The owner of the drone, David Boggs, just released the flight data recorder from his iPad, saying it tracks the drone’s path. In a video Boggs sent WDRB, he comments on drone’s path 40 seconds before, during and after the incident.
“We are now one minute and 18 seconds into the flight,” he says on the video. “We are now 193 feet above the ground. This area here is the world-famous drone slayer home, and this is a neighbor’s home, and our friends live over here, and over here, and over here. You will see now that we did not go below this altitude – we even went higher – nor did we hover over their house to look in. And for sure didn’t descend down to no 10 feet, or look under someone’s canopy, or at somebody’s daughter.”*
It’s obvious that the drone owner has edited the video. At least to add commentary. What else did he add? Or delete?
My first thought was that that seems like a bad idea. My second thought was Skynet.
Unrelated - the creator is currently facing charges of assault on a police officer from a separate incident at a police station.
Oh, and using a shotgun to bring down a drone from your neighbor is a dick move. Flying a drone over your neighbor’s house as alleged is also a dick move.
Next time I hear about how nice Americans are, I’ll think about this guy and how he threatened to murder people if they stepped over a sidewalk. Stay classy, dude.
Wait. Before I form an opinion I’d like to know a bit more. This is described as “a neighborhood”. I’ve lived in neighborhoods where houses sit on 75 x 100 foot lots, and a neighborhood where no property was smaller than 5 acres. In the later case, flying a drone low over my house is clearly intrusive, since my property lines are quite distant from my house. Coming that close can only be for the purpose of observing me/mine. But in the former instance, it is well nigh impossible to avoid flying over other people’s houses, even if the intent is to view/film a particular property or friend who has given permission.
So – big properties, clear intrusion? Yeah, I might shoot it down.
Typical suburban neighborhood? Nah, silly to think it was targeting you, without some outside evidence, so shooting isn’t justified and is unsafe to the neighbors.
Four angry, strangers appeared in front of his home and began an argument over the drone. The home owner threatened to DEFEND himself against four angry men. The four angry men chose not to trespass on the home owner’s property.
WTF is wrong with all you people completely okay with this guy destroying another person’s property? Just because he doesn’t like what he’s doing with it doesn’t mean that he gets to destroy it. If I were to drive my car onto his property, he doesn’t get to come out with a bat and start beating the shit out of the car. The correct response is to contact authorities and let them handle it, not to go Rambo.
First you have to prove there is actually a problem with peeping tom drone fliers. I have a drone, it’s a valuable piece of professional equipment and I fly it to get beauty shots of overall areas. I have zero interest in any particular house, and when I over fly other people’s houses it’s for a general wide angle sweeping shot in which any one house is only in view for a short time. Sometimes we might hover the drone for a while, while setting waypaths on the GPS system but in that case its not recording.
I suspect the number of drone fliers with perverted / peeping tom motives is very low, and if you think otherwise then let’s have some cites.
I can’t wait when everyone has drones guarding their individual airspace. Guard drones, designed to protect you from all kinds of spy drones, assassin drones, and troll drones, as well as people who want to fuck with on you on the ground.
That’s kind of the backdrop of Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, where cities can get foggy with nanotech robots floating around for various offensive and defensive purposes.
Anyway, drone notwithstanding, firing in the air in a suburban neighborhood is, fortunately, a big no-no. Where do the pellets that miss come down? Two blocks away into an occupied kiddie pool?
I don’t think there are any good guys in this story. I’m against people shooting non-dangerous things out of the air (random birds and drones) and I’m against people flying drones and using it to possibly peep at people over their fences.
But in this case I’m more against the shooter. I think he should have to, at minimum, pay for all or part of the destroyed drone and attend anger management classes. The drone guys should be warned by police not to be seen as even attempting to intrude on people’s properties and not angrily confront a guy at his house with 3 of your buddies but otherwise I don’t really see that they did anything wrong that’s actionable.
“Stepping on the other side of the sidewalk” isn’t a life-threatening act of aggression. One has to be insane to think one’s life is in danger because someone else’s feet have moved beyond a sidewalk onto a lawn.
This is obv not the first time a neighbour has done this. I think we can assume - those with perhaps less certainty in the USA - what usually happens is Neighbour A visits or calls Neighbour B and asks that Neighbour B have consideration for their neighbours.
This would usually end the matter, perhaps over a cup of tea, and it would not result in media attention. If Neighbour B persisted it could be considered by the authorities a Public Nuisance type offence. Presumably the legal remedy would be civil, not criminal.
It seems to be easier to take the confrontational option in societies where weapons capable of shooting down drones are legally owned.
I guess this begs the real question, which goes to “privacy” (scare quotes deliberate) and all that it entails. Frankly – and this is just me – I don’t get the fear some people have of being viewed. I didn’t understand the outrage some expressed when the newer ‘whole body’ x-ray machines were installed at airports. I mean really, if some anonymous person gets an anonymous view of you, how are you impacted?
And please don’t attack me with the “If you had daughters you’d understand” bit. I have three daughters, and I’d do anything to protect them from harm. But is there actual harm in someone looking at them? They’re clothed in a manner suitable for the street or the beach and they’re not doing anything licentious or illegal. I don’t understand the ire raised at someone seeing them sunbathing in our back yard, when no such outrage would follow them running about in broad daylight at the beach or pool.
And my neighbor five doors away can see them perfectly well from his second floor balcony. Neighbors at ground level using binoculars to identify an unusual bird at their feeder can also see my kids from a block away. Do these people deserve a shotgun blast?
Photos of my kids are another matter. Images on teh intar-webs live forever, and there can be genuine harm in that. If the drone’s operators were taking more than brief wide angle sweeping shots of kids, I wouldn’t like it. Still and again though, anyone can take all the pictures they like at the beach. Our society criminalizes actions, not possibilities. I can park all day outside the bank, but I shouldn’t be arrested until I walk inside it and say “This is a robbery”. Do drone operators deserve no less?