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posted by LaminatorX on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the nothing-to-see-here dept.

girlwhowaspluggedout writes:

"When Pedro Rivera, an on-call photographer for Hartford, CT's WFSB-TV, used his drone to photograph the scene of a fatal car crash, he probably did not expect to be detained by the local police and be forced to ground his drone and leave the area. What he certainly did not expect was being suspended by his employer without pay for a week after the head of the department's major crimes division contacted WFSB-TV, requesting that disciplinary action be taken against him.

Rivera has now filed a federal lawsuit against Hartford's police department for violating his First and Fourth Amendment rights. The lawsuit seeks more than just damages it asks the court to declare that Rivera did not break any laws by operating the drone.

Shortly after the incident, Hartford police told the media that it was concerned with 'the safety of the officers and the privacy of the victim.' But, as Rivera told the Professional Society of Drone Journalists, 'If privacy is a concern ... it was not with me. It was with all the local news stations that were on the sidewalks with 'long lenses' and had shots so tight, that you could see inside the crash vehicle.' The photo he has provided and the GPS coordinates that are embedded in its EXIF data show what his drone was capable of photographing 150 feet from the accident site.

As Rivera succinctly describes it, 'What happened to me falls in the category of the war on cameras by the police. Whenever the police are videotaped, they try to detain people and confiscate the camera.' It's time to add one more marker to the War on Cameras Map'."

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by CIO on Thursday February 20 2014, @09:03AM

    by CIO (2269) on Thursday February 20 2014, @09:03AM (#3275)

    Dude, it's an accident scene. There is a very, very good chance that they will need to fly somebody out in a helicopter. Maybe not *this* accident, but it is pretty common. If a helicopter tries to land there and hits your small quadcopter, there is a very good chance that it will crash.

    I am not in favor of the lawless nature of the regulations around these little drones and agree that a proper legal framework needs to be set up to prevent arbitrary punishment. But you cannot deny that in this case the reporter took an unconscionable risk that endangered lives and his employer's reputation. If I were his editor, I sure as hell would have suspended him if the police called me and told me this.

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  • (Score: 2) by girlwhowaspluggedout on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:30PM

    by girlwhowaspluggedout (1223) on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:30PM (#3381)

    What drones share in common with other modern-day ubiquitous camera systems is their effect on privacy. Drones are unique in that they are also a "physical" threat, as you point out. But in this specific case, since Rivera claims that his drone only came within 150 feet of the accident scene, it seems that caring for the public's safety wasn't really what Hartford PD had in mind when it detained him.

    What's more, Rivera flew the drone on his own personal, unpaid time.

    --
    Soylent is the best disinfectant.
  • (Score: 1) by wjwlsn on Thursday February 20 2014, @01:06PM

    by wjwlsn (171) on Thursday February 20 2014, @01:06PM (#3398) Homepage Journal

    Did you look at the picture and GPS position map? He was well enough away for safety. Plus, any responsible drone operator would immediately ground the vehicle if full-size traffic was close by. Why assume that this guy wouldn't?

    --
    I am a traveler of both time and space. Duh.