Is this the same Eric Schmidt
who said: "if you don’t have anything to hide, you have nothing to fear".
Shurely shome mishtake?
Google supremo Eric Schmidt has demanded tough rules on civilians flying surveillance drones, branding the tech a threat to privacy. The executive chairman of the internet advertising giant that snaps photos of millions of front doors worldwide is upset that cheap camera-toting aircraft can be used by anyone from terrorists to …
That's what I was going to post... however I agree with his comments in this case even though I think drones are incredibly awesome and I really want one. They are such an open opportunity for perving and so on - I shouldn't have to close my curtains if my window is not overlooked.
I fear they may be banned before they properly take off (!) as a toy.
Schmidt / Google needs a good old Thatcher-style hand-bagging. Obama should borrow Michelle's heaviest "purse" and let rip.
Next in line - London Banks, the British Leyland of the 21st Century. The should be hand-bagged with all available speed.
Sorry about the off-topic rant. But seriously, man.
And who thought it would be neat to provide us with (pretty high res.) aerial / satellite photo's which could almost identify your wife or girlfriend lying on a beach bench in your own backyard in her bikini ?
Has everyone already forgotten about Google Earth and how much trouble many individuals had to go through before Google finally allowed the public to apply for blurring of pictures on their Google Earth environment ?
What I see here is the Pot calling the Kettle black, and also a shameless display of sheer arrogance.
Google's approach has tended to be: "We can, so we should. We'll pick up the pieces later."
Schmidt is assuming that everyone else will do the same - in other words, because we can buzz a neighbour's BBQ then we will.
Truth is, must of us think before acting and don't believe we should just because we can.
You have a very naive view of humanity. You don't think a guy who gets a drone for 'honourable' (nerdy) purposes who realises a hot woman sunbathes naked in her private garden or showers with the curtain open in her un-overlooked bathroom, would abuse that? It's very easy to say people won't BUY drones to perve, and I agree (mostly). But that doesn't mean they won't use them for that...
Nothing stopping them nailing a video camera to a long stick and viewing that way through a window.
I think it would be cool to have one. Could inspect my roof/guttering as well as shooting some nice flypast views (away from houses).
Though, because there will always be one pervert out there, its going to restrict the rest of us normal people.
It is indeed a handy way to get a stills shot from a better vantage point... over a tall wall... above some other obstruction.. something in distance isn't quite visible but a few more feet of elevation will help.. a better view for all sorts of reasons...
Put camera on tripod, extend to max length.
Keep tripod legs together, and use as a long 'stick'.
Use wide angle. Press 5 or 10 second timer... hoist camera up high, it takes shot.
Bonus points for having a tilt-n-twist screen you can angle downwards so you can roughly check the framing.
@jdx: with your fit woman example where do you draw the line? If I could be upstairs in my house ogling her or hovering a drone above my property is that still allowed as long as I'm not taking photos or video? Is it only wrong if her property isn't naturally overlooked? Where's the line?
As regards other comments about google cars only taking images of what is publicly viewable I believe that has been held to not be true in several jurisdictions due to the pole extending from the roof of the vehicle giving it greater than normal viewing height.
"@jdx: with your fit woman example where do you draw the line? If I could be upstairs in my house ogling her or hovering a drone above my property is that still allowed"
If you could see her from your house, she can expect to be observed and should shut her curtains.
Hovering a drone high above your own land... well you would not be allowed to build a high viewing platform on your garden which allows you to overlook neighbours, as far as I understand it, so I'd say this falls into that category.
Surely this kind of story is a gold mine for commentards?
I think this is a case of glass houses and throwing stones. Im betting hes got a reporter doing exactly this and he doesn't like it.
People do not get rich like him by playing by the same rules as the little people. After a while, the truly powerful people really do live in ivory towers and the really don't see the hypocrisy in their statements.
Maybe if the reporter used paint to blur out the faces on the picture? After all, he kindly did the same to the picture of my mother falling out of her car outside her house, which was nice, she loved that being shown to millions.
Or maybe the people taking snaps of his back garden could publish them all online and then give him an opt-out per image ? Seems fair tbh
I think this is a case of glass houses and throwing stones. Im betting hes got a reporter doing exactly this and he doesn't like it.
Probably that. But aside from the downright offensiveness of Schmidt being the one to say this, he is correct in this case. I'll just be keeping a very close eye on whether his actions match his rhetoric.
No, he's utterly wrong.
Taking photos that deliberately invade the privacy of another is already illegal in most jurisdictions.
For example, one could stand on a hill with a really long lens to take pictures of somebody topless sunbathing in a private area - and it would be against the law.
It would break exactly the same law to use any other technology to get that same photo.
- Oddly, you'd get caught more easily if you used a drone - they are noisier and have less loiter time than a bloke with a monopod and 1m lens.
Banning drone photography would be fundamentally stupid - it's the same as banning cameras because you might hold one up over a fence.
It is the photo itself which could invade one's privacy, not the means used to take it.
Apart from the "fun police" aspect, there are many business opportunities opened up by using them - the most obvious utilitarian example being safe roofing and gutter inspections.
> cheap camera-toting aircraft can be used by anyone from terrorists to quarrelling neighbours:
I think his major, probably only, reason for getting upset is that the paparazzi will start flying drones over his property and start invading his privacy. He obviously has no interest in anybody else's privacy, but when it comes "home" it's a different matter entirely.
Though to be fair, it's only a short journey from loading a camera onto a drone and flying it over his heavily guarded and impenetrable walls, to loading a gun onto the same ...
It's probably more a case of
'We had to do all of this shit which cost a lot of money to get around the 'you're invading peoples privacy' stuff, which went atop license fees to take those pics in the first place. And now you're letting tom dick and harry go around with cheap consumer drones doing all the things you said we couldn't do... And without having to pay a license fee for it!"
Which to a degree I can go with. There's a difference between buying worldwide pics which infringe on privacy without the intention to do so, and deliverately flying a drone to your neighbours bathroom window that the leave open while they're in the shower.
If someone flies a drone into your property, I wonder if you're allowed to shoot it down
"I'm into conceptual art, you know, nailing water kettles to a board, letting concrete flow down the stairs, that kind of stuff. Right now I'm experimenting with firing paintball pellets up into the air, and have them fall on this canvas. And I seem to have hit some helicopter-thingie that apparently was flying overhead."
That doesn't help if sale of drones is unregulated and millions of the things start being used in this illegal manner... how is PC Plod going to tell who is operating the damn thing when someone reports it keeps bothering them? Hell how's he going to tell who is controlling it if he happens to be there when the drone appears? Users could fly the thing to knock off the copper's helmet with impunity!!
Though I want a drone, I can see blocking them at source is potentially the way this might go. Thought waiting for it to BE a problem first would be preferable in case it's very rare.
Isn't this already covered by law. It's illegal to take pictures of people on private property, in the air above would include this. It is also illegal to take pictures of people in public places where there is an expectation of privacy. The same goes for video. Buzzing a neighbours bbq with a camera equipped drone would contravene the law anyway right? I am not a lawyer, but as a photographer I do hope I understand this part of the law, at least for a couple of countries.
There are some iffy areas such as taking pictures of people on the private property from a public place, but this is often covered by voyerism. Personally I'm not all that bothered, saves on clay pidgeons :-)
I have no problem with people flying drones in public areas or on their own property or with permission of the land owner..BUT if they fly over my property, expect to be prosecuted or to have your drone shot down by mine...
I am pretty sure we have laws to stop this, I.E. while I can put up cameras on my property and record anything I damn well like, its my property and its my choice.
BUT if you fly over my garden with a drone and spy on me in my garden, then your breaking laws, I have an expectation of privacy in my garden! and you should expect your drone to be taken down, I expect drones are as susceptible to water guns as cats & rabbits are! (now to start building my automated defences!)
> cheap camera-toting aircraft can be used by anyone from terrorists to quarrelling neighbours
Terrorist A: So, we want to to blow up a crowd of people here and inflict a lot of casualties, but where best to plant the bomb?
Terrorist B: I know! I know! We could use an RC quadropter with a video camera to survey the area first.
Terrorist A: Nah, we can't do that, that would be illegal.
Um, how would any legislation work work, exactly?
All that being said, Obama's proposal for domestic drone use is a very serious and worrying thing. The US government does not have a great track record with respect to privacy, and add in that our current prez is an Ivy Leaguer, former wall streeter, Chicago machine politician, and lawyer, and you can see why I have my doubts.
The only difference between spying on your neighbours with a drone and doing it by attaching a camera to a long stick or climbing a tree or using a telephoto lens or a hole in the party wall is that it's marginally more convenient. The laws that apply to the current peeping Tom technologies will still apply. The same applies to the nuisance and safety risk that you can cause with a drone.
Believing that readily-available drones change things is a classic example of technology fixation.
It is true, that you can build a drone relatively cheaply with something like a GoPro (ie DJI Phantom ~£500), but the image quality is just not up to spying on people, let alone through windows, you would have to be practically on top of them to get any detail.
For serious spying you would need something capable of lifting and controlling a DSLR with telephoto and also relaying live video (FPV) back to the user, this is where the cost starts to exceed anyone but the most determined spy. (something like a Vulcan MANTIS 900, and then you need to add the cost of camera and FPV gear)
// anon, because...
Cheaper than that: A Parrot 2 is £260-ish on eBay right now; comes ready to go with 720p video and you can fly it from your iThing or Android tablet/phone. Relays live video back to the device, to be stored there or on an onboard USB stick.
I had a look at the parts and I reckon (after a fairly cursory look) that you could put together something a little more industrial (and with full-fat 1080p video) for somewhere in the £150-200 region. More if you want night-vision, of course.
Of course all this FUD is purest bollocks - drones uniformly sound like a swarm of bees and it would be absolutely impossible to stalk someone without them knowing about it (without getting into *major* cost for high-res kit and the oomph to lift it). With 'domestic' dronery if it's close enough to do the stalker any good; the stalkee knows all about it.
Mr. (or is it Übersturmbahnführer by now) Schmidt is NOT displeased because not everyone can afford a fleet of cars and trucks to drive through every street and film and photograph your home (or even inside it, if your curtains are not drawn) or buy hi-res areal shots of your garden and whoever is in it. He can do that and you can't so that's OK.
He IS, however, displeased because everyone (or nearly) CAN afford a 100$ toy with a 50$ camera strapped to it and fly it over HIS garden, or hover in front of HIS windows, and take snaps and post them on the interwebs. He finds this utterly unacceptable. And you're not even making money from it. Who do you think you are.
The media coverage of this is quite incredible. Few (any?) seem able to question it but just jump straight on the 'its something new and there is an excuse now to ban it, ban it, ban it, ban the new, burn the heretic' bandwagon.
Its not as if we can be doing something in our gardens these days without being spied on (unless we are a multi-millionaire anyway) - the housing estate (or is the battery cages) the uk people are forced now to endure are built so on top of each other that even if the garden has enough room to put a sun lounger in then it is overlooked by at least 5 houses.
Besides, you've been able to buy small cameras and remote control planes for a long time, easy to put them together, and don't forget the little rockets and parachute toys you can buy that are capable of carrying a camera (http://gyroscope.com/d.asp?product=ROCKVIDEO is just one of a number)
Pretty much double standards, google has a front picture of my house, they also have an aerial view, and when you zoom in closer, they have a 3D view from 4 different angles, bing has a crapper version of that.
I don't really care that much to be honest. If someone flies a drone in my garden and peer into my rooms, I am going to get a baseball bat and smash it to bits.
Flying toys are not new. I've still got my fathers Frog (with petrol engine) from well before I was born (I think he got it in the late 1940s)
So all this talk of "flying over my property" is just a red herring as the issue of flying objects has been around a LONG time. Banning flying objects is therefore pointless.
So it comes down once again to privacy laws and their existence and application - should you have the right to a private life? If the law covers a photographer with a long lens, then it covers camera equipped flying objects. If the law doesn't cover photographers....
Hypocrisy detector yes, irony no.....
Schmidt has already demonstrated that he believes that personal privacy is not for "little people". See for example his childish boycott of CNet that was mentioned in the article.
Some people have principles that become highly malleable in the presence of large amounts of money, and Eric Schmidt is one of them.
If a drone started circling over my house, I'd get a slingshot and shoot it down. Anything buzzing over my property is mine for the taking. (Given I'm in the good ol' USA, my lot rent agreement does specifically prohibit shooting off guns outside, since otherwise it'd technically be allowed by default.)
I agree with the others that it is merely Eric feeling that others might "infringe" on his apparent sole god-given right to invade people's privacy.
It is ludicrous to think any commercially available drone could "flies over your house all day." They can barely stay aloft 10 to 15 minutes at best.
It is an ignorant statement. And he probably is sad he hadn't thought of a way to commercially deploy drones to swoop in and blare an advertisement at you whilst you were in your backyard.
Your legal expectation of privacy has already been watered down by Google Streetview. Watered down legally because Streetview has been challenged in the courts and their action upheld.
So, if Google are to campaign for a ban on flying thingies with cameras, I can well imagine that here in the UK at least, any new law banning remote flying camera operations will likely be kneejerk, wooly and wide ranging. It will almost certainly cause Streetview to be in violation of that new law. This may well lead to Streetview being blocked until Google can spend more money challenging it in courrt.