Canberra Police Want Drones To Track Cars

garymortimer tips this story at the Canberra Times, which starts: "Police have suggested that Canberra's new point-to-point speed cameras be linked to unmanned aerial surveillance drones and used to track vehicles of interest to authorities. The first of the cameras, which use automated number plate recognition technology to calculate a car's average speed and whether it is within the legal limit, are due to be switched on by the end of the year." I wonder how much surveillance by drone is already being done in the U.S., especially considering that even an (admittedly high-end) home-built drone is capable of hijinks that seem to parallel the cell-phone tracking activities the FBI has been shown to employ.

Comments

Re:Why drones?

[Tynin]

I don't get why they want to do this with drones... It seems like a less efficient and more expensive method of tracking compared to the satellites they are using now...

My guess would be to have more control of what they can see. Satellites look down, whereas UAV's can reposition themselves rather swiftly and look from numerous angles. The other reason would be more of a psychological one, the bad guys will some times get to see these things and perhaps will think twice, and the fearful citizen might feel like they are now more secure since the watching eye in the sky will somehow be able to protect them better.

Re:Why drones?

[killmenow]

Yeah but it's way cheaper to retrofit munitions onto drones than satellites.

Speeding is about to be history.

[Mad Quacker]

Just authorize the drones for autonomous kill functionality, this way we can take care of those evil speeders for good!

what I want to know is...

[roc97007]

...how soon before the drones are equipped with Hellfires?

I Am Amazed

[Nom du Keyboard]

I am truly amazed at just how much Big Brother that the (formerly, and once fiercely) independent Australians are willing to put up with. Virtually no private ownership of guns any more. Non-opt out Internet filtering. Now P2P traffic monitoring. How long before they regulate out of existence the Aussie equivalent of the pit bull - the legendary Australian Cattle Dog?

Re:I Am Amazed

[Cimexus]

I think you might have taken a few exaggerated and inaccurate Slashdot headlines without the requisite grain of salt:

- Your point about guns is true, but keep in mind the context you are talking about here. There was very, very little private ownership of guns in Australia from the start. Gun laws were indeed toughened up and a buy-back instituted during the late 90s but it wasn't a particularly controversial issue because we simply don't have the gun culture that countries like the US do. If you have a legitimate reason to own guns (sports shooter, farmer, security, etc etc.) and are appropriately licensed, you could, and still can, own a gun. But the rest of us don't care that we can't because 99.9% of us never did and have probably never thought about guns in our lives.

- What non-opt out internet filtering? Please stop spreading this myth. That proposal never even made it to the "introduced into Parliament as a Bill" stage, let alone actually got through the House and Senate and enacted into law. It was shot down in flames by the public and by most of the political parties. Two ISPs did implement a very basic filter blocking a handful of sites using a trivial-to-overcome method (they were not forced to do so - they did it of their own accord). But there are literally dozens of choices of ISPs in almost every area and if you don't like it, you are free to move to on of the other 95% of ISPs who don't filter.

- What P2P traffic monitoring? I honestly have no idea what you are talking about and I follow the Internet industry here pretty closely. Are you confusing something you've read about a ~particular~ ISP's policy, and applying that to the country as a whole?

- Aussie cattle dogs as common as mud here - the stereotypical farmer's or tradesman's dog. They don't generally have the same temperament as a pit bull so I'm not sure why they would be legislated against? Particularly as they are considered a national icon in many ways.

Look I understand where you're coming from, but please, please remember that Slashdot articles are often hyped up, inaccurate and filled with hyperbole. Doubly so for stories originating outside the US where readers might not be aware of the other relevant facts and overall context of the article. The net filtering thing is a good example - it was constantly reported on here as if it was a done deal and we were all going to be subject to mandatory filtering, whereas the reality on the ground is that it was politically untenable and most people could see it couldn't/wasn't going to happen. And it didn't. A proposal by a few senators does not equal an enacted law ... but to this day half of Slashdot seems to think there is some kind of mandatory government-forced filtering here.

The Australian character has changed over the last few decades to be sure (although not so much once you move outside of the large cities). That is inevitable - we are still a young country that is still maturing in many ways. What has changed though is the degree to which every little idea, random thought and proposal is reported on (often in as inflammatory language as possible to get page views).

There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to be levelled against Australia without having to make things up. And on the flip side there are plenty of areas in which we can say we have resisted some of the big brother stuff seen in other countries - we have nowhere near the level of CCTV coverage as Europe does, we still have decent warrant requirements and safeguards regarding wiretapping, we have strong privacy and consumer protection laws, and we can still get on a plane without being nudie scanned, without taking our shoes off, without having to package up our liquids into sandwich bags etc etc. Every country has its vices and I don't think anywhere can truly say it's resisted Big Brother completely, unfortunately.

Re:I Am Amazed

[Cimexus]

Oh, you are right! Apologies to the parent :)

Yeah point-to-point speeding cameras may be new to the ACT but as you say I've seen them in Melbourne before, and there's been some on the Federal Highway in NSW (between Sydney and Canberra) for a while now. First genuinely effective way of ensuring people don't speed on a stretch of road that I've seen (let's face it, once you know where the traditional speed cameras are, you just slow down ... go past ... and speed back up again). They are a bit irritating because, yes I admit, I usually set the cruise control on 117 km/h going from CBR to SYD (on 110 km/h roads), which won't get you pulled over in NSW, but is enough to trigger these P2P cameras. The stretch between Canberra and Sydney is quite a decent distance too - around 30-40 km between each end, so you have to make sure you don't go over 110 at all during that period.

Re:Why drones?

[jklovanc]

If you mean GPS satellites the vehicle has to have a GPS device that is transmitting it's ID, location and speed. Very few vehicles do that.

If you mean image satellites then you are way off. Satellites do not have the angle or resolution to read a license number so can not identify a single vehicle. They generally take still photographs so it is very difficult to spot vehicles going faster than the general flow of traffic. There are very few satellites available that can handle video. Those that can are generally to expensive to use for a $200 speeding ticket.

What they are using now are helicopters and light planes. Drones are much less expensive than either of those.

Re:Why drones?

[Synerg1y]

A ticket in the mail???

Re:See David Brin's Transparent Society book

[Paul Fernhout]

"Otherwise, if everybody can just sit around doing what they want, then they'll probably end up wanting to have a fair number of kids."

And with a seemingly empty and devoid-of-life solar system and galaxy around us, this is wrong because?

Ignoring how in practice industrial countries birth rates are falling below replacement...

You may well be right about current technical limits. But they can change with some research investment.