Peekaboo Drones on the prowl By Harley L. Sachs If you travel to England these days you will be under police surveillance, but you knew that. London is reputed to have about 45,000 surveillance cameras. Some of the video clips were broadcast in the follow-up to the London subway bombings. Sifted out of millions of frames of video, the clips showed the bombers doing their practice runs, etc. But now the British cops have another tool, the AR100B surveillance flying drone made by the AirRobot company. The AR100B is about the size of an automobile hub cap, is battery operated, and comes equipped with a heat sensor so it can follow you even in heavy fog, as it did in Merseyside when the gadget was used by the police to pursue and nab a 16-year-old car thief who left the vehicle and hid in the bushes. The lad was arrested, but he may get off if his defense is that the police illegally used the AR100B without a license! Seems that these drones can’t legally fly around without Civil Aviation Authority approval. That’s the argument used by civil libertarians who say enough is enough when it comes to surveillance. European controllers of air space have yet to decide on the legality of these flying drones. Until they come to some agreement, the drones have been temporarily grounded. Maybe a policeman needs a pilot’s license to control one? Seems unlikely, because people fly radio-controlled model planes all the time. The AR100B isn’t that much different from a radio-controlled model helicopter, though it resembles some kind of metal insect. There’s nothing pretty about it. If anything, the AR100B looks sinister.
SPECIAL GLASSES Air Robot isn’t the only company making them. Air Power Systems has one, too. The Ar100B is operated at a range of up to 1,500 feet. In Merseyside the police quickly assembled theirs and the operator could “watch” its progress with special glasses even though the drone was out of sight in the fog. The drone can whisper along under its four counter-rotating rotors at up to 30 mph and use satellite GPS for its location. It can hover, take off vertically, fly backwards or forwards, and doesn’t have to be in sight of the operator. It sounds like science fiction of the 1940s, robots hovering outside your fourth floor window watching, watching, but as we have seen, almost anything that can be imagined can be accomplished, short (so far) of your being able to step into a phone booth in New York and dial yourself to London. But the snoopy $60,000 drones are themselves being watched. The web site “Big Brother Watch” is defending the public against these ever encroaching surveillance practices. Seems there are all sorts of surveillance gadgets. How else, for instance, can one inspect an oil pipeline from the inside?
BIG BUCKS Still, considering budgetary problems, what police department can fork over $60,000 for what looks like little more than a toy? And wouldn’t it be embarrassing if it tangled with a power line or got caught in a tree like a kite? To overcome public prejudice against government snooping, Air Robot says their drone has multiple uses (besides peeking through third story bathroom windows). Their web site lists reconnaissance, search and rescue, intelligence, documentation, inspection, use by fire fighters, law enforcement, the military, and special operations forces. Certainly, it would be useful for remote inspection of hazardous or radioactive sites. Chernobyl comes to mind. Since various censors can be attached to the AR100B besides a heat detector, it can carry a Geiger counter, receptors for various forms of radiation, such as radio, X-rays, etc. Video and still cameras can be mounted on it. And of course it can be used day or night. It’s not just for chasing 16-year-old car thieves through the bushes.
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