

Fake horns do make up a lot of the consumer trade in rhino horns, with most
made from water buffalo horns, but these have had the effect of increasing
demand. High-end buyers get their rhino horns from syndicates that are able to
guarantee the provenance of their horns and can command a higher price as a
result.

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fnordfnordfnord
I hate hate hate the idea of the use of drones by police fishing for crimes to
prosecute. OTOH, I agree with the sentiment of the article on the notion that
drones are simply a new (as in newly economical) technology, and neither good
nor bad. One of my favorite ideas for drones is scouting for forest fires
during drought. Finding a forest fire before it becomes too large to fight
could save lives and property.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
>> Fishing for crimes to prosecute

Err, if its a crime its a crime. Upping the detection rate is not a bad thing
in itself - it merely hastens the day when we reduce the number of crimes
because if we prosecute we manage to bang up 20% of the population.

(See the US approach to mandatory drug sentences for a tired example)

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
I would argue that upping the detection rate is a bad thing, given the current
status quo of the relationship people have with government. Our system relies
upon investing some amount of trust in individuals (law enforcement agents,
prosecutors, jurors, etc.) to ensure that laws are enforced fairly, by
applying them selectively (or at least that's the ideal case). As for
hastening "the day we reduce the number of crimes because if we prosecute we
manage to bang up 20% of the population." I'd expect that number to be nearer
to 99%, and, it can't happen soon enough as far as I am concerned.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
presumably the happen soon enough is the reduction of statutory crimes, not
banging up 99% of the population (although that too might ... No.)

Actually increasing the detection rate is IMO a Good Thing. I would like it if
violent crimes were caught on CCTV, then the MIT-derived algorithm to pick
individuals from stance and gait is used to follow them through the streets
out and the taxis, to their front door where a cop car pulls up.

Add to that all the white-collar crimes, the lax banking departments that move
billions around for terrorists, tax evaders and criminals.

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MrQuincle
If I am correct, this is a law enforcement task, so it is again police work. I
think there are better uses of drones for now, for which reason our company
created some ethical guidelines: <http://www.dobots.nl/ethical-policy>. One of
our statements is "Helping, not harming!". It is better to first develop
technologies where we can help people, and consider them as victims, rather
than searching for scenarios where we can identify perpetrators. The
suggestion in the article is to destroy the vehicles of the poachers, but
where does it stop... There are so many situations where we can help. People
that drown at sea, early detection of forest fires, environmental monitoring,
crowdsourcing journalism, etc.

PS: I am the PI of the Dutch <http://www.fireswarm.nl> project in which a
group of companies and universities use drones to detect a fire as quick as
possible.

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newishuser
I wonder how long it will be until a specific anti-drone gun is invented.
Seems like there will be a strong market for one soon.

~~~
icegreentea
Oky, so I've actually had a really hard time finding out what type of drones
they're using. What I did get is this report - with some pictures and stats:
<http://www.iapf.org/images/documents/niassa.pdf>

Perhaps someone else can identify it, but from it's specs, it looks like it
can probably fly reasonably high... if it can manage 6-8 hours at 400km range,
it looks like it kind of slots in somewhat below
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScanEagle> in terms of performance (and cost).

From that guess, I'm thinking that this sucker is flying well over a mile
high, which makes most gun approaches (unless they brought in a whole anti-
aircraft platform...) pretty unfeasible. In any case, the cost of shooting
down one of these would be pretty high - you would almost certainly need a
weapon with guidance somehow (ie, a missile, which is going to really cut into
your profit margins), extreme luck and patience, or lug around anti-aircraft
platforms... which might not actually be out of the picture.

One of the things this article doesn't really tap into is how the nature of
the poachers themselves are changing. The poachers themselves are becoming
more militarized (as are the wardens now), partly due to the hilarious amounts
of money poaching generates - it apparently, they represent a significant
revenue stream for various African Paramilitary groups.
[http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/rhino-horn-crisis-and-
the-d...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/rhino-horn-crisis-and-the-darknet)

In any case, like most illict trades, constraining the supply rarely makes the
problem go away - you gotta shutdown the demand somehow.

~~~
apawloski
Wow, that's the first time I've ever seen that figure (for rhino horn). We
were doing programs for totally different animals, and presumably different
markets, but the magnitude of that number is completely contrary to our
experience. Only further evidence that one-size-fits-all solutions are not
always as generalized as they might seem.

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forgotAgain
It's not about drones per se. It's about giving untrustworthy governments such
a powerful tool to oppress.

~~~
_djo_
Both South Africa and Kenya already operate military drones, in South Africa's
case dating back to the mid-1980s. The idea that a tiny number of cheap low-
endurance crowd-funded drones will increase government oppression or that
these governments can't already get better drones is poorly thought-through.

Plus, neither South Africa nor Kenya can be considered 'oppressive'
governments.

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schabernakk
I am really looking forward ordering a pizza and getting them delivered by a
drone 15 minutes later.

As soon as this happens (5 years? 8 years?) I am pretty sure there will also
be a service like silk road using drones and bitcoin as payment to deliver
drugs (and probably everything else) to your doorstep a few minutes after
ordering it.

~~~
Giszmo
Oh great! ;) So I can order a pizza to my GPS coordinates paid with bitcoin
from my Android on the beach? That's cool!

Only problem with an anonymous order (hey, of course it should be anonymous!)
is that people might want to take the drone instead of the pizza so maybe they
will have to parachute the pizza from some altitude :) … oh I love this idea
:)

… ok so maybe the drone would not operate 100% automated and the pilot would
drop the pizza only some meters away from any person that might want to snatch
the drone?

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_djo_
Unfortunately while this helps it's not a panacea. I wrote a previous comment
on HN [1] on the same subject, which I'll paste here as the points still
apply:

 _This is welcome from Google, as focused aid of this sort can often have an
outsize effect, but we must be careful to avoid believing this can solve the
problem._

 _For one, sophisticated UAVs that are much more capable than those the WWF is
getting are already being used to combat rhino poaching. SANParks, the state
agency responsible for South Africa's state-run national parks, has deployed
the Seeker II military-spec UAV[0], ground radar, thermal imagers, cameras and
dedicated teams of heavily armed rangers in the Kruger National Park, one of
Africa's largest wildlife reserves. All anti-poaching resources have been
placed under the command of Major General Johan Jooste, a highly-regarded
retired military commander and a rewards program giving approximately US$ 10
000 to anybody whose tip-off results in the arrest of a poacher and about US$
100 000 for a tip-off leading to the arrest of the head of a poaching
syndicate has been created. At the same time the South African Army has
deployed units in both the border patrol and anti-poaching role in certain
parks._

 _These measures are all helping, but it's important to understand just what
an impossible task this is. SANParks's 19 national parks alone cover 37 000
km², that's larger than Belgium, Israel and Lebanon. Moreover those 19 parks
are dispersed across South Africa's 1.2 million km² and many of them are on
the border of neighbouring countries from which many of these poachers come.
It also doesn't include the hundreds of private wildlife reserves across the
country which have been badly hit by rhino poaching. As the US has discovered
on its southern border with Mexico, trying to prevent small bands of people
from crossing a border this large is impossible even with UAVs, manned
aircraft and massive resources._

 _So technology alone is not going to solve this, though it and other measures
are hopefully going to help reduce the rate at which rhinos are being killed.
The only long-term solution is to somehow stop the demand for rhino horn from
Asia and thus remove the profit motive for poaching rhinos in the first
place._

 _[0] The Seeker II is a 9-12 hour endurance UAV with all the standard
surveillance gear such as FLIR cameras that is being provided free of charge
by Denel, a South African arms manufacturer. The intention is to supplement
that with a longer-ranged model, the Seeker 400, sometime next year. At the
same time they're finalising development of a much smaller UAV, the Hungwe,
that can be deployed by ranger teams for short-range surveillance._

[1]<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4936947>

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Interesting - replace "rhino horn" with "cocaine" or "heroin" and you have the
editorial page of the Economist.

Supply and demand rule it seems.

