Bird-Shaped Drone Symbolizes New Forms Of Covert Surveillance To Come (mirror.co.uk)

One security writer in Somali recently discovered a downed metal drone that had been carefully disguised as a bird, a reminder that drones will bring powerful new forms of surveillance. Slashdot reader Stephen Sellner also shares an article by the CEO of one unmanned systems company who's predicting that the commercial drone industry will create more than 100,000 new jobs and generate more than $82 billion for the U.S. economy, and suggesting "security of industrial areas (shipyard, storage facility, etc.) can now be augmented by drones to provide a quick eye in the sky."

But it may be inevitable that drones will be used in a variety of unexpected ways. Airbus is also testing the use of drones for quality inspections on their commercial aircraft. In Iowa, a drone helped lead first-responders to a man suffering from a heart attack. And the U.S. wildlife service is planning to drop peanut-butter pellets onto northeastern Montana to deliver vaccines to prairie dogs -- so that they can then in turn be eaten by Montana's population of endangered black-footed ferrets. Any predictions about drone news we'll be seeing in the future?

Comments

Clearly

[rmdingler]

These machinations will get better and better, until a roach or mouse sighting will cause alarm on the order of a new level of revulsion.

Jobs and revenue

[bjwest]

Too bad 99% of those jobs will be in overseas manufacturing and the vast majority of that $82 billion will be into the bank accounts of the wealthy.

Oh, don't fret little man, the drones will be used on you so you'll not be left out of the loop.

Here's a thought

[rsilvergun]

With the exception of the occasional mad man anything evil that gets done is done for the sake of controlling access to or the use of wealth. People don't generally want to watch random blokes for the fun of it (rule 34 excepted). They're looking to hurt you because you're threatening either their money or their master's money.

Rather than worry about a symptom of wide spread institutional evil ( surveillance ) why not attack root causes ( wealth inequality and the desire of a lucky few to preserve the privileges such a system grants them).

Re:One more reason ...

[Kjella]

For starters, the only bird type that can hover in one spot is the Hummingbird. If you see a large bird hovering perfectly still in one spot, you can bet your ass it's a drone.

Well if you bothered to properly disguise your drone as a bird I'm sure you'd have a program to fly in gentle circles like a bird searching for pray to "hover" over an area. Otherwise it'd be kinda obvious.