Surveillance Drones for the Home

In recent years, drone aircraft operated by the military have become familiar to casual observers of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Just last week, the Ministry of Defence announced that it had flown drones over Afghanistan from the UK for the first time, from its base in Lincolnshire. Their use is controversial, with critics claiming that drone pilots are less able to react to a situation effectively, leading to an increase in civilian casualties.

There is also the issue of accountability and empathy. Is a pilot stationed thousands of miles away from the scene of a battle able to properly empathise with the targets on the ground, and understand the implications of a mistake? Can they even be held accountable, legally speaking, for firing weapons that resulted in civilian casualties?

The legal picture over the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is extremely unclear as well. Last year, the UN’s special reporteur on extrajudicial killings, Christof Heyns, suggested that there may have been attacks made in Pakistan by the US using UAVs that amounted to international war crimes.

Click here to view Figure 1.

Home drones
The arguments for and against the use of UAVs in far-away countries are many and varied, but the latest scene of disagreements surrounds civilian use of drone technology.

Mobile CCTV is not just the preserve of the local council or professional security companies, thanks to the proliferation of relatively cheap consumer cameras (such as GoPros) and radio-controlled “quadcopters” — small four-bladed helicopters.

In a post on a US-based surveillance retailer’s website, we came across a selection of videos taken on home-made “mobile surveillance” equipment including this video showing some mischievous individuals giving the local police the run-around, teasing them with their flying camera.

There’s no crime committed here; in fact, from the birds-eye view of the quadcopter, it feels as if the camera itself has a cheeky personality, tapping the police officers on the metaphorical shoulder, then jumping to the other side in a slapstick Pink Panther-inspired Police chase.

But the technology is getting simpler. For the paltry cost of $300, you can pick up the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 — a small quadcopter that comes with a camera capable of shooting HD video, taking photographs and broadcasting the images straight to your tablet or smartphone, which also acts as the remote control.

It’s remarkably easy to fly and to record images as this training video made by Parrot shows. You can easily take off, hover, and stabilise the quadcopter using the app — in fact, Time Magazine said:

It’s so firmly autostabilized that on a hot day small children will gather under it to get the cool downwash from its rotors.

Time went on to describe drones as “an enormously powerful, disruptive technology” that could revolutionise the way farmers, builders, and your neighbours behave. If the Internet is an extension of your virtual presence, a drone is an extension of your physical presence, they say.

A groundbreaking idea then: A home mobile surveillance solution in the hands of the everyday consumer — and this has got some people worried, all the way up to Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

He told The Guardian that drones should be banned for use by the public amid fears that drone technology could fall into the hands of terrorists very simply.

He gave an example of a dispute between two neighbours. He asked:

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

Drone technology is already used to monitor farmers by the EU, who are strictly regulated in order to qualify for lucrative subsidies relating to the types of crops they grow, and now “home drone” technology allows farmers to monitor their own land from the comfort of the farmhouse.

Schmidt is calling for regulation at this early stage, before drone technology gets into the wrong hands.

It’s got to be regulated. You just can’t imagine that British people would allow this sort of thing, and I can’t imagine American people would allow this sort of thing. 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.

In the UK, where legislation is typically slow to keep up with technology, we are at the moment having a CCTV code of practice developed by the recently established surveillance commissioner. A CCTV code of practice 17 years after Axis Communications first invented the IP camera.

How long will it take to create regulations controlling the use of home drones? Too late to stop your neighbour taking photos of your garden in that planning dispute, probably.