

Quadcopter drone group held in London airport on suspicion of terrorism - th0ma5
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/27915-quadcopter-drone-group-held

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cpswan
Here's what happens next:

1\. Drones become more and more popular as kids/hackers toys

2\. Eventually a drone is used in a real terrorist plot

3\. Our politicians over react and ban drones

4\. We all write tweets and blogs about what clueless morons our politicians
are because the whole thing has been widely understood since (before?) Scott
Adams wrote 'The Religion War'

5\. Drones don't get unbanned for use outside of police/law enforcement
because of whining from the hacker community

~~~
gouranga
All while our unwanted persistent state of war rages and our supposedly but
not appointed military counterparts fly armed drones to kill and name people
under our name.

Fuck this planet sucks. actually no, humans suck as a race.

~~~
theorique
* supposedly but not appointed military counterparts fly armed drones to kill and name people under our name.*

Don't worry, it's all cool - they only kill the BAD guys! ;)

~~~
gouranga
Indeed. They even tell us which are the bad guys so we don't have to exercise
our brains!

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MrEnigma
It looks like they were only held for a couple of hours and released. Not that
I think this is right, but they are flying with lots of
wires/electronics/batteries.

~~~
cpswan
It's crazy how the whole movie plot driven security industry has been able to
associate naked electronics with bomb making. A friend was commenting last
night that the bare PCB of the Raspberry Pi could be seen as
dangerous/threatening, and I was speculating about how much trouble I'd get in
if I tried to take Arduino based home made toys on a flight.

~~~
mc32
I think you'll be fine.

Friend of mine had a kind home-made led flashlight (small PCB and gangly
wires). Friend was pulled aside for questioning and demonstrated its 'torch'
capability and then let go thru. The delay was about 20 minutes though. It is
silly, but if they've not studied any (even basic breadboarding) electronics,
then anything out of the ordinary like that will look 'weird' and arouse
caution.

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RedwoodCity
Glad to see that european airport secuirty is just as incompetent as american
TSA officers.

In the future have your robots sent by post in advance of your arrival and
terrorism officials will be none the wiser.

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mikeash
They were questioned by customs because they had a lot of weird stuff in their
luggage, and then were allowed through after two hours. Why is this news?

~~~
cpswan
Customs don't normally call the special branch, and whilst being detained for
hours is now normal practice in the US it's still (thankfully) pretty unusual
in the UK.

~~~
mikeash
How unusual is it, though? I imagine it's still something they do multiple
times per day, given the large volume of travelers they process.

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cpswan
I'm now feeling lucky that the OSHUG meeting last night, where the topic was
drones, didn't get raided - <http://oshug.org/event/20>

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vampirechicken
Repressive governments always fear artists.

