Close Encounters of the First Kind

I've been putting an infrequent post or two about drones for a couple of years now, but last Monday was the first time I actually had an up close and personal encounter with one. A friend and I were walking along the lovely West Cliff Drive here in Santa Cruz and had stopped to sit down on a bench, when one came hovering by. I don't if it was the same guy who shot this video, admittedly quite beautiful, but I think we basically had the same kind of reaction that Rambro had in a recent post here--annoyance. Frankly, they are rackety, and the idea that they're filming you doesn't help anything. Although I'm not actually a violent person, there is kind of a visceral reaction that makes you want to pick up a rock and see if you can knock it out of the sky.


Obviously, I didn't. Good thing too, because according to this Slate article, I would not have been within my rights.

When 3-D printing and drones come together

Come on, you knew it had to happen. Advances in both 3-D and drone technology have now collided, or so says this interesting piece at Wired Magazine's Danger Room. Jordan Golson who wrote the piece says:


"The design can be modified—and reprinted—easily, to be bigger or smaller, carry a sensor or a camera, or fly slower or faster. The plane can be made in 31 hours, with materials that cost $800. Electronics (like the tablet-based ground station) push the price to about $2,500. That’s so cheap, it’s effectively disposable, especially since you can make another one anywhere you can put a 3-D printer. If one version is flawed or destroyed, you can just crank out another."


O brave new world.

NYT piece on drones and democracy

Very interesting piece in the New York Times yesterday entitled Drones and the Democracy Disconnect by Firmin Debrabander. Connects the dots in many ways on our current war policy.


"How do drones affect the nation that endorses them — overtly, or, as is more often the case, tacitly? Are drones compatible with patriotism? With democracy? Honor? Glory? Or do they, as I fear, represent — and exacerbate — a troubling, even obscene disconnect between the American people and the wars waged in our name?"

Sotomayor weighs in on drones and privacy

A short piece at Slate by Lily Hay Newman talks about Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's concerns about what I guess you'd call our naiveté about drones in the private sphere. It's not just government surveillance we should worry about--it's anybody's surveillance. And some of those anybodies have our best interest at heart a lot less than government does, though I admit that that can be a low threshold. Check it out HERE

Rambro

I found an article at Slate a few days ago about the encounter between a drone and an angry ram. I could put the YouTube up here, but I think I'll just send you to the piece by Lily Hay Newman. It's probably worth noting that the ram in question is owned by the drone operator, and in fact is a 'rescue ram'.

Still, you can kind of see the future, can't you? Kids with time--and drones--on their hands. Innocent hikers out to enjoy the beauty of nature when suddenly they hear an annoying whirring sound over their heads. If that scenario plays out, just remember that you don't have to be a ram to take action...I predict a new vogue for sling shots.

homes, farms, runways, highways, waterways

Slate has a piece up on how more than 400 drones "costing millions of dollars each"  have crashed since 2001. My title comes from the kinds of places Slate says they have crashed into. Read all about it HERE

Drone wars at Tom Dispatch

Here's a piece that just went up on Tom Dispatch by Pratap Chatterjee called "The True Costs of Remote Control War". It follows a few paragraphs by Nick Turse on the NSA. The article focuses in particular on the long term effect of being a remote control drone pilot. 

PTSD, Drone style

I've been a bit remiss about posting here lately, though it's not for want of material. However, I just read this short piece by Vivian Salama at The Investigative Fund,  which succinctly captures the reasons for my own animus towards this form of warfare. The situation in Yemen sounds like a form of psychological torture for many innocent civilians.

Medea Benjamin on "The Dangerous Seduction of Drones"

Check out Medea Benjamin's article on the slow creep of drone warfare over at Nation of Change

Metadata and you--or maybe someone else

This  piece on Chris Hayes' All In featuring an interview with Jeremy Scahill was the scariest piece on the intersection of drone warfare and metadata that I've seen yet.

Drone warfare--a drabble

Just saw this one over on Rob Kitchin's blog, which I usually read for his thoughtful reviews on crime fiction, rather than his fiction about drone warfare. A drabble is a story of exactly one hundred words. With no further ado, This Isn't a Video Game.