Publius pro tem
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Big Brother - are all his itty-bitty toys ripe for abuse?
There are a million concerns over this - Constitutional rights, privacy, safety, etc.
But if I'm ever out sight-seeing in a single-engine Cessna and one of these fxcking things comes through my windshield...
'Citizen Drone Warfare’:
Hobbyist explores a frightening scenario
By patrick Hruby - The Washington Times - Monday, December 17, 2012
Less than a month ago, rumors that celebrity news and gossip website TMZ
was interested in obtaining a paparazzi drone prompted privacy concerns and
public debate about the appropriate personal and commercial uses of
unmanned aerial vehicles.
Now, a new online video poses a more troubling question: What if civilian
drones are equipped to shoot more than just pictures?
Titled “Citizen Drone Warfare” and posted to YouTube last week by an
anonymous man calling himself “Milo Danger,” the video shows a hobbyist
drone equipped with a custom-mounted paintball pistol flying over a grassy
field and peppering human-shaped shooting-range targets with pellets.
Following an attack pass by the drone, one of the targets sports three large
red blotches on its head and neck area.
A hobbyist’s drone shooting paintballs hit not just its cardboard targets but video team members who wanted to try outwit it.
(Photograph provided by Milo Danger)
"I wanted to show an inevitability of what I think will happen with these
drones,” said “Milo,” who lives on the West Coast and spoke to The
Washington Times on condition of anonymity. “I’m not advocating bad
activities. But I wanted to raise some of the ethical issues we need to think
about with this new technology. We didn’t post the footage of this, but some
of the guys who worked with me on the project weren’t afraid of being shot
by paintballs. They wanted to see if they could escape the drone. The
answer was, no, they could not.”
Milo of Danger ia man s the pseudonym who posted a video to YouTube (screen grab shown) in which a civilian drone equipped with a paintball pistol
flies over an open field, shooting at cutout targets with deadly accuracy. He said his purpose was to point out ethical issues that must be faced.
(Milo Danger/YouTube)
Though Federal Aviation Administration regulations do not explicitly mention
the use of firearms on drones, they do prohibit any type of recreational flying
or dropping objects from aircraft that endanger life or property.
DIYDrones.com, a drone hobbyist website and online community that counts
defense and aerospace engineers among its 32,000 members and averages
more than 1.5 million page views a month, discourages using or modifying
drones for any uses that are “potentially illegal or intended to do harm.”
DIY Drones
“We’ve banned the weaponized use of drones,” said Chris Anderson, the
site’s founder. “So in our community, the reaction to this video is dismay.
We’re particularly interested in civilian uses of drones, things like search-and-
rescue and filming sports teams. Obviously, putting a paintball gun on a drone
doesn’t help.”
American Civil Liberties Union policy analyst Jay Stanley wrote on the
organization’s website that the video was “pretty scary” and
America “cannot allow our skies to fill with flying robots armed with all manner
of dangerous weapons.”
Mr. Stanley also noted that defense experts have warned for years that
small, commercially available drones could be used as weapons. In 2004, a
New Zealand engineer managed to build a miniature cruise missile for less
than $5,000, a project that subsequently was shut down by the nation’s
government because of security concerns.
Last month, a 27-year-old Massachusetts man was sentenced to 17 years in
prison for plotting to attack the Pentagon and the Capitol with a remote-
controlled model aircraft rigged with explosives.
“We’ve called for a ban on armed drones, and I think there’s a broad
consensus that we should not allow armed drones to be used domestically,”
said Mr. Stanley, the author of a report on drones and privacy. “The
International Association of Chiefs of Police has recommended against it. I
think this video likely will further cement that consensus.”
‘Terrifyingly easy’
In the video, Milo wears sunglasses, a black baseball cap, a large American-
flag bandanna that covers his face and a T-shirt reading “Dangerous
Information” — the latter the name of a fledgling Web video series that
explores topics such as picking locks and growing marijuana.
Holding a small, six-rotor hobbyist drone in his hand, Milo states that the
realistic-looking handgun attached to the machine’s undercarriage fires “non-
lethal” 11 mm paintballs.
“Let me be clear, under no circumstances should you ever put a live firearm
on a drone, a remote-controlled toy or any other vehicle,” he says. “It’s
incredibly dangerous.
“Can a mail-order drone from a kit even handle the stress of rounds cycling
through a gun? Is it accurate? Let’s find out.”
Flying about 15 feet above the ground and controlled by Milo with the help of
an onboard video camera that transmits real-time images to a set of piloting
goggles, the drone maneuvers around five human-shaped targets, the buzz
of its electric engines mixing with the popping sound of the paintball gun discharging.
By the time the drone lands, Milo has hit all five targets repeatedly.
“If the question is, ‘How easy is it to fly this drone?’ the answer
is, ‘terrifyingly easy,’” he said. “The first time we flew it, we were able to put
all of the paintball ammunition into a target 50 yards away from the
operator — and 15 yards from the [drone] — in an area the size of a dinner plate.”
According to Milo, building the drone was nearly as straightforward. He
purchased the drone and the paintball gun online, downloaded open-source
piloting software and found instructions on how to get the drone up and
running by running simple Internet searches for the terms “drones” and “DIY.”
The entire project, he said, took no more than a dozen hours and cost less
than $2,000.
"I’m not particularly handy,” he said. “But I was able pick up this pretty high-
end hobby as a completely inexperienced person and master it with a small
budget in a couple of weeks. It was up and flying within a couple of sessions
of working on it, and that’s including trial and error and making mistakes.”
The hardest part, Milo said, was centering the weight of the paintball pistol,
which weighs approximately 2 pounds — roughly the same weight as many
actual handguns.
“There would be some practical physical considerations to mounting a real
gun,” Milo said. “Many pistols have significantly greater recoil. However, some
guns have very little. And the onboard computer for the drone tries to keep
itself level even if you try to knock it out of the air.
“I don’t think it would have problems staying in the air with many smaller
firearms, but I don’t encourage anyone doing that.”
Unlike the autonomous human-hunting drones of dystopian science fiction —
think “The Terminator” film series — Milo’s drone flew by remote control, the
same way miniature dune buggies and toy airplanes are piloted by RC enthusiasts.
“With very little extra work, however, we could program it on a computer to
fly on a path, fire on a fixed target and then fly home with little human
intervention,” he said. “This drone is capable of that.”
The future is soon?
Earlier this year, a different YouTube video appeared to show a homemade
quad-rotor drone with a custom-mounted machine gun laying explosive waste
to a group of mannequins.
Viewed more than 15 million times, the video turned out to be a hoax, part of
a viral marketing campaign for the future-warfare video game “Call of Duty:
Black Ops II.”
"Drones are a hot topic,” Milo said. “You can’t look at the Internet without
coming across a drone-related story. Most of them are about military drones
or government and police agencies considering drones and their uses. But
very infrequently do you see stories that cover the DIY maker approach.
“The fun and valid uses of this technology are going to happen. But other
possibilities are there. Surveillance drones over American skies. Armed
drones. Not just your local police but also your neighbors. I wanted to create
a video that put the questions out there.”
For the most part, drones currently are confined to the military — which
reportedly has more than 7,500 vehicles in service — and hobbyists such as
Milo, who are flying roughly double that number. Moreover, current FAA rules
largely prohibit commercial drone use, while hobbyists are subject to strict
guidelines: no flying above 400 feet, near populated areas or outside the
operator’s line of sight.
A federal law passed in February, however, compels the FAA to allow drone
use by police and emergency services later this year and allow “safe”
commercial use by September 2015.
Drone advocates such as Mr. Anderson argue that the technology is akin to
the personal computer, flexible enough to perform important and useful tasks
ranging from crop-dusting to inspecting pipelines to extreme sports photography.
Milo said excited paintball players began contacting him within hours of his
video being posted online.
“A ton of people are very excited, to the point of ‘Shut up and take my
money’ and ‘This is now on my Christmas list,’” he said. “People are interested
in playing with this kind of toy.”
Acknowledging the inevitability of increased drone use by the government
and
private citizens alike, Mr. Stanley said society needs to proceed with caution.
The Washington Times recently reported that because of privacy issues, the
FAA appears likely to miss its self-imposed Dec. 31 deadline to choose six sites
in states throughout the nation where drones will be put through a battery of
safety and other tests before full commercialization is allowed.
“There is nothing like seeing actual video of something that might be an
abstract concept to bring home the reality of the fast-paced technological
era we are living in,” Mr. Stanley said. “And this video is a reminder of how
we really need to step up and deal with these issues, and not just sit back
and let things happen on their own. Whether that’s preventing guns from
being placed on drones, or putting in rules to protect our privacy, we should
decide if these are changes we want or don’t want and protect ourselves as
necessary.”
Citizen Drone Warfare: Hobbyist explores a frightening scenario - Washington Times
There are a million concerns over this - Constitutional rights, privacy, safety, etc.
But if I'm ever out sight-seeing in a single-engine Cessna and one of these fxcking things comes through my windshield...
.
