Eric Schmidt: Regulate Civilian Drones Now

An anonymous reader writes "Google Chairman Eric Schmidt is urging lawmakers to regulate the use of unmanned aircraft by civilians — and quickly. He posed this hypothetical situation to The Guardian: 'You're having a dispute with your neighbor. How would you feel if your neighbor went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their backyard. It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?' Schmidt went on to bring up military and terrorist concerns. 'I'm not going to pass judgment on whether armies should exist, but I would prefer to not spread and democratize the ability to fight war to every single human being. It's got to be regulated... It's one thing for governments, who have some legitimacy in what they're doing, but have other people doing it... it's not going to happen.'"

Comments

How would you feel about it?

[Osgeld]

I live outside city limits, so I would take my shotgun and get rid of the annoying nuance flying over my house, how would my neighbor feel about it... dont care

Re: How would you feel about it?

[phantomfive]

Yeah, I think this is basically Eric Schmidt having #richPersonProblems. If that happened to me, I would wonder why anyone wants to do such a boring thing with their life as watch me. But now that he is rich, he is concerned about reporters and paparazzi, and random people who might try to find some reason to sue him.

The funny thing is he's ok with the government doing it. That's kind of hilarious.

Re: How would you feel about it?

[Curunir_wolf]

He's rich enough and connected enough to be part of the 'government'.

You are not.

This explains Schmidt's motivation here pretty well. The modern equivalent of walking around yelling "shut up slave" and quipping "let them eat cake."

Re: How would you feel about it?

[girlintraining]

but unless you can site some specific regulation or authority that provides and exception to low-altitude trespassing in general for any random flying craft, then I think you're just making some wrong assumptions.

Hot air balloon landings have plenty of legal precident. None of them end with "and you can shoot at them during landing." Now, while it's been established that in cases of emergency -- or because the aircraft simply lacks the ability to prevent landing on your property (or anyone else's for that matter), it doesn't become yours, nor do you get any rights to it, including the right to move it. The police have to do that. Yes, it's been to court. There have been assholes with guns that have tried to attack the balloonist and then keep the chase vehicle off the property. It didn't end well for them... and by not ending well, I mean they were led away in handcuffs, possibly unpleasantly depending on how they used their weapon.

But you know what? Amazingly, hot air balloon events happen every fall, all over the country, and both the balloonists and the property owners manage to settle their differences peacefully, without guns, debates about privacy, land ownership rights, etc. It goes a little like this, "Sorry I landed in your corn field. We can pay you for the damage." And the property owner responds with, "Hey, that's cool. Just sign here." And away they both go, satisfied and without any violence or involvement of the legal system.

Amazingly, this happens about 99.95% of the time. Of the remaining 0.05%, some fucker decided to be an unreaonable prick, and was punished accordingly for it. Very occasionally, said fucker causes death and/or destruction before said punishment is handed down... usually with some additional helpings on top.

99.95% of the laws on the books are to deal with that random crazy asshole. Laws aren't needed for reasonable people, and reasonable people don't need to concern themselves with the law. All this talk about regulating drones is silly, because none of the regulations discussed either in the original article, or any of these replies on slashdot, actually goes to answering the question -- what do you do with that 0.05%?

The legislator should know better than to try to write blanket legislation that has no precident -- you write laws based on things that are actual problems, not imaginary ones. When we actually have a case of some asshole flying a drone over some other asshole's property, and they (predictably) decide to be assholes to each other with escalating levels of assholery, then we'll have something to legislate. And the law should narrowly and only target the two assholes. The specific mechanics of it, I leave up to you, the reader, or the legislator who will never read this.

But that's the only reasonable way to deal with the law; reactively. We can't predict what the assholes of the world are going to come up with next as a punishment upon themselves and us... we just have to wait and see. Because they are endlessly resourceful and unreasonable; But there are thankfully not very many of them.

So we observe them, document the behavior, test the hypothesis, and then present a conclusion (ie, a new law). And thus the law moves incrementally forward, and we as reasonable people can get on with our reasonable lives, trusting that unreasonable people will be slowly, but inexorably, pushed to the periphery.

Quiet enjoyment

[DogDude]

We already have laws to cover this or any other kind of annoyance from a neighbor. That's what civil law is in place to deal with. In the US at least, you have a right to "quiet enjoyment" of your real estate. In a situation described in the article, you sue your neighbor. No need for more laws.

Schmidt

[hackus]

Notice how he points out YOU shouldn't have drones, but the banking elite funding all of these wars, using your bank accounts CAN have drones, with no restrictions of course.

So, when the Banks shut down, and you decide to get mad because they stole your money, don't be surprised if you see Schmidt's cronies he hangs out with flying Military drones over your head to insure you either like the banks raping you or you don't.

Which if you do, you are a terrorist, and your fair game for the drone.

What a load of crap.

I say unregulate civilian drones, and BAN military and government drones.

-Hack

Afraid of competition huh?

[ikaruga]

'...How would you feel if your neighbor went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their backyard. It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?'

Said the guy who sends a car to photograph my entire neighborhood and collects hi-res satellite pictures of it every 6 months or so.

Schmidt has double standards on privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything Schmidt does at Google is devoted to destroying user privacy, yet when it comes to his own privacy, he doesn't want the masses to observe his private life using drones. The contrast couldn't be more vivid.

His comment that "it's OK for government to observe" is a poorly veiled "it's OK for the rich to observe", because government in the US is entirely under the control of the rich through the legalized bribery of "campaign contributions". And Google doesn't even try to hide its gluttony for observing everything, so "it's OK for corporations to observe" is implicit in his words. It's just not OK for you and me to do so.

This man really is one of the most morally corrupt people at the helm of technology giants today.