 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…
I’ve watched Google go from everybody’s BFF to an evil empire on this blog. Interesting. Took less than two years. Just saying…
Monster==what is your evaluation of Google in real life?
A company that had leveraged their way into the search engine field and did a better job than the sell-outs at Yahoo. After dominating the search engine landscape, used there influence and money to acquire other technologies to make themselves a better company (growth is good). They are innovative and a little too progressive for some but I feel comfortable using their products.
Monster–the Nazi’s made good hand guns but are considered to be evil regardless of what else they did well.
What of Google agreeing to censor search results in conformity with Red China’s requests?
What of Google lobbying the FCC to remove net neutrality for wireless services?
What of Google posting high resolution photos of peoples backyards/homes?
I don’t follow Google, so I’m just going off of the blog you also have followed.
Open Call: is Google evil for anything else? Portal to porn? to bit torrent?
Bobbo – I’m like you. I haven’t really followed Google doings outside of this blog. But in regards to your points:
What does Google have in common with a misguided political phenomena like the Nazi’s? Is Google intending global conquest of countries? What are their views on white supremacy?
Sounds like Google was just trying to find a way to work in China. Don’t know the rationale but I bet it has to do with “better something that nothing”.
As far as Google lobbying against net neutrality, I ain’t got a clue outside of this blog.
I like the high res of my house but it is about 2-4 years old.
Bottom line:
I wasn’t dis-ing anyone about busting on Google but merely stating the fact that Google went from sweet-heart to Eddy Haskell in front of my eyes.
People confuse “don’t be evil” with being good.
If the business you worked for, or say your local gov’t. or even your neighbor was posting online hi-res photos of your home, backyard, etc. without you consent, would it bother you?
bobbo?
Monster Man?
Eideard?
Just wondering. Maybe it wouldn’t, for some it would.
Monster==I didn’t compare Google to Hitler, I compared you evaluating their evil quotent as misguided as admiring Hitler for his good works.
If you want to evaluate evil, you don’t look at the good, you look at the evil. Shit from Shinola.
I would think a Monster’s Lawyer would not be so defensive? So you think enabling a fascist control over information is a good thing because misleading info is better than none? I disagree.
Web neutrality. You claim ignorance which is fair enough. You will probably support manipulation of traffic as some traffic is better than none?
High Def pics of your house: you don’t care. Neither do I.
Bottom Line==your dissing on people or not is irrelevant and not the issue. The direct question was: what do YOU think of Google in real life. And your answer is an irresponsible miasma of evasion and muddled thinking.
Google is no more or less evil than any other for profit corporation: meaning they are evil by definition.
So easy.
That’s a V-1 Buzzbomb that someone painted Google on the side. Cripes. THAT’s NOT the drone. It’s one of those cheap little cam-drones people can buy off-the-shelf.
http://vectorsite.net/twcruz_2.html
Hey McCullough: you aren’t going to ask THAT question and then get insulted and in a Huff when you can’t argue your position are you?
You KNOW my position: there is a meaningful difference between an understandable DESIRE FOR ANONYMITY and the constitutionally based RIGHT OF PRIVACY.
I already posted I don’t care about High Def pics of my house. “I don’t care” is an assessment of my RIGHT TO PRIVACY. I would of course prefer that my anonymity was preserved–or that google inform me of what day my back yard would have pics taken so that I could clean it up? That Hawaiian Pig Roast looks like a human sacrifice from 500 feet.
There is some constitutional argument for backyards being within the ambit of privacy==if you put up a fence and a normal person could not see your backyard from the public street==but there are pro’s and con’s to every position taken. I accept the invasion of my backyard so that I can look into the backyards of people around the world.
I spend too much time traveling the world on google and wish for more resolution. Go fly over Somalia. Its an eye opener even with all the news we get. Fly over as many newsbreaking areas as you can.
Ultimately, information/truth will win out if evil corporations don’t lock it down for profit as they naturally are want to do.
bobbo – It’s been nice talking to you. Later.
Better to question how much of a threat Google is.
How much does Google know about YOU?
Does Google influence your of view?
I, for one, welcome my new Google overlords.
JCD==we all know the picture and the headlines have squat to do with the facts alleged in the linked story. Don’t you read your own blog?
John, you do know Eideard was trying to pull a funny with his photo (not his comment).
Bobbo, you mistake my “huff” for an absence of desire to get into a pointless debate with you. Unlike you, I don’t drink beer for a living. And once I post, I must go earn money to feed my sorry ass. Sorry if you took offense.
Even the Monster has grown weary, there was nothing combative in his comment.
Now, I’m off to do something productive.
How can a debate be pointless? Two sides? Resolution? Only pointless if it is poorly engaged.
Is Google Evil?===pointless?
Yes, combative. I agree. Not “just” combative though unless you must have your ass kissed with every conversation. There is a lot of humor if you get your ego out of the way. Education as well-both ways=if we get our egos out of the way.
Is a sword fight just combative or is there a joy in improving your combative skills that lies apart from the combat itself? One a lawyer “should” enjoy??
Now, where is that half used 12 pack? Just let me move my ego out of the way, and I can still reach it.
Two things I am curious about in this age of drones.
First, being a pilot, there is a FAA Reg known a Visual Flight Rules (VFR). Im not quite sure how the government and private entities flying these things, “to get a better look at neighborhoods” can abide by said rule with an unmanned aircraft.
Second, It scares the bejeezus out of me that our own government entities want to start using drone in this country, but it scares me even more that private entities are going to start operating them.
I mean, government at least a a little shred of accountability for what they do with them etc, I don’t think that private entities will have the same accountability.
So this is for better mapping? Yea right. Just a thought, but government usually gets around the accountability thing by using private corporations to gather data, then buying it from them.
So Google eventually becomes the main operators of surveillance drones in this country? Supplying all the various law enforcement and intelligence agencies with data? Hence said government agencies don’t have to worry about constitutional issues.
When I lived in Southern California all the women in my neighborhood told me what time they sunbathed as soon as they found out I was a pilot and flew around the neighborhood often.
The point is: if Google would publish the flight times, people who don’t want to be photographed could be indoors and we would get 10 times as many sunbathers to look at. Google only has to blur the faces.
you==I would think an unmanned drone connected by cameras and electonic aides could totally comply with vfr or ifr regs. What “issues” do you see? Consistent with your concern, aren’t drones often grounded even in war zones because of “weather?”
Typically, the government can’t do by contractors what they can’t do themselves. The RIGHT TO PRIVACY isn’t even in the constitution==its an activist judge made concept. We have a right to privacy in our home/castle and its immediate surrounds. I think an early case said google could take pictures from the normal height of a man? Then comes the notion that civil aviation can look into backyards all the time==not just on final approach. So, I think the subject of the immediate area around your house not normally exposed to public view is one of those “growth areas” of the law that is always so problematic.
There is a V1 in the Auckland War Memorial Museum. And a WWII JIA Zero fighter. A very cool place, check it out if you’re around New Zealand.
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.