On 3/30/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> wrote:

----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> ----- ... Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have long been used over Iraq and Afghanistan. Now local police and Homeland Security want to use them in the U.S. for aerial surveillance.

This raises two interesting issues: privacy and safety.

i wager $something_equivalent_to_the_cost_of_a_few_beers that the safety concerns will scuttle this program within a year or two. some radio punks with an fpga modem and homebrew front ends will deep 6 one of these units if occasional failure doesn't do it first. with so little value added it's hard to justify that kind of risk over the public's heads and homes. sats and manned planes are almost as effective at invading such aerial privacy anyway...