Injured Man Is First Person Saved By a Police Drone In Canada 187
AchilleTalon writes "As the US continues to grapple with the idea of letting drones fly through the country's airspace, our neighbors to the north have reported a new milestone for unmanned aerial technology: the first life saved using a drone. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the province of Saskatchewan announced yesterday that they successfully used the small Draganflyer X4-ES helicopter drone to locate and treat an injured man whose car had flipped over in a remote, wooded area in near-freezing temperatures. Zenon Dragan, president and founder of the Draganfly company that makes the drone, said in a statement: 'to our knowledge, this is the first time that a life may have been saved with the use of a sUAS (small Unmanned Aerial System) helicopter.'"
Drones (Score:5, Insightful)
They are a powerful technology, for good, or evil.
Re:Drones (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly so. I wish more people would remember that when discussing various other technologies. Or maybe it would be better to say I wish that understanding was more broadly shared when discussing various other technologies, activities, and actions.
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Pretty much true of any and all technology (maybe with a few exceedingly rare exceptions and even that's debatable); it's the intent behind the use of a tool or technology that is good or evil.
The only thing to understand before hand is limiting "Mission Creep". There have to be rules in place before hand or the technology will, without a doubt, be misused for evil.
Thats great.. (Score:2, Insightful)
When they are used for search and rescue. The problem is that our police force has been lobbying to get them for law enforcement, to be used to further spy on and exert control over the populace. If law enforcement wants to have drones for the sole and limited purpose of search and rescue thats fine by me. Id prefer if I didnt need to worry about some agency watching my every physical move.
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No, don't you see -- this justifies everything. Commence media saturation of the population to welcome the use of drones in all aspects of society, because if they one time saved a guy in a place in this one context, then it's worth any sacrifice or inconvenience or violation, don't you see?!
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Re:Thats great.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate to break it to you, but we have so much wilderness here in Canada that once you get a dozen two miles outside of a main highway, or out past any major city especially outside of southern BC or the Windsor to Southern Quebec corridor, you can go for days without seeing anyone, or even a sign of civilization. Realistically, we have enough problems even here in Southern Ontario, you know part of the most densely packed part of the country finding people when we get smacked with a blizzard and have to go out an rescue them. Usually on snow mobiles, with volunteers. It's even worse in the rest of the country, where poor roads with very poor driving conditions lead people to get stranded.
This is a very good use of technology, especially here in Canada. Where helicopters are cost prohibitive and the nearest airport can be 600-800km away from the search area.
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Re:Thats great.. (Score:4, Informative)
When they are used for search and rescue. The problem is that our police force has been lobbying to get them for law enforcement, to be used to further spy on and exert control over the populace. If law enforcement wants to have drones for the sole and limited purpose of search and rescue thats fine by me. Id prefer if I didnt need to worry about some agency watching my every physical move.
When you research this device on the manufacturer's website they are very very careful to NEVER specify the RANGE.
It can go 30mph (allegedly), and climb to 8000 feet but no range or duration is given, and it does this on a 5400mAh battery.
(My android tablet has a bigger battery).
I'd be very surprised if this thing could get out of sight of its operator.
Which means they could have just look for the car and followed his tracks or sent a dog. But instead this will be used as an excuse to equip every police force with one of these things, and they won't be restricted to search and rescue.
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Everything depends on the voltage :) If their battery is, say, 48V, you'd need a good armful of android tablets to beat that.
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It's about the same mAh capacity, but three or four times the voltage of most tablet batteries, giving it much more energy storage.
I agree that they do try to hide the range stats though.
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So that would be 80Wh, or more properly 288kJ. So it could run a 60W bulb for a little more than an hour... (well, discharge rate affects the actual capacity - higher rates of discharge will reduce the total output to less than that).
So this thing is more inline with a laptop battery for capacity.
288kJ happens to be roughly equal to about 8ml of diesel, just for fun... So even with the poor efficiency of combustion engines, there's just no comparison.
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I'd be very surprised if this thing could get out of sight of its operator.
It's an RC device. It's not supposed to get out of sight of its operator.
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Quit FUDing! Drones just saved their first life! And after only nine years of CIA drones spying and blowing people up.
Clearly they are the greatest boon to public health since penicillin.
first, a matter of perspective (Score:2)
I can assure you hundreds and maybe thousands of people have been saved by drones of all sizes and shapes - but possibly the first time a drone used by the police has saved a life...
Figures. (Score:5, Funny)
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Sometimes good deeds go unpunished. What would have happened if that blob on the FLIR was a napping grizzly bear?
I wonder what the relative costs are for the drone or a Cessna with a FLIR camera?
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Drones to the rescue! (Score:2)
Heard this story (Score:3)
As with most government tools we will only hear about the good things until after they become common place. When tazers were originally deployed they were a "replacement only for lethal force", now they are used at the drop of the hat against loudmouthed teens, nonviolent protestors, and pregnant women with little to no repercussions. Right now it is all about saving people lost in the woods and catching murders, but 5 years after they are more ubiquitous you can be guaranteed that the stories will begin to flow of women catching one hovering outside their bathroom window, protestors finding unflattering images of themselves on police forums & former boyfriends/girlfriends of officers being stalked by drones (much like the cases of police misusing official databases to track/harass).
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All Slashdotters live in basements with the shutters closed, no dangers of having unflattering images of themselves on police forums.
As for the "former boyfriends/girlfriends" part, that's also applicable. You can't date JPEGs.
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You can't date JPEGs.
Sure you can. Right click - properties - details tab, and click on the date taken field.
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When tazers were originally deployed they were a "replacement only for lethal force", now they are used at the drop of the hat against loudmouthed teens, nonviolent protestors, and pregnant women with little to no repercussions.
Because police never used much more lethal guns in this same manner?
Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
The man's life was saved by a policeman using an infrared camera which happened to be mounted on a drone.
It's important to get the gist of the story right here, because the decision to use drones domestically is a matter of trade offs. So it makes a difference whether you draw the spurious lesson "drones save lives", or the correct lesson, "infrared cameras save lives, drones save money in deploying such cameras in comparison to conventional helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft." One might reasonably choose to risk civil liberties because of certain life-or-death situation, but not choose to do so if its a matter of another ten or twenty bucks a year on your state or provincial taxes.
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Translation: "I really, really want to find a way to slam drones... but I can't, so I'll nitpick, play semantic games, and on a heavy spin and smokescreen so I can pretend that the drone really wasn't all the important".
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Actually, I don't want to slam drones. I think they can be used responsibly and economically. But *responsible* isn't a given.
As for my playing semantic "games", that's a richly ironic accusation.
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Well, it's not quite so easy. You can have drones for orders of magnitude less cost than full on helicopters/planes...say $10-100K/drone instead of $10M/plane. Plus they can fly in inclement weather with no risk to humans. They can stay "on station" for days instead of hours. You can use 100s or 1,000s of them to search an area non stop until the mission is complete without having to have 1,000s of pilots ready to go at a moment's notice.
When drones start being used to evacuating people from disaster areas,
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When drones start being used to evacuating people from disaster areas, they will be able to perform more risky landings without risk to pilots.
I agree. Let's have that conversation when that starts happening.
It is not the tool.... (Score:2)
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Crack Pipes Save Lives Too (Score:3, Funny)
The effect of a tool depends on how it is used.
Then again, a person carrying a crack pipe at a bank would probably have used the tool for its usual purpose, and would be unable to successfully aim the pipe at the robber's head, so the odds of a crack pipe routinely saving lives are about as slim as the odds of a drone routinely saving lives.
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You used a crack pipe before writing your comment, right?
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I could see this working, but it would definitely be a crack shot.
There's Video of Search from Drone (Score:2)
There's a link in the article to a ~2 minute IR video that was provided and annotated by the drone's maker. It shows how human body heat clearly contrasts with snowy background, even from miles away. I'd be curious to see the same video shot in Summer temps. I suspect the range falls by 50% or more.
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Dude. This is Canada. In summer the snow just gets a little bit warmer!
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The flip side is that in the summer the urgency (based on the weather, at least) goes down. If the drone can't find you because it's too warm outside, you probably won't freeze to death.
Obviously not the best way to do it (Score:2)
locate and treat? (Score:2)
So this drone was taught first aid? Did it stitch up a leg? Reset a broken bone?
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So this drone was taught first aid? Did it stitch up a leg? Reset a broken bone?
I'm in favor of the drones now. They have apparently been taught how to diagnose, administer first aid, presumably CPR as well. Why do all that if they are just going to be used to spy on us. They must have had good intentions all along.
Bullshit (Score:2)
The story is spin, not to mention inaccurate.
The drone didn't do anything to 'treat' the man, as stated in the article and summary.
The drone spotted him using an infrared camera that could as easily have been mounted on the manned helicopter that didn't, for whatever reason, spot him when it went out. Not sure why the helicopter didn't also check the area where the man's mobile phone signal had last been spotted (which is where the drone went) but whatever.
A search & rescue member's perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
I happen to be a search & rescue volunteer here in the southwestern US. (As a matter of interest, we are all 100% volunteers. We don't get paid for anything except fuel when we're on a search. We buy all of our own equipment and devote a lot of our own time to train regularly.) Recently, we were approached by some university students who built an inexpensive UAV ($3000) specifically for SAR uses. I personally though their platform had a lot of merit. It's a low-cost foam airplane that uses a customized version of Ardupilot to take photos regularly while flying a pattern over a designated region. They can photograph a square mile in about 30 minutes. You then have a couple of people do a photo analysis of the results. The photos are all geotagged so you can pull a coordinate off the photo for some object of interest. Sadly, the political climate is such that the tin-foil hat types have scared the county board of supervisors and the local Sheriff's office away from even trying the platform out on some training exercises. What's worse is that even though our SAR organization is an independent 501(c)3 and not part of any law-enforcement agency, the managers still won't try out the concept. I wonder how people would feel if some child died of exposure because we didn't have this tool in the toolbox.
This platform is also an order of magnitude cheaper than a DraganFlyer and can cover a hell of a lot more ground without changing out the battery. 15 minutes of air time isn't nearly enough.
Clear Mission != Fishing Expedition (Score:2)
Most libertarians have no problem with drones - they're cheaper to operate than manned aerial vehicles, and have a lot more on-station time. Nobody will argue with drones being sent to find someone lost in the woods.
The problem arises when drones are "on patrol" with narrowband radar looking into houses on fishing expeditions. And so the question remains - what appropriate checks and balances exist search with court permission?
Meh (Score:2)
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Re:But the honor of the first life TAKEN by a dron (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting point, but I have to disagree. The V1 was a missile, not a drone. The V1 itself constituted the attacking weapon. I think the distinction with a drone attack would be that the drone itself isn't the attacking weapon, but rather it carries weapons to attack. Example: The Predator drone which carries Hellfire missiles.
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"drone (vs a V1) might be that a drone returns to a "base" and lands (or is otherwise recovered) to complete its mission."
Nope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21 [wikipedia.org]
Probably the only dividing lines that work would be that a cruise missile contains an warhead and is destroyed in the attack and that it is a single function device aka it is just a weapon.
A drone can be used for many functions including delivering weapons but it is not the actual weapon.
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Doesn't count. No guidance. A device like that you just point in the vague direction of the enemy and hope will hit. If you send a few thousand off, chances are a few will go the right way.
Re:But the honor of the first life TAKEN by a dron (Score:5, Insightful)
The V1 had a rudimentary guidance system consisting of an anemometer in the nose that track distance and tipped the missile into a dive at the proper range.
So yes it was the first guided drone.
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I was referring to the Chinese rockets.
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It probably does have simple onboard guidance. Lots of home-built RC quadcopters do, and I don't see any reason why a commercial one shouldn't.
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You forgot getting rid of the jews! (I joke I joke, he didn't get rid of the jews)
Re:This reminds me that even Hitler did some good. (Score:4, Funny)
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It's pretty bad already, so let's make it worse!
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I'd say it's worse, yes. I doubt satellites would be very useful for spying purposes.
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For spying on individual people, I can't see where they would be very useful or efficient (certainly not as much as an unmanned drone).
Re:We could save more people with 24/7 surveillanc (Score:5, Insightful)
There are commercial satellites with the resolution to read your license plate
Satellites are not comparable to drones. To achieve good resolution, satellites need to be in near earth orbit, which means they are moving overhead at thousands of km/hr. They can take a snapshot, but they cannot loiter and observe continuously, and they cannot zoom in real time. They are an expensive and limited asset, which means they are not available to the local cop who has a grudge against you because you are dating his ex-girlfriend.
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They are as expensive and limited to Federal agencies as overpriced "LEO-Grade Surveillance/Rescue Drones" are to local police departments. They aren't going to check out an expensive piece of equipment that requires the precinct to maintain an FAA license to operate to Officer How-Do-You-Fly-This Bob without a paper trail.
Drones are neither expensive nor difficult to operate. I have a quadcopter with a camera that cost about $500. My 8 year old son can fly it, so I think Officer Bob could manage as well. It is currently illegal for me to fly it out of line-of-sight, but there is no enforcement, and when I fly it, I usually look at the video on the laptop, not the drone. If Officer Bob was willing to break the law by using police resources to spy on his ex, then I don't think he is going to be too concerned about unenforc
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There are commercial satellites with the resolution to read your license plate
High school physics FAIL [wikipedia.org]!
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Aperture synthesis, take 5 pictures in succession and you have your plate
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Satellites have been using this technique since forever (at least the ones facing outwards from our planet).
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its commonly called
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superresolution [wikipedia.org]
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Modern technology fail... or do you really think that satellite imagery is still poured over by dozens of people magnifying glasses in a poorly lit room? Jesus fucking Christ... it's like I'm talking to rejects from the Cold War here.
I'm not sure what you're referring to, but what I was pointing to was that reading a license plate from LEO would require a 10+-meter mirror, under the best conditions (no atmosphere to screw things up). Somehow I don't think that such a satellite has ever been launched. It doesn't matter at all whether the images are being pored (sic!) over by "dozens of people magnifying glasses in a poorly lit room", since "dozens of people magnifying glasses in a poorly lit room" can't beat the fundamental limitations o
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No you are wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_imagery#Resolution_and_data [wikipedia.org] .41m Which is well below the resolution need to read a license plate. Also since you would have to view it at an oblique angle instead of almost vertically.
The best commercial sat has a resolution of about
Second the high resolution imaging sats are in low earth orbit so you do not have 24/7 coverage.
So you have no idea what you are talking about and have contributed nothing but noise to this thread. You may go now and leave
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If you're mixing them, I prefer my metaphors shaken, not stirred.
Re:weight of the word (Score:4, Insightful)
but when the police department does it, it's evil?
The government has the power to ruin people's lives, so the implications are far different. Furthermore, the information would be available to the entire government, not just a single person.
And unmanned drones are different from helicopters (and I don't think helicopters should be spying on anyone, either) in that they can be used en masse far more easily.
but realistically you're not that important or interesting to begin with.
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. As long as the government doesn't abuse me, all is well!
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Furthermore, the information would be available to the entire government, not just a single person.
There are two issues with this statement;
1. The "single person" has access to youtube and the internet and can post the video for anyone to view. Remember the blood in the river caught by a civilian drone [dailymail.co.uk]? There are also many news outlets that will publicize it if it is important enough.
2. "The government" is not a monolithic organization. There are many competing agencies and departments who are competing with each other to make themselves look more important and therefore get a bigger budget. It is diffic
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1. The "single person" has access to youtube and the internet and can post the video for anyone to view.
The government has far more power to ruin lives than a citizen, and (under the pretense of security) has been shown that it is more than willing to do so.
2. "The government" is not a monolithic organization.
It doesn't need to be.
To use drones en masse will take a lot of money
Right now, yes. I was thinking of the future. At this point, I'm more concerned about the government installing surveillance cameras everywhere in public places than I am unmanned drones, but that doesn't mean that I can't be concerned with how drones would be used in the future.
There is a lot of truth in that statement.
Then allow the government to install cameras throughout
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Then allow the government to install cameras throughout your house. If you don't have anything to hide, what do you have to fear?
I just love how "privacy advocates" jump from cameras in public places to cameras in people's homes. That is a huge leap and fear mongering. There is no expectation of privacy in public spaces but there is an expectation of privacy in one's homes. The expectation has been upheld many time; most recently the ban on using infrared cameras without a search warrant.
Banning night sticks isn't viable, and sometimes we must accept that certain things are necessary evils, but there is no inherent reason to accept drones.
I disagree. Drones can be used in many instances to catch criminals. I see drones the same as I see helicopters or patrol cars. They all need peopl
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I just love how "privacy advocates" jump from cameras in public places to cameras in people's homes.
I merely used your own logic against you; that is, if you have nothing to hide, what do you have to fear? It does not matter whether we're talking about public or private places; your logic should apply to either. You can commit crimes in private places too, remember?
There is no expectation of privacy in public spaces
There is some degree of privacy even in public places. Some European countries seem to understand this.
I disagree. Drones can be used in many instances to catch criminals.
We can (and have) easily go without drones, but a police force (or one that's allowed to use certain basic tools to apprehend criminals who s
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The government has the power to ruin people's lives
Um... so do private citizens and corporations.
Now whether such power is legal or not may not matter to the victim, nor would the many hurdles they have to jump to get compensated.
Again, the original article was about using drones and deploying infra-red cameras in the Canadian wilderness, which sounds to me like a fantastic way to use this technology. It's a lot better than waiting X numbers of days and then massing enough people for a manhunt through a giant area, and the expenses that would incur.
On the o
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Um... so do private citizens and corporations.
I knew someone would say that. The government has the power to do so by its very nature, and that combined with the fact that all the information would be gathered for a single source (the government) makes the government's use of drones far different from a private citizen's use of drones.
Corporations might be a bit similar, though.
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(news from 2014)
And so tonight, the president declared shoes illegal.
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Drones on the other hand are much much cheaper to acquire and operate, and will probably be done with much less oversight. And unfortunately the
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actually a valid point - not to mention Combat Search And Rescue (CSAR) missions, and convoy protection (stopping he convoy before getting to the roadside bomb) Global Hawk was used to provide surveillance of California wildfires to aid firefighters etc.. also likely saving lives. I think its awesome that the RCMP is using remotely piloted technology and it is cool it paid off in a tangible way of saving a life- but drones have save lots of lives in less visible ways
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Stop imagining, the future is today [diydrones.com]!
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Yeah, but they can add dynametric tailfins [memory-alpha.org] to their drones!
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Americans seem to have this stupid notion that they get 100% freedom and privacy 100% of the time anywhere they go while they do whatever it is they please.
I'm not seeing it.
I hate to break it to americans but as soon as you leave your home and out in public you no longer have privacy.
What? Where are all these Americans who supposedly think that you have privacy even when in public? I'd be happy if more than a select few existed, but many people seem to only care for security.
But really, the government is not entitled to have ubiquitous surveillance, so this whole thing is meaningless.
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But really, the government is not entitled to have ubiquitous surveillance, so this whole thing is meaningless.
I am not sure you understand the meaning of the word ubiquitous [merriam-webster.com]
1. The government does not have enough money for the hundreds of thousands of drones and their pilots, the hundreds of thousands of analysts watching these videos to find wrong doing, and the massive amount of storage needed to log all these video feeds.
2. It has already been ruled illegal to look inside homes, even with FLIR, without a search warrant.
3. One can not be identified inside most buildings even with FLIR.
With the few thousand drones
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I am not sure you understand the meaning of the word ubiquitous
No, I do. After the silly little Boston bombings, a number of people started demanding we put government cameras everywhere in public places. As unmanned drones become cheaper, ubiquitous surveillance (and selective surveillance, which is another problem) becomes easier even if they don't have enough people to constantly watch the videos (they wouldn't need that).
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Ubiquitous is an absolute term and means "everywhere, all the time". I have shown areas that drones can not see into therefore it may be "pervasive" it is not "ubiquitous".
As unmanned drones become cheaper, ubiquitous surveillance (and selective surveillance, which is another problem) becomes easier even if they don't have enough people to constantly watch the videos (they wouldn't need that).
So there are days of video in storage that no one ever looks at. So what? If they need to look through them to find a bomber I say go for it. Maybe fewer bombers will try if they know there is zero chance of getting away with it. I realize it will not stop suicide bombers but it may help track their handlers.
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Ubiquitous is an absolute term and means "everywhere, all the time".
If you want to take it literally, almost nothing is ubiquitous.
So there are days of video in storage that no one ever looks at.
The same is true for government-owned cameras placed in public places. Very nice for selective abuse, yes?
If they need to look through them to find a bomber I say go for it.
Ah, yes... security is all that matters. Maybe fewer people will try to bomb planes if we molest people at airports.
I'd much rather risk being killed by an almost nonexistent threat that have cameras or drones everywhere.
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If you want to take it literally, almost nothing is ubiquitous.
My point exactly. If the word does not fit then don't use it. If you use an absolute it better fit or you are just sensationalizing to sound better. It weakens your case as one flaw usually indicates more flaws.
I'd much rather risk being killed by an almost nonexistent threat that have cameras or drones everywhere.
Bombers are only one target. There are bank robbers, muggers, drive by shooters, etc. You seem to ignore the point that there is no expectation of privacy an places where cameras and drones have access.
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My point exactly. If the word does not fit then don't use it. If you use an absolute it better fit or you are just sensationalizing to sound better.
But it does fit; I've seen it used that way often and it doesn't cause any confusion.
It weakens your case as one flaw usually indicates more flaws.
Unless you can prove there are other flaws, this is meaningless.
Bombers are only one target. There are bank robbers, muggers, drive by shooters, etc.
Which is exactly what I fear: drones being used for everything you can imagine.
You seem to ignore the point that there is no expectation of privacy an places where cameras and drones have access.
But there are degrees of privacy even in public places, and I fully expect the government to not have cameras and drones everywhere to spy on my every move even in public places. I have some expectation of privacy in public places, and some other countries recognize this, but apparen
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But it does fit; I've seen it used that way often and it doesn't cause any confusion.
I am in no way "confused". Using the word "ubiquitous" is an exaggeration and untrue. Just because other people misuse the word does not mean that it is a good thing to do.
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I am in no way "confused".
I did not say you were confused.
Using the word "ubiquitous" is an exaggeration
I personally have no problems with exaggerations most of the time, and I do not have a problem with the way I used the word. Something can indeed seem to be ubiquitous even without literally being present everywhere.
Sometimes I do have problems when people say things they don't literally mean or use a word in a certain way just because there's a definition in the dictionary that tells them it's okay to use it that way, but that's generally only in cases where I believe it cou