Some time ago I watched the video footage of the Chaos Communication Camp 2007, and in particular the recordings of the quadrocopter drones had impressed me. My fingers were itching to build a microdrone myself, unfortunately I currently have no time for such things. But what exactly is a drone and what can you do with it?
Source: Wikimedia
In this case, we are talking about a very small helicopter-like unmanned aircraft that flies with four electrically powered propellers and makes almost no noise. Drones are either remote-controlled or can move autonomously based on GPS data. They tow a photo or video camera whose images are transmitted live to the ground. Aerial photographs will soon be much cheaper.
Despite the fascination with technology, it wasn’t really clear to me what I was supposed to do with such a thing: I’m not interested in using the camera installed on the drone to look through my neighbors’ windows or monitor potential observers. For me, possible surveillance by drones outside of a military context was also more like music of the future.
Now I saw in the news yesterday that in Saxony, drones will be used to monitor fans in football stadiums in the future, a drone from the German company MicroDrones has already been ordered for 65,000 euros (the CCC model costs less than 1,000 euros when self-built), and Heise adds that the Federal Police already own two drones.
No one will deny that there are many good uses for drones, whether it’s to quickly obtain information about the situation during disasters or to check a terrain like a football stadium for suspicious objects before an event. This is about identifying potential dangers, for example, to provide rescue teams with an overview of a situation that is also dangerous for them, or to prevent a disaster. However, monitoring football fans during a game using drones is a different matter. Not that I have any sympathy for hooligans, but here people are being monitored – Orwell comes to mind. Of course, all of this is done solely for documentation purposes, according to the police, in order to enable proper evidence collection. No one needs to be afraid that drones will fly through the streets and look into windows, says a spokesperson for the state police department. Drones have already been tested in other EU countries, for example, in England.
However, if you read the other article on heise.de, which belongs to the customers of the company Microdrones, or look at some of the videos on the manufacturer’s page, then you can quickly think in a different direction (it must be credited to the company Microdrones that they provided a quadrocopter free of charge to the CCC). You can even rent drones, and here it is also discussed that this would be interesting not only for photographing landscapes but also for security companies. Do you want to know what your partner is doing when you’re on a trip? A detective agency can provide clarity with a microdrone.
According to Wikipedia
The Swiss Army made negative headlines when it became known that, for training purposes, they routinely tracked and filmed randomly selected private cars and civilians with their reconnaissance drones from an altitude of 1,500 meters using high-sensitivity thermal imaging cameras during their training flights.
This happened as early as 2004. And if one also considers that these drones can already be made much smaller and will certainly become even smaller, it is also conceivable that they may eventually be indistinguishable from an insect. Linking GPS data with registration office data should not be that difficult either.
But why should the state want to monitor its citizens in this way? Perhaps for the same reason that the state claims it already monitors all citizens’ internet and telephone communications. With telephones and the internet, most citizens didn’t notice or weren’t interested. Let’s see if it will be different with drones.
One question that has not yet been clarified is: How will self-built drones be treated in the future? Under 5 kilos of own weight, everything can take off without special permission. How long will this still be allowed? Will self-built drones be able to detect other drones?
Update: Wonderful video from the two developers from the Mikrokopter site
Another update: On Kai’s blog, it is being discussed that the increased sightings of UFOs can also be explained by the fact that these UFOs could simply be drones; additionally, miniature drones are being addressed.