Police Chief Trying To Find Some Way To Charge Drone Operator Who Didn't Break Any Laws

from the I-AM-THE-[NONEXISTENT]-LAW dept

Don't let the fact that no crime occurred stop you from attempting to prosecute someone, Sparky. (via PINAC)

Naperville Police Chief Robert Marshall said he is consulting the city's legal department after the three-minute video posted on YouTube by user JPDrone came to his attention. Shot at night, a drone camera flies over City Hall and several downtown streets, providing a unique view of seasonal decorations while cars and pedestrians move around city streets below.

Photography Is Not A Crime points out that there is no law in Illinois that addresses what happened here. The closest the state gets to private drone prohibition involves a very specific set of circumstances.

While Illinois has passed a law making it a crime to use a drone to interfere with hunting and fishing, there are no other state laws preventing the public from using “drones,” more appropriately called RC (remote-controlled) copters.

If the local lawyers can't figure out some way to nail John Pauley for his not-illegal act, Chief Marshall is willing to go over his own head.

"Obviously, if they're flying over a public area, you have to ask if there's any risk to public safety, who's the operator and if he's abiding by the regulations set in place by the FAA," Marshall said. "There was a request from an individual who wanted to fly a drone camera overhead at Ribfest last summer, and we did not allow that."

Ah, "public safety." The one-size-fits-all hammer for every annoying nail that refuses to fit neatly into existing legal confines. The thing is, John Pauley has been very careful about his drone usage ever since his run-in with the Geneva (IL) police department officers, who expressed concern about his flying camera. Since then, Pauley has made an effort to notify proper employees before taking to the air. This includes the Naperville Police Department.

He said he called Naperville police before doing the nighttime video, which he said was filmed from less than 200 feet above the city.

This statement remains unaddressed. Neither confirmed nor denied or even acknowledged. So, it's Pauley's word against the Naperville PD's, the latter of which hasn't offered any words contradicting his claim.

Maybe Chief Marshall is just suffering from drone envy. Illinois state laws do prohibit the use of drones by law enforcement.

Section 10. Prohibited use of drones. Except as provided in Section 15, a law enforcement agency may not use a drone to gather information.

The Section 15 exceptions (and there are a lot of them) are: preventing a terrorist attack, with a warrant, imminent harm to life, locating a missing person (but notably, not as part of a criminal investigation), and crime scene/crash photography. Flying over private land for the latter also requires the acquisition of a search warrant. "Freedom from drone surveillance," as the law is titled. That applies to law enforcement only. It says nothing about private use.

The FAA may choose to fine Pauley if Chief Marshall decides to rat him out (the FAA restricts private drone usage to daytime hours), but it appears there's little he can actually do about this from his end. Marshall appears to believe that if he thinks something's illegal, it must actually be, even if all evidence points in the other direction -- really not the sort of attitude you want in a law enforcement official.

As of yet, no charges have been filed, but never underestimate the creativity of law enforcement personnel whose common sense has been shouted down by their desire to prosecute.

Filed Under: drones, john pauley, laws, naperville, police, robert marshall

DHS Watchdog Says Border Patrol's Drones Are Expensive, Useless

from the 'just-like-your-mom,'-the-report-DIDN'T-add dept

The CBP's drone squadron has been a tightly-held secret. Documents have been pried loose by FOIA lawsuits, but it's pretty clear the DHS and the CBP would rather not discuss its flying surveillance technology. Not that the CBP drones are strictly for patrolling our nation's borders. They've been spotted far inland, being used by law enforcement agencies taking advantage of the CBP's drone lending library.

Finally, more details on the CBP's drones have made their way into the public domain, thanks to an Office of the Inspector General report. [pdf link] The information contained in this document points to two seeming contradictions, albeit the sort of contradictions often found in government agencies that run long on Congressional support but short on effective oversight.

They're expensive:

We estimate that, in fiscal year 2013, it cost at least $62.5 million to operate the program, or about $12,255 per hour.

And they're worthless:

Given the cost of the Unmanned Aircraft System program and its unproven effectiveness, CBP should reconsider its plan to expand the program. The $443 million that CBP plans to spend on program expansion could be put to better use by investing in alternatives, such as manned aircraft and ground surveillance assets.

This table makes it completely clear how little this technology has contributed to safer borders.


The drone program began with the assumption that long-range eyes in the sky would be cheaper than running agents all over the place. Supposedly, the drones would be able to cover areas that wouldn't be feasible using humans and ground vehicles. The CBP has 7,000 miles of land borders and 2,000 miles of coastal waters to cover, but its long-range drones, for the most part, kept an eye on only two very small areas.

[A]ccording to CBP, in FY 2013 UAS operations along the 1,993-mile southwest border focused on about 100 miles of Arizona border and operations in Texas concentrated on about 70 miles of that state’s border.

The OIG found that the CBP's enthusiasm for drones far exceeded the agency's grasp. It envisioned nearly round-the-clock surveillance over large areas. It delivered minimal coverage for nearly $13,000/hour.

[T]he unmanned aircraft logged a combined total of 5,102 flight hours, or about 80 percent less than what OAM anticipated.

The OAM (CBP's Office of Air and Marine) blames budget constraints. It wants $443 million to acquire more drones and keep the ones it has airborne more often. But the OAM seemingly has no idea what its actual costs are, much less what it might need to reach its 16-hour-a-day goal. It underreported drone operating costs to the OIG by nearly $10,000/hour. And yet, it wants to be trusted with more money and more toys.

The Office of Air and Marine’s calculation of $2,468 per flight hour does not include operating costs, such as the costs of pilots, equipment, and overhead. By not including all operating costs, CBP also cannot accurately assess the program’s cost effectiveness or make informed decisions about program expansion.

Even with 5,100 hours of flight time being logged, the eyes in the sky contributed to only 2,300 apprehensions. The CBP's ground forces made over 10 times as many apprehensions. An apprehension for every half-hour of flight time is a pretty good ratio (said here without any meaningful stats to compare it to), but that works out to about $6,000 per detainment -- hardly an indicator of efficiency.

The CBP argues that apprehensions aren't a good measure of the drones' value. It prefers to use "detections." All well and good, but even though that number is higher (18,239), the agency was unable to demonstrate to the OIG that there was a meaningful connection between what the drones "saw" and effective border enforcement. The OIG notes the CBP's objection, but still sticks with the lower apprehension measurement.

The CBP also claims drug seizures to be a better measuring stick of effectiveness than apprehensions, but even this self-selected metric is underwhelming.


The report also calls out the CBP for vastly misrepresenting the amount of area covered by its drones.

According to CBP, our statements that unmanned aircraft are not operating along the entire southwest border are inaccurate. CBP said OAM has authorization to fly, and has flown, the unmanned aircraft along every stretch of the southwest border, from California to the Texas gulf coast.

OAM provided additional flight hour information that showed 44.6 hours flown over California and 3.8 hours flown over New Mexico. The California hours involved an unmanned aircraft flying over that state to conduct missions over water off the state’s southern coast. We do not know what the 3.8 hours over New Mexico flight hours involved. OAM did not provide information that showed surveillance missions in either of these states.

We believe it is misleading for CBP to report that its unmanned aircraft operate over every stretch of the southwest border when these flights appear to be simply on the way to another mission.

It's not that drones are completely useless. It's that these particular ones are. Ars Technica quotes drone law expert Brendan Schulman:

"Smaller drones, used in closer proximity to border areas, may turn out to be far more efficient and effective at this type of mission," he wrote in an e-mail. "The Predator is a very large airframe that is over a decade old. One of the recommendations of the report is to conduct a study on whether investments in alternatives, such as manned aircraft and ground technologies, might work better. Newer, low-cost drones that have been developed over the past year or two might be another alternative worth investigating."

The best thing the CBP can do at this point is drop its defensiveness about its underutilized (but overhyped) drone program. There is no doubt the agency will continue to use drones, but it needs cheaper and more agile technology. And while it's updating its fleet, it should also update its Privacy Impact Assessment. We know the FBI has yet to make its public, and the CBP's current PIA makes no mention of its drone lending program -- nor does it require similar assessments from those it lends its fleet (and operators) to.

Drones will continue to be a part of border surveillance, but just because they're inescapable doesn't mean the CBP is justified in its insistence on throwing more money at a program that clearly needs a major overhaul.

Filed Under: border patrol, dhs, drones

Could The FAA's Drone Policies Violate The First Amendment?

from the strike-them-down dept

Law professor Margot Kaminski has a fascinating post detailing how the FAA's "drone licensing" program could very much violate the First Amendment. A while back, she'd already expressed concerns about the FAA's attempt to ban the use of drones, noting that the bans blocked expression in the form of video and photography -- because, remember, taking a photograph is a form of expression. But the First Amendment question is even more stark now, thanks to the FAA's recent decision to let Hollywood use drones for commercial purposes, but no one else. As Kaminski notes, now the FAA is suddenly deciding whose expression is okay and whose isn't. That's a classic First Amendment issue.

The problem is that now the FAA appears to be playing favorites. All commercial uses of drones are banned—except for uses by those six companies that obtained an exemption (and by BP, which received an earlier exemption to use drones up in Alaska). There are 45 other applicants for an exemption under section 333, including a self-identified newsgatherer and a realtor who presumably wants to take photographs.

This potentially raises a First Amendment licensing issue. Does Congress’s treatment of these applications violate the First Amendment by putting too much discretion in the hands of government officials, allowing them to privilege one speaker over another? And if this is the case, what are the consequences for any licensing regime that happens to touch on First Amendment-protected activity?

The Supreme Court has long acknowledged that a too-discretionary licensing regime can raise serious First Amendment concerns. This is true even where a complete ban might be permissible. A brief recently filed at the NTSB on behalf of News Media Amici raised the specter of the FAA applying too-vague law in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner, in violation of the First Amendment.

Kaminski admits that this isn't a completely clear-cut case. The courts would have to determine if the licensing program is "aimed at speech" -- specifically the "law must have a close enough nexus to expression, or to conduct commonly associated with expression, to pose a real and substantial threat of the identified censorship risks." That may be a high bar. Kaminski isn't sure the courts would go there yet, but notes it's a possibility. And, in that possibility, it could lead to challenges towards other licensing requirements as well.

If courts paint the definition of a “nexus to expression” with too broad a brush, then licensing schemes touching self-driving cars, smartphones, or the Internet of Things may also have to meet the First Amendment’s more stringent requirements. This potentially puts the First Amendment in tension with good innovation policy. As we attempt to encourage Congress not to rush to conclusions, and encourage agencies to experiment with regulatory schemes for new technologies, discretion may be something we want to afford them, rather than restrict.

Given that we've already seen evidence of drone innovation going overseas due to regulations at home, perhaps it might not be such a bad thing to have such regulations face that higher level of scrutiny.

Filed Under: drones, faa, first amendment, free speech

District Court Orders Release Of Another DOJ Drone-Killing Memo, Cites [REDACTED] In Support

from the reading-between-the-deletions dept

New York's Southern District Court -- which has been hosting (along with the Second Circuit Appeals Court) the ACLU and New York Times' long-running, concurrent FOIA lawsuits against the government over its drone killing memos -- has reached a partial decision on some of the embattled documents.

The court's decision was actually delivered on Sept. 30th, but its conclusion and order have spent the last month under seal while the government applied its redactions. An accompanying memo from the presiding judge [pdf link] notes that the court isn't buying all the government's redaction arguments.

I disagree with the Government's redaction of the bulk of the first full paragraph and the second and third paragraphs on page 9, which as drafted by this court contain not a whit of classified material (the Government does not suggest otherwise), and which I do not believe would tend to reveal any classified information. In order to preserve that issue for appellate review, I will release on the public docket the opinion with all the Government's proposed redactions today, along with this cover note indicating my conclusion about this material. Should the Second Circuit agree with the Government that the material was properly redacted, nothing will be lost; should it agree with my view that nothing the Government has redacted on page 9 should be redacted, it will so indicate.

Indeed, page 9 of the order [pdf link] leaves almost everything to the imagination, retaining only a single sentence that really makes you wish the court hadn't deferred to the government's judgement.

The issue raised by the Government's objection to disclosure is potentially fascinating and incredibly complicated.

The rest of the document is the government's proprietary blend of abysmal scanning and heavy redactions. After some discussion about documents the government has already released and information revealed by government officials' own statements, the court drills deeper into the DOJ's redaction justifications. Of course, we can't actually read the government's reasoning or the court's reactions because the government has final cut approval. The DOJ's broad redactions remove a majority of the last 14 pages, leaving behind tantalizing sentences like:

The Government's blithe assertion to the contrary, these waiver issues are not so easily resolved

and:

if that be true, I see no reason why I am even going through this exercise.

The court orders the government to release the contested documents (legal opinions from the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel) discussed in the order (the remaining documents related to the FOIA requests will likely be discussed next year), noting there is "no just reason for delay" considering both the public's interest in these memos, as well as the fact that it has been more than three years since the documents were requested.

So, another long-running FOIA lawsuit is showing a little return on investment. Unfortunately, the government's lengthy redactions prevent the public from seeing what arguments it's using in defense of its FOIA stiffarm, as well as keeping it from drawing any legal insight from the court's response.

Filed Under: classified, drones, extrajudicial killing, foia, killing, redacted, secrecy, transparency

California Governor Shoots Down Warrant Requirement For Law Enforcement Drone Usage

from the paperless-surveillance dept

California governor Jerry Brown has just vetoed a bill that would add a warrant requirement for drone surveillance. In Brown's opinion, the demands of the bill surpassed what the Fourth Amendment actually requires.

"This bill prohibits law enforcement from using a drone without obtaining a search warrant, except in limited circumstances," the governor said in his veto message (PDF). "There are undoubtedly circumstances where a warrant is appropriate. The bill's exceptions, however, appear to be too narrow and could impose requirements beyond what is required by either the 4th Amendment or the privacy provisions in the California Constitution."

Rather than err on the side of the public's interests, Brown has come down on the side of law enforcement. Currently, only 10 states require warrants for law enforcement drone usage. California won't be joining them.

Brown does have a point about public spaces and the Fourth Amendment. There's little practical difference between drone surveillance and other warrantless surveillance techniques that involve public areas. Police helicopters routinely fly over large cities. Why shouldn't drones? Just because drones can fly longer, follow closer (and more surreptitiously) and provide a more targeted view doesn't necessarily turn its surveillance into a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Just as taking pictures of a single person's license plate is not a violation of privacy, neither are the millions collected every day by automatic license plate readers.

The solution here isn't necessarily warrant requirements, but it's worth a shot when there are so few options. Even though some states have managed to push through similar legislation, they're unlikely to survive legal challenges -- at least not in terms of the Fourth Amendment (mileage varies considerably with state constitutions). This is part of a push for more accountability from law enforcement, whose capabilities have advanced at a rate far surpassing its effort to keep the public informed of its activities.

California law enforcement agencies, more often than not, are forced to relinquish information on newly-acquired surveillance technology. There's rarely an attempt made to consider the public's concerns before deploying. Drone purchases and deployments almost always lead policy-making by weeks or months.

There needs to be more done to address privacy concerns than simply deferring to the "outside is public" argument. Government figures like California Senator Diane Feinstein and Justice Sotomayor complain about drone usage by the public, claiming they would hate to have a privately-operated drone flying "right outside their windows." But they defer to law enforcement discretion, somehow forgetting that whatever a privately-owned drone can do, a law enforcement drone can do -- including hovering outside a window. (Law enforcement officers suffer from similar rhetorical blind spots...)

If private drones are going to be subject to several rules, so should law enforcement drones. There's no reason to assume law enforcement officers are better pilots or more inclined to avoid using the drones to invade someone's privacy. What a warrant requirement does is add a small layer of accountability: who is using it, where they're using it and why. This generates a paper trail that will help deter abuse. The Fourth Amendment may cover expectations of privacy and prevent unreasonable searches, but there's nothing similar demanding transparency and accountability from government agencies.

At this point, drone usage by law enforcement agencies isn't an "if." It's a "when." The public's rights are being trimmed around the edges by law enforcement tech and that's what's prompting this sort of legislative pushback. The legal reasoning may be flawed but the underlying motivation isn't: police powers continue to expand while the public's rights continue to erode. There's an urge to reset this balance and it will sometimes manifest itself as unsound legal arguments.

A good faith effort would be the embrace of warrants for drone usage. Anything that requires warrants also contains several exceptions to be used in emergency situations. This proposed law was no different. If time and/or public safety is a concern, the drones can be immediately deployed. Anything else can wait for a judge's signature. But this is the sort of proactive move very few will make. The city of Seattle tossed out its drones because of public concern, but it's a singular exception. That the drones ended up in a state where the governor has vetoed an attempt to force accountability into the system lies somewhere between irony and kismet.

Filed Under: california, drones, privacy, warrants

White House Says Its Rules Limiting Drone Attacks To Avoid Civilians Don't Apply In Syria

from the rules?-fuck-the-rules dept

When the US finally set up some "rules" for its extrajudicial killing-via-drones (after years of no rules at all, which allowed the CIA to "acquire a taste for killing people with drones"), one of the "rules" was that drone bombs wouldn't be used unless there was a "near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured." As President Obama noted, this was "the highest standard we can set" to avoid civilian casualties via drones. This high standard upset some bloodthirsty hawks like Rep. Mike Rogers, who saw things like actually trying to prevent civilian casualties as unnecessary "red tape." And, in fact, soon after the rules were in place, the Obama administration itself started realizing that it didn't really like the restrictions it put on itself.

So it's just going to ignore them. Last week, we wrote about how the administration has been redefining pretty much everything to justify the attacks on Syria, including what is meant by "civilian." However, even with that new definition, they've run into some very obvious problems: namely that there's increasing evidence that (despite repeated denials) the bombings did, in fact, kill civilians.

No problem, apparently, for the Obama administration, which has now decided that the very rules it set up in the past to avoid killing civilians with drones... no longer matter. Basically, it looks like the Obama administration just added a big fat asterisk to the "near-certainty" standard for civilian deaths, whereby those rules can be ignored... because the Obama administration says "this is different."

At the same time, however, Hayden said that a much-publicized White House policy that President Obama announced last year barring U.S. drone strikes unless there is a “near certainty” there will be no civilian casualties — "the highest standard we can meet," he said at the time — does not cover the current U.S. airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.

The “near certainty” standard was intended to apply “only when we take direct action ‘outside areas of active hostilities,’ as we noted at the time,” Hayden said in an email. “That description — outside areas of active hostilities — simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now.”

It's not much of a rule when you can exempt it based on... deciding to exempt it.

Filed Under: civilians, drones, extrajudicial killing, obama administration, rules, syria

FAA: Drones Are Okay For Hollywood, But Not Okay For Sports

from the huh? dept

We remain absolutely baffled by the FAA's bizarre rules about drones. As we've noted, the FAA has said that you can use drones for fun, but if it in any way involves profit, it's not allowed. So you can use a drone to take photographs from the sky for personal use, but if you're a real estate agent trying to do a flyover of a house you're trying to sell, that's illegal. And while some people still claim that drone use should be limited so they don't interfere with airplanes, that doesn't seem to (even remotely) be the concern here, otherwise the personal use of drones would be barred too.

But it's getting even more bizarre. Now, it seems that anyone who wants to use drones in anything close to an innovative way has to first go beg the FAA for permission. And the permission is sometimes given and sometimes withheld. Compare these two stories. The University of Michigan wanted to use drones to deliver the game ball before kickoff of a football game, but the FAA nixed the request. It's not at all clear why. This was for a sporting event, and it would just be for fun. It's hard to see how the use was "commercial" other than the fact that college football is big business. Meanwhile, compare that to the fact that the FAA is apparently granting permission to Hollywood to use drones to film things:

In May, seven aerial photo and video production companies asked for regulatory exemptions (known as a 333 exemption) that would allow the film and television industry to use drones with FAA approval. Those seven companies and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), were asked by the FAA to develop the guidelines and safety procedures under which they planned to operate. The FAA reviewed those procedures and is expected to approve the drone-specific rules and standards that will enable Hollywood to be exempt from existing aviation regulations.

Of course, the report from Forbes notes, this actually took four years of back and forth with the FAA to get to this point.

We've talked for a while about the concept of permissionless innovation and why it's important to keep the velocity of innovation moving forward at a rapid pace. Adding in this layer of bizarre, arbitrary and ridiculously slow regulation, and you're slowing down that pace. And while some say "does that really matter" for something as silly as flying drones, as we've noted, it's entirely possible that drones can create some amazingly powerful societal shifts. But each bit of "permission" needed along the way slows down that process and limits our ability to innovate and to adapt and adjust and learn.

Filed Under: drones, faa, hollywood, innovation, movies, permission, regulations, sports

The Interesting Thing About Google's Delivery Drones Is Not The Drones, But Massive Societal Shift They Envision

from the the-sharing-society dept

Alexis Madrigal, over at The Atlantic, has the big scoop story concerning Google's project to create delivery drones, in its Google X moonshot factory. The project, unimaginatively dubbed Project Wing, has many people comparing it to Amazon's similarly announced plans for delivery drones. And, of course, for years before that, we discussed ideas like the TacoCopter (and the LobsterCopter) which some people were trying to build to deliver food via drones. Google has confirmed the project (notably never using the term drone, but instead "self-flying vehicles") with this video: Of course, as we've been noting since the TacoCopter days, the big problem here is that the FAA hates drones and insists that they are 100% illegal for any for-profit effort no matter how useful or reasonable.

While most people are comparing this to Amazon's drone delivery idea, or talking about the nature of "instant gratification," it seems like many are totally missing the much bigger thinking behind Google's effort here. Like most truly disruptive innovations, the interesting thing here isn't in just delivering packages faster, but how such a move could totally reshape society -- a vision that the team behind this at Google apparently are well aware of. From Madrigal's writeup, this key part is buried in the middle, but is the most important point. This isn't about faster delivery. This is about how faster delivery can totally change our relationship to physical things:

The idea goes like this: Because people can’t assume near-instantaneous delivery of whatever they need, they stockpile things. They might have a bunch of batteries, slowly decharging in a drawer, or a drill that they use for 10 minutes a year. Each of these things is a personal possession that sits around, embodying all this energy and industrial effort unproductively.

If this sounds familiar, it should: It is the argument—even down to the drill example—that organizations like Worldchanging made in the mid-00s for the creation of “product-service systems.” Those ideas, in turn, became key planks in the original conception of the “sharing economy,” imagined as one in which the world could make much less stuff because efficient, digital logistics would let each asset be used by more people.

“It would help move us from an ownership society to an access society. We would have more of a community feel to the things in our lives,” Teller preached. “And what if we could do that and lower the noise pollution and lower the carbon footprint, while we improve the safety of having these things come to you?”

People like to mock ideas like "the sharing economy" for putting things like homes and cars to more efficient use rather than leaving them idle all the time. But drones that can move things about easily, quickly and efficiently really could absolutely change how we think about property and ownership. Now, for those who are worried about Google, they might not like Google being at the center of this, but it's hardly likely that they'll be the only player in this space.

But this is also why the FAA's restrictions could be so damaging. The FAA, like so many government bureaucracies, has trouble viewing the future. They only view it through the prism of the past. So, drones are seen as toys that might "interfere with airplanes." The FAA is in absolutely no rush to allow commercial drone use (which is why Google's tests are all being done in Australia), because to FAA bureaucrats, what's the big deal? Drones are toys. The fact that they could reshape certain aspects of the way society works doesn't even enter the picture.

But if you're trying to understand where the future of innovation is going, dismissing projects like this as just being about toys -- or even just being about delivering things faster -- means that you're missing everything.

Filed Under: consumerism, delivery, drones, economics, google x, ownership, predictions, sharing, sharing economy
Companies: google

Awesome Stuff: Flying Cars, Hover Bikes And Ultrasonic Levitation

from the float-away,-float-away... dept

For this week's awesome stuff post about interesting crowdfunding projects, we've got three campaigns that have to do with... leaving the ground behind in some form or another. I'm not sure any of them are practical, but let's not let reality get in the way of fun ideas.

• The OverDrive Flying Car Where's my flying car? That line has been repeated for decades, after the futuristic promises of the 1950s never really came to be. Every so often someone tries it, though, and the latest is The OverDrive -- a sports car that turns into a flying car. Well, in theory. At this point, it doesn't seem to be much beyond a plan and a remote controlled-scale model. It's kind of a moonshot idea and you'd have to believe in the guy behind it to bet on it -- especially since you're not actually buying much here, just supporting his vision. So far, it doesn't look like he's going to get anywhere near the $250,000 he's seeking, but dreamer's gotta dream.
• Hoverbike Okay, moving slightly down the "ambitiousness" scale, how about a Hoverbike that is kind of like a giant quadcopter drone... but that a person can (theoretically) ride. That's sort of the idea, though what these guys are really selling is the 1/3-scale model drone. In other words, it's really just a drone that they're selling, with the idea that one day they'd like to make a hoverbike version of it.
• Ultrasonic Levitation Moving way, way, way, way down the ambitiousness scale to something that's actually more plausible, there's the ultrasonic levitation device that will allow you to make tiny, little things float in the air. Kinda neat in a science-experimenty way. The guy behind it hopes that it will inspire people to build real hoverboards, but I wouldn't bet on it.

That's it for this week. Feel free to go outside without too much worry about flying cars and hoverbikes zooming around just yet...

Filed Under: awesome stuff, crowdfunding, drones, flying cars, hover bikes, ultrasonic levitation