#slucey18

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Blurb

A drone is an unmanned aircraft that is guided remotely.  They generally have cameras on them and drones used for war may have weapons on them as well. Drones are cause for concern in America because of potential invasion of privacy. Simple drones with cameras are very easy for any one to get their hands on. The FAA is currently trying to establish fair laws to allow private drone use while restricting usage that would invade the privacy of others.  The other potential invasion of privacy is drone use by the government and law enforcement agencies. This is the more controversial topic that is harder to address.  Should police be able to use drones to assist in arrests? Should they be able to use drone footage to incriminate people in court? Surely we dont want drones constantly watching over us, so where do we draw the line?

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This is a clip from James Bond Skyfall and this is a good example of positive uses for drones.  To capture some of the shots of the bike chase, they had to use drones to catch the zoomed out shots of the rooftops. 

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"I had no clue they were using a drone during the standoff.  What the SWAT team did was definitely illegal".

April 9, 2012 was the first case where drones surveillance was used to aid an arrest in the US.  They used it to verify Rodney Brossart's location and make sure there were no weapons before they moved in to arrest him.  Brossart fought this stating that the use of the drone was illegal. On January 14, 2014 he was sentenced to three years in prison.

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GW Remix

Although this is unrelated to my issue, I will be remixing a generative writing that I did in class.  For class, we had to write about something about ourselves that cant be known just from appearances and wouldn't come up in class.

I absolutely despise clothes shopping. It doesn't matter who I am with, it is dreadful. The origin of this hatred towards shopping was probably started from shopping with my mom. Those 5 hour outings for "back to school" clothes always left me exhausted and cranky. Going from store to store buying new shirts, pants, shorts, and sometimes shoes.  After about two hours I would begin to sit down wherever I could to take a break.  I never understood why, but shopping always drained me physically and mentally.  Walking that much would never bother me that much doing anything else, but while shopping I would lose energy with every step. To be blunt, shopping sucks.

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This photo was taken by a drone. To capture such a stunning photo, you used to have to take a picture from a helicopter, but drones have made this type of photography possible while on the ground. It is also much cheaper to have a drone than to pay for a very expensive helicopter ride every time you want to take a photo from the sky.

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Interview with Scooter (he wanted me to call him Scooter), a sophomore at Umass Amherst

Me: How would you react if you saw a drone in the sky that you though was recording you?

Scooter: I would probably make a funny face or something like that. 

Me: You wouldn't try to throw anything at it to knock it down?

Scooter: Probably not. (chuckles). Maybe wave at it.

Me: For what purposes would you deem it necessary for government agencies to use drone surveillance?

Scooter: For protection. I dont think they should be able to spy on random people but its the same with following people. If they can get a court ordered warrant on somebody you could use that(drones) to hover around them.

Me: The FAA projects that 30,000 drones will be in the US skies by 2020. How does this make you feel?

Scooter: I dont see a problem with it as long as its regulated by a transparent government.

Me: What restrictions would you place on government use of drones?

Scooter: I wouldn't want them to have weapons. I probably wouldn't want them to blow stuff up. (laughs)

Me: So weapons. (laughs) Those are the only restrictions?

Scooter: Ya.

Me: And for private use? Any restriction on private use of drones?

Scooter: Maybe you should have a background check to get a heavy duty drone. Kind of like guns. Except they don't even do that for guns that well, so...

Me: And you could make your own if you're knowledgeable enough.

Scooter: Maybe there could be a flying permit for recreational use. I think people should be able to use them, like my cousin.  If he wants to watch the Pats with it... (laughs)

Me: Ya, power to him. (laughs) Thank you.

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My Context for Drones

I grew up in a the medium sized town of Easton, which is in Eastern Mass. Although there were neighborhoods in Easton with kids playing in the streets, I lived off of a main road set back a couple hundred yards due to my driveway length surrounded by trees.  We could barely see our neighbors through our trees and we had very few unexpected visitors. We didnt even get any trick or treaters on halloween because our driveway was too long.  Besides our cousins, who lived next door with a path in the woods to their house, we had our fair share of privacy.  I am now studying Electrical Engineering at Umass and hope to go into robotics one day.  This creates quite a dilemma for me, I love my privacy and would hate it if a drone with a camera was hovering over my Easton home, but that is the field that I want to go into.  I chose this blog topic to explore a way to allow some drone use without encroaching on the privacy rights of ordinary citizens nation wide. I have come to the conclusion that drone use is perfectly fine as long as privacy is respected and government, commercial and private use is monitored and reasonable restrictions are in place.