Here's A Use Of Drones (Nearly) Everyone Will Like
from the eyes-in-the-sky dept
It seems like every other headline is about drones these days -- drones being used in battle, drones being used by the police, drones as a threat to privacy. As we've noted before, it's easy to get the impression that drones are inherently evil, and should be made illegal or something (good luck with that.) But drones are simply a new kind of technology, largely made possible by Moore's Law and the dramatic reductions in size, weight and cost it has brought with it for electronic control devices. Like any other technology, drones can be used for all kinds of purposes, both good and bad. It's just that we have heard mostly about the more dubious ones. To remedy that, here's a heart-warming tale of how drones could tackle one of the most serious threats facing wildlife around the world: poaching.
Conservation group WWF has announced plans to deploy surveillance drones to aid its efforts to protect species in the wild, as the South African government revealed that 82 rhinos had been poached there since the new year.
This sounds like a brilliant use of technologies to solve several problems. The huge areas involved make it almost impossible for a few rangers to cover, but multiple drones flying high could easily do that. Similarly, using drones would avoid the dangers that rangers face on a daily basis when dealing with poachers prepared to shoot if discovered. Drones might even be used for more aggressive management of poachers -- for example, safely disabling their vehicles. Given these and other benefits, it's no wonder, then, that drones are being deployed for similar purposes around the world:
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WWF's three-year project also involves combining data from unmanned aerial vehicles, cheap mobile phone technology tracking animal movements, and handheld devices carried by rangers, in a bid to outsmart often heavily armed poachers who bribe corrupt officials to avoid patrols and find wildlife.Drones are already being used by conservationists to monitor wildlife, such as orangutan populations in Sumatra, anti-whaling activists are using them against the Japanese whaling fleet, and a charity in Kenya recently beat its target of raising $35,000 in crowdfunding for a drone to protect rhinos and other wildlife in the country's Laikipia district.
As well as using crowdfunding to pay for more of these drones, one interesting approach would be to apply crowdsourcing to help protect animals directly. If the live feeds from drones were available on a Web site for anyone to watch, it would be possible to monitor huge areas 24 hours a day by using online volunteers around the world who drop by to keep an eye on things for a while. If they spotted something suspicious, they could alert the Web site, which would pass on the information to the relevant rangers nearby who could take a look on their screens and, if necessary, on the ground.
This would help protect vulnerable animals, share the burden of monitoring them with drones, and help people around the world to become more engaged with conservation. Who could possibly have any problems with this kind of drone use -- apart from the poachers, of course?
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Filed Under: drones, poaching, surveillance
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If we currently use manned aircraft for surveillance (as we do in lots of applications from forestry to border protection to military applications), then making the aircraft unmanned doesn't really add any extra moral difficulties to me.
The same goes for armed drones. If it's already okay to send in a bomber in some situation, I don't see a moral problem with sending in an armed drone instead, especially if there really is a pilot making the targeting decision.
Oh, there may be practical problems for sure. But as a general rule, the morality of aerial surveillance or air strikes is the same whether the aircraft has a pilot physically in it or not.
One of the big problems with drone strikes as the US carries them out is that they are often used in places other than legitimate war zones. That's a moral problem whether the drone is manned or not.
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Response to: n on Feb 18th, 2013 @ 6:03am
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Okay, I gotta do this...
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The arms race is on!
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The best bit is we're not just talking about a small group of altruistic animal-loving volunteers. This has the potential to be a 24-hour live wildlife program the likes of which David Attenborough can only dream about. Who wouldn't want to check it out from time to time?
It could be that a would-be poacher wouldn't be able to sneeze without a million people saying "bless you"!
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He wanted to keep them armed though so we could do some USA type judicial punishment on the poachers :)
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Personally, I would love to see this case for use brought up in a question to Sarah Palin, just to watch her head twist and explode like a fembot as she tries to figure out which position she's supposed to take....
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And I have a friend who is making Drones for selling homes.I told him off !
Told him he was Sold-Out as I do not Support Drones.
Good for shooting down or hitting em with any Object.
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So you don't think they should be used to catch poachers?
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Rather than "for the children" its "for the animals"
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On a side note, if we truly wants to help preserve endangered species, we should be advocating for individual property rights (rather than government regulation/legislation).
A big part of why some animals become endangered, especially with many types of fish populations being depleted, is due to what is termed the "tragedy of the commons".
The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently, and solely and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will lower the yield a shared limited resource, even to the point of ultimately depleting it, even when it is clear that it is not in everyone's short or long term interest for this to happen.
For further explanation on this topic, I highly recommend Robert P. Murphy's article "Save the Bluefin Tuna through Property Rights".
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As for drones, the question is where we draw the line, politicians like to keep pushing, once we start with wide-ranging drone surveillance for any reason, the police state and 1984 soon follow. Its best to not start, not until our leaders can handle the power responsibly.
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The arms race
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Re: The arms race
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Why are people all upset about drones?
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Re: Why are people all upset about drones?
BTW I'm the same anonymous coward (Ha! irony) who was replying about the commons earlier (just on a different computer)
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Re: Re: Why are people all upset about drones?
Keep in mind it's not the pilot of an aircraft, whether manned or unmanned, that is making the decision to fire a missile at a target. It's a superior officer or officers who are quite likely just as far away from the action no matter what type of aircraft is being used. The pilot is following orders, whether they're in a cockpit or a control room.
"If you are unwilling to personally take responsibility for your actions, and instead choose to act through a computer or some cold, unfriendly eye in the sky, then you should not do them."
Apply that thinking to the actual decision-makers as opposed to the pilots, and the choice of manned or unmanned aircraft becomes far less relevant.
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Its not all about drones though, the problem exists with any automated surveillance equipment, especially when it also has the capacity for enforcement.
A policeman in his car, for instance, is unable and unwilling to chase down every speeder he sees, he chooses (hopefully) to only go after those that are endangering other drivers. However with the aid of a drone, he can easily mail a summons to anyone and everyone that the drone clocks over the speed-limit. Worse still, he doesn't take personal responsibility, he doesn't have to go through the effort of really seeing if someone is just going a little too fast, or is actually creating a hazard, it becomes automatic instead. If that's not a hallmark of a police-state, I don't know what is.
Not that I condone speeding of course, but I hope its a good example of how a drone can be abused.
OK, enough ranting for one day, I better go to bed before someone bans my ip.
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Just read this morning that Oregon is trying to make it illegal to put a camera on a drone, punishable by up to 6 months in jail, just for having the camera attached to the drone. If you actually fly the drone bump it up to 1 year.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/18/flying_camera_drones_face_ban/
Because, you know, you can trust big brother, but not your neighbor. Big brother would never do you wrong.
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I'd go further and suggest that as drones get more capable of handling cargo they might become even more useful (both for good and for evil obviously). The fact that the Govt is using them for widespread surveillance is not the technology fault, it's the Government that's out of control. Blaming the drones is just silly.
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Want
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DoS vulnerability
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Also having to sacrifice at least one person for a diversion is not going to work as a long term strategy. Even then, if they figure out how to manipulate their alert system to add dummy threats, they don't know which of the presently identified poachers will take priority. Crowd sourcing can easily pan out well for them.
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Misleading headline
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Law enforcement after all
PS: I am the PI of the Dutch http://www.fireswarm.nl project in which a group of companies and universities use drones to detect a fire as quick as possible.
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Re: Law enforcement after all
Why is that better than identifying animals or people who are victims and help them by intervening against the perpetrators of violence? Helping victims and identifying perpetrators are not mutually exclusive.
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Most of the areas we're talking about here are generally already designated off-limits to unauthorised personnel, so if you're spotted, you're either poaching, or at least trespassing.
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Is that not just another “do it for the children” luvy duvy argument? Find some obscure use for your new weapon of mass privacy abuse that everyone likes and make a supportive example of it. Then use the argument to blast through credible dissenting arguments.
Question to drone factory sales spokesperson: “What privacy issues do you feel need to be worked on with respect to your products?” Answer: “We have targeted and destroyed by missile fire 48 poachers in the last year by remote drone operations. We feel this is a positive effect and the privacy of the poachers is irrelevant.”
The concept of a factory representative firing upon whatever targets is not wild with some countries now considering a shoot on sight poacher laws. Lost are the privacy issues (and what else?) in the enforcement madness.
Am not a fan of regulation of any kind but nasty dangerous things need to have oversight. Not just wacky phrased loosely worded special interest influenced regulation but well written constitutionally correct laws. Evidence based judicially reviewed laws are the best explicitly making illegal shooting on suspicion.
Nasch, great comment. “Lets face it, the only legitimate thing drones should be used for is target practice.”
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Cool!
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It won't Fly on "Good Intentions"
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