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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday May 27 2015, @03:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the spying-at-home dept.

I chair the tech and garden committees at the PTA at my kids' elementary school in Brooklyn, a small, Title 1 (the majority of the families are poor) school with limited resources. A couple months ago the PTA gave money for expensive self-watering planter boxes, flowers, hoses, and other gardening implements to improve the austere, institutional exterior, which resembles a prison. As we discovered this morning, some of the flowers, boxes, and hoses were stolen over Memorial Day weekend.

Since planter boxes must be outside, and the thief must be in the neighborhood to know the boxes are there, it occurred to me that they must be visible from the air and perhaps a camera drone with decent range could be used to recover the stolen property and put a stop to thefts that will surely continue if we merely replace what was lost.

Ideally I imagine flying it from the flat roof of my 4-story apartment building to search in a .5 mile to 1 mile radius, with roughly 30 minutes of flying time and a "go home" feature if it loses contact with the controller or runs too low on battery.

Are there drone aficionados in the SN community who can speak to the feasibility of such a project and/or can recommend models to buy?


[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]

 
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  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday May 27 2015, @07:30PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 27 2015, @07:30PM (#188742)

    So for you it is okay to "spy" as long as the data is very old? Would it be acceptable if his drone recorded the neighborhood and then he waited a few years to look at the video? Also, in my experience google maps are no more than 3 years old. That number is only going to get smaller too!

    Phoenix666 is here, there is no need to make assumptions about what he would do. But we can certainly debate about what you or i would do. If i saw what looked like the planters then i would turn the image over to the school and let them decide. I'd probably see who is living at that address and see if it was school faculty, as that could affect who i gave the image to.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 27 2015, @09:15PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday May 27 2015, @09:15PM (#188783) Journal

    It's very interesting to see the responses to this idea and the visceral reaction it has provoked. What I'm talking about is a slightly different take on the age-old, time-honored practice of me walking past your house and seeing my stolen property sitting in your yard, calling the cops, and having you arrested. The only difference is I'm talking about an RC craft that can do it from 60 ft in the air. But the emotional reaction to it has been, it seems, much stronger than the general reaction, even here on SN, to having the NSA in every most intimate part of your home and person, on your computer, on your smartphone, reading every thought and intimacy you share with those closest to you, stealing your medical data, profiling you, flagging you, and truly, totally invading your privacy.

    Why is that?

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    • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by KGIII on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:22PM

      by KGIII (5261) on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:22PM (#188847) Journal

      It is likely because you walking by their house does not mean you are able to look in their back yard or over their fence. In the back yard or beyond a fence I, personally, have an expectation of privacy from government bodies and from nosy neighbors. That would be why I would be out back or behind a fence. Of course I live in a very wooded area about a half mile from the road so this is figurative in my case.

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      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 28 2015, @02:53AM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday May 28 2015, @02:53AM (#188919) Journal

        Of course I live in a very wooded area about a half mile from the road so this is figurative in my case.

        In that context, yes, for someone to see into your backyard they'd already have to be trespassing on your land. Here, I can look out my kitchen window right now and see into every neighbor's back yard on the block (our blocks are like donuts, with the back yards in the holes, surrounded by 2, 3, and 4 story brownstones and apartment buildings. In an area with this kind of density the only expectation of privacy you can reasonably have is to be inside with your drapes drawn. If the thing you want people to not see is by definition a thing which must be visible (plants that need light to grow), then there's a chance someone can see it.

        But this is a long-standing precept of law in the United States, at least. When I was a kid in the 80's the government flew choppers over our valley for weeks to catch people growing marijuana out in the open. They didn't need search warrants because the plants were visible from the air. It's also the same precept that protects the paparazzi who sit in boats offshore celebrities' beach homes with tele-photo lenses and snap pics of stars sunbathing in the nude. They also hire choppers to get pictures from the air, which are like drones that carry people to operate the cameras. Like those guys or not, what they do is perfectly legal. When I lived in Chicago my car was stolen, and when I reported it the first thing the cops asked me was if I had gone around the neighborhood to see if I could see it. Why would they suggest such a thing if it were impossible for me to report that I had seen my car because it was sitting on someone else's property?

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        Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 1) by KGIII on Thursday May 28 2015, @05:26PM

          by KGIII (5261) on Thursday May 28 2015, @05:26PM (#189199) Journal

          That is why it is figurative. If I were a star and had people shooting pictures of me I would still be unhappy about it. This does not mean that it is illegal, it means that it is something that would perturb me. Just because it is legal does not mean I have to be happy about it. Just because it is illegal does not mean I have to be happy about it. Legality does not mean it is ethical either. You are free to go about spying on your neighbors, and while their response may be illegal, do not be surprised if your children are shunned or if someone takes offense and does the same to you - also do not be surprised if someone slashes your tires. The tire slashing would be illegal, immoral, and not entirely surprising. In my neighborhood (not nearly as dense as your area) I would not be surprised to have the RC shot down, doing so would be illegal but it would not surprise me to see it happen.

          --
          "So long and thanks for all the fish."