

Paris night drone mystery deepens - dismal2
http://bbc.com/news/world-europe-31619099

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xutopia
I don't think people realize that France has a huge number of drone
aficionados. They race drones and have plenty of competitions for amateurs.

To me those drones are nothing more than a few amateurs taking pictures of the
beautiful city of lights. No mystery there... simply a few non-threatening
people having some fun with tech.

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matt_morgan
Right. All these stories fail to mention that you don't really need any
special reason other than the perfectly obvious (Paris at night!!!) to want to
fly a drone there. Plus once it makes the news, you better get your pics
quickly, before it's too late.

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sctb
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9106905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9106905)

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dismal2
yeah just noticed this, maybe url was a bit different and allowed dup. can a
mod delete this?

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msane
I predict that some cities will eventually desire persistent aerial
surveillance systems like
[http://www.baesystems.com/product/BAES_162772/ARGUS-
IS](http://www.baesystems.com/product/BAES_162772/ARGUS-IS) for many reasons,
this being one.

The best way to tell who is operating a drone may be to play wide-area
surveillance video backward and trace the drone back to where it was launched.

Wide-area surveillance is a slightly scary technology. But it may be more good
than bad if used appropriately.

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mcamara
Since it should be relatively straightforward to weaponize these drones, is
this all leading to a ban on civilian drones in the foreseeable future?

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chrismarlow9
I think so. This article somewhat shows that there's no real control over the
drones and it still takes manual labor to track and identify the owners. Right
now there are only a few drones, and it's taking days to get them out. If
these were weaponized it would be far too late. That's only with a few of
them. All it would take is a small military/ops budget to launch like 50
drones and then there's no chance.

This + the whitehouse drone incident = impending crackdown on drones...

