 Secret Nazi World War II experimental drone – uncovered by the Register |
Google is planning to use unmanned “spy drones” like those used by special forces to improve its maps, according to an aircraft manufacturer.
Sven Juerss, the chief executive of Microdrones GmbH, a German firm which builds unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has said that his company has supplied Google with one aircraft already and expects to provide “dozens” more in the future.
However, Google has moved swiftly to deny that the purchase was for company use – Peter Barron, a spokesman for the firm’s UK office, told the Telegraph: “Google is not testing or using this technology. This was a purchase by a Google executive with an interest in robotics for personal use…”
The UAV, known as a “hicam microdrone”, is less than 1m wide and weighs less than a kilogram. It has four battery-powered rotors and can stay in the air for more than an hour. It navigates itself automatically and can take high-quality photographs of large areas beneath it…
It seems likely that the drones will start a new Google privacy row, despite the shots not being significantly different from existing aerial photography. Street View, the ground-level photography of the world’s streets, sparked controversy as various photographs were claimed to invade people’s privacy.
Techno-paranoia produces lockstep blather and noise as predictably as a Gay interracial couple on holiday walking into a church for a few photos. Let the games begin…
Just because google know all your searches, know what you buy what videos you watch what music you listen to, serves your email, maps your wifi signal, photographs your house and car, routes your telephone, is going to control the majority of smart phones, stores you documents, soon control your TV, watches your mouse hovers doesn’t mean they’ll ever do evil. It’s not like they’re facebook…
This may produce live video aerial feeds for events, surveying, etc.
Maybe, if people pay extra. It’s supposed to be cheaper than satellite, BUT Google already own its satellites.
In the US, the law that comes into play will be the one similar for police helicopters.
If it’s for a Google executive’s personal use, than the money to buy the drone should come from his pocket not Google’s.
They need no UAV to “spy” on me. They have much better ways of doing that.
The UAV is for seeing… everything that can be seen from UAV height.
Now what on Google Earth might that entail?
Really now…
I sincerely hope no irony is lost here in light of the recent Google/NSA partnership.
um, -what’s that old saying..?
..Hide it in place sight
(and they’ll never see it coming)
-check.
-s
@# 20 sargasso_c
>There is a V1 in the Auckland War Memorial Museum
Well 10/10 for range but pretty poor navigation!
On privacy:
The photons that bounce off a house or other building can be collected by someone else’s camera lens and turned into a picture. Simple optics. So far as I know, pictures of home exteriors don’t invade people’s privacy as long as the pics aren’t of the interior.
You might remember a news item in 2003 about actress Barbra Streisand, who wanted to keep a professional photographer (who was documenting beach erosion for the state of California) from taking pictures of their house that overlooked a beach outside their yard. This led to the Streisand Effect, which is now well documented in Wikipedia.
Keeping someone’s house out of a general home survey might be a bad idea, if (for instance) that house was in Tornado Alley, got hit by a twister, and the owners didn’t have a good documentation of what their house used to look like. An insurance company might have hard time documenting what the house used to look like if the insurance agent’s office was also damaged (see Greensburg KS, for instance).
>The photons that bounce off a house or other building can be >collected by someone else’s camera lens and turned into a picture.
Same thing here, I supplied my own photons, they bounced off a DVD and I recorded them – but the movie studio still claims they somehow own the pattern of photons.
I think the only ones complaining (and being heard) about privacy, are these huge land developers and their wealthy clients. They don’t want the rest of us to see just how much they’re blighting our lands, with their upscale urban sprawl. All the farm land outside of my town is rapidly disappearing, and being replaced with $400k to $600k mega homes. And this, all during the home mortgage crash. While Google earth hasn’t rescanned the area in two years. Meanwhile the rich new comers are dictating what county roads to be closed off (the protect their kids, who need to play in their streets). And what traffics lights they want removed from old town. I guess they’re just so bored with all their money. They need to see how they can push everyone else around with it.
Eventually, most of them will self-destruct. But until then, they’ll tear up the country side with their building spree. ruining once productive farm land we’ll never get back. So our veggies will end up costing more, when they all become imported from overseas.
bobbo said “The RIGHT TO PRIVACY isn’t even in the constitution”
Have you actually read the Constitution? There’s this little thing between the eighth and tenth amendments. It’s known as the ninth amendment. It says “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
#29–QuitPretending==Gosh, I hope you are being contentious for that reason alone.
“The Ninth Amendment has not yet been used to justify the protection of any right not already listed in the Constitution.”
Its about like saying our rights are natural coming from god. Might sound nice, but means absolutely nothing.
Silly Hooman.
I predict that one day right next to the Street View man on your Google Maps there will be a Drone View drone that you can click on and see real time drone views of the surrounding area.
In popular areas there will be multiple drones ready to zoom to a new location upon the user’s request. It should be pretty cool.