OMG!!! Two "drone sightings" in a week! And, as CTV reported, they were apparently unmanned! Jeez.
The people interviewed in the TV report live on the third floor of an apartment building which has floor-to-ceiling windows and yet they think no one can see in?! Double jeez.
The guy interviewed by the paper called the police?! Triple jeez.
The problem isn't with the UAV but with the "pilot". Sadly, some idiot will seriously injure or kill someone and then strict laws will happen. This will, of course, make life difficult for the serious and responsible people (eg. photographers) who use UAVs for work. I bet few amateur UAV-users know anything about federal model-aircraft regulations.
While our laws are quite up-to-date and applicable in today's drone-infested world, I think we could use an all-encompassing idiot law.
A couple weeks ago at a tennis tournament, during a late-night match, all was quiet as the crowd waited for Roger Federer to serve. Then, overhead the stadium in the dark sky, came the familiar buzzing sound and the flashing lights of a UAV. Everyone in the stadium, including the players and officials, stopped and looked up. Federer just laughed and went back to playing tennis. The UAV (with camera) was apparently waiting for the match to end so it could shoot the night's fireworks.
Why not label drone users as potential terrorists, just like they did for people with SLRs?
It's important be as paranoid as possible and the media to be as hysterical as possible.
Why not simply reverse the situation: responsible, professional, commercial users of UAVs no longer need a licence but amateurs do. Remember the quote: "Professionals are predictable, the world is full of dangerous amateurs."
Technology changes, people don't
From ~125 years ago:
1) George Eastman releases the
first Kodak camera in 1888.
2) People are concerned that the new device invades their privacy and
news media go hysterical.3) The push for the
right to privacy (in the USA) began in 1890, partly due to the invention of the Kodak camera:
Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person, and for securing to the individual what Judge Cooley calls the right "to be let alone". Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life...
(...)
... to protect the privacy of the individual from invasion either by the too enterprising press, the photographer, or the possessor of any other modern device for rewording or reproducing scenes or sounds.
- From
magazine article about the history of snapshots.