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Houston Police Test Unmanned Surveillance Aircraft
54mc writes "The Houston Police Department was filmed testing an unmanned aircraft in a secretive gathering on Wednesday. The media were not allowed into the event; however they were told that the aircraft would be used for 'mobility' and 'tactical' issues, and possibly even for writing traffic tickets. The aircraft has a wingspan of 10 feet and is said to cost from $30K to $1M. Pictures and video are available at the link." The article mentions that the craft was being operated by staff from a private firm called Insitu, Inc.. The device in the video looks like the firm's ScanEagle.
That's a very broad price range.
I can't possibly see this thing helping local law enforcement much. It's obviously not going to land next to you and physically write a ticket out, but it would probably take lots of pictures. This would be so very intrusive to have some sort of plane constantly watching over you.
The difference here is that a police helicopter is extremely expensive, and is therefore reserved for only the most serious of crimes. There are understandably very few of them, and I'll agree that they're mostly a good thing.
However, if they truly can purchase a UAV for $30k, you'll see these things buzzing around EVERYWHERE. I don't doubt that if purchased and deployed in quantity, you could purchase and operate a UAV for the fraction of the cost of a patrol car.
Earlier in the year, I got to get up close with the UAV equipment operated by PFRR, and was extremely impressed by the simplicity and portability of the system. There's really not a whole lot to it, and UAVs do indeed have some pretty awesome potential applications (military recon is an obvious one -- I'm not too keen on the moral implications of sending in automated kill-bots, but that's another discussion....). I'm just not sure that police patrols should be one of them...
I'd love to see fewer highway patrols. However, I'd also love to see fewer assholes weaving through traffic 30mph+ over the speed of the "flow", avoiding arrest by using a radar detector. Those guys are dangerous, and the speed traps to catch them are dangerous.
Unfortunately, I fear that the police will simply use this as a cash cow, and use it to ticket the average Joe going 75-80mph on an empty straight highway, which is what most highway patrols tend to do. (If you've ever driven across Pennsylvania, you'll know what I'm talking about -- it's a vast expanse of nothing).
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I for one want to see if the same "+5 informative", "+5 insightful" inflamed comments about how a similar thing happening in Venezuela was a proof of a totalitarian government will be repeated on this thread, by the same set of people.
Normaly copters are used to supplement an active investigation. If you see one, you know something is up ( or its just the local TV station running traffic reports.. )
These things will just fly around and look at everyone, hoping to catch you with your pants down. Later they will just record every move everyone makes, regardless of any suspicion. Do you want that? I don't. Unless I'm under active court supported suspicion, they don't have a right to 'follow' me around, 'just in case'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"The privacy nutters never seem to come up with better arguments then "this won't allow us to break the law anymore". Fine with me, don't like the law, change it, don't break it."
What an intelligent suggestion... and one that shows your comprehensive knowledge of history! Why, if only the citizens of the USSR had known, they could have just changed the law rather than running from the gulag! Same goes for the citizens of Nazi Germany, Pol Pot's Cambodia, and even the United States under slavery. What were those people thinking, rebelling against slavery, running away from their legal owners, protesting the laws by violating them? They should have just changed the law, not broken it!
Yes, you really do seem to understand this. I applaud your pure insight. When an unjust law exists, it is our responsibility to obey it!
They do if one of these things collides with their Piper Cub or the 737 they are riding on.
Have gnu, will travel.
...and you've never seen the Autobahn at its best. No speed limit, and it WORKS. Why? Drivers who want to KEEP that lack of a speed limit driving at high rates in a usually logical manner.
I've seen it in motion. Fraggin' beautiful.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Just don't let the price be everything that a free democratic republic should hold dear. It's not the monetary cost, it's the cost to your liberty that is at stake.
However, that doesn't work when the speed limit doesn't reflect the speed that people are actually travelling on the road. I've seen lots of roads where the speed limit is set way below the actual speed that people travel. If you drive at the speed limit, then not only will you get a lot of other drivers really angry, but you'll probably be really unsafe too, as drivers will come up behind you at a really high speed. Also, for a little experiment in speed limits, try coordinating with 3 other people to each drive in one lane of the expressway at the speep limit. Not directly beside eachother, but with just enough room for other drivers to pass and go around you. Watch the traffic pile up behind you, and bring the city to a stand still, and watch the lack of traffic in front of you. What's really terrible is that speed limits are set such that they are not to be followed. Then they arrest you for going 2 km/h faster than the other guy, just because you happen to be going 30 km/h over the limit, and he was going 28 km/h over the limit.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
In other words, you don't own the air over your property.
So unless they're harrassing you, I doubt there is much you can sue for. Would a suit based on the assumption that an overflight by a UAV be considered a warrantless search work against the authorities? Maybe...
OTOH, Police don't need a warrant to look at things that are in "plain sight"... which is a somewhat flexible concept. Either way, fscking around with their UAV would definitely be destruction of gov't property.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The range is not really that surprising.
For 30k (or 10k if you don't get ripped off), you can build an aircraft that relies on GPS + digital compass with a built in map for navigation, uses sonar for handling weaknesses in the map (e.g. the map didn't mention this aircraft just in front of me), and stores/transmits pictures (over 3G).
However, if you want to have onboard video processing then things start getting expensive very fast. A processor and graphics card powerful enough to do image processing is very hard to make small and low power (where hard is a synonym for expensive). As you start putting higher power requirements on the engine, you have to put greater weight (damn batteries) which coupled with how heavy batteries are means you have to start buying hideously expensive small/light/powerful batteries. Also, you have to do the same with every other component of the system - the motor is the most obvious but the rest of the aircraft has to be specced to handle an extra 10 pounds without being any larger or heavier.
Next, if your computer is drawing nontrivial amounts of juice, you've got to seriously think about whether you're better with a generator onboard rather than seperate batteries. Oh, and you better get a really efficient generator since you can't afford the weight of more fuel. I'm sure you can see where this is heading.
Crudely put, think about cellphone technology. What you're asking for is something like a cellphone (with a couple pretty standard addons like GPS and sonar) except you're wanting a cellphone from five years in the future in terms of power and features. How much do you think it costs to custom-build a cellphone from five years in the future today?
Finally, but perhaps most important, I've skipped over development time. These projects take a lot of work and even more testing. You can only do so much with Flight Gear before you have to build and crash a few to configure the software. Want to test the emergency radio override before you start flying this thing around the city, you'll have to crash a few in the process. Even if you're getting development at cost (ie. you hire a team of programmers to do it for you), you'll still pay around $1M and have to amortise that over all the planes you build. Few people get development at cost either - it is hard to build up a team of decent programmers so much easier to contract to a company that's already done it.
He could observe courtesy (and what the law requires in many areas) by driving in the slowest lanes thereby minimizing or eliminating any safety hazard caused by his slow driving.
It's well known that excessive speed differentials create dangerous conditions. That's why freeways have minimum speed limits and why failure to yield right of way is seriously enforced in some areas. A strong argument could be made that safety hazards created by excessively slow drivers are just as much the government's responsibility as anyone else. They're the ones setting deliberately slow speed limits that encourage drivers to ignore posted speeds and they're the one's supporting low standards of driver competence in their licensing policies. Where uniform speeds are driven, whether or not they correlate to posted speeds, driving is relatively safer. Raising speed limits, therefore, can have a beneficial effect on safety in some cases.
Today. Will it always be? Or will we install constant surveillance, which will then be used by future governments, which may or may not be as good as this one?