Woman arresting for beating up boy using drone on beach

Not sure where I read it (I could try to find it if you’re interested) but another site did a pretty thorough take-down of that video. Basically, both it and the companion piece (showing strangers coming to the rescue when it’s a man attacking a woman) were significantly edited to create the apparent dichotomy.

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“filming people in a public space can easily be a violation of privacy in a non-legal sense.” - which means NOTHING.

A personal sense over issues is exactly why laws and rules are necessary in society. There is no such thing as a non-legal sense in this instance. When it comes down to opinions, the legal sense is what defines the issue at hand. Being ignorant of your rights and the laws of the land is no validation for breaking said laws. The “equal ground” the people look for is where laws come in - because they are the same for both parties.

“For example, if I put a camera in your face on a public street and made loud buzzing noises, you’d probably get annoyed, and maybe even call the cops. However, I’d be totally within my rights to do that to you. For hours even.”

No, you would not. Again, being ignorant of the laws does not give you the right to break them. There are still harassment protections in place, unfortunately for the subject of the story she was not being harassed. If you were buzzing around my face with a camera for hours making noises as you said, I could indeed call the cops for harassment. This of course can vary by county, city, state, etc. However it still holds true.

Ignorance leads to false assumptions, which lead to bad actions.

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I’d like to see that actually.

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I guess your argument is that morality, aka social norms, don’t matter. But I’d argue that they’re exactly what laws come from. When a social norm is violated frequently enough, you get a law enforcing it. You can see that in the discussion happening over whether people should be allowed to walk down Main Street carrying an assault rifle. The NRA is powerful enough that those discussions probably won’t go anywhere, but they’re certainly happening.

And there’s lots of other instances where something is technically legal but very much not ok. As @jsroberts pointed out, its legal to take photos on most nude beaches, but very much not ok. Someone could be that guy who stands on his legal rights to do it anyway, but they’d be being an asshole. And people may correct their behavior in non legal ways, as people often do with assholes.

So I guess the issue is: are people who fly these noisy, privacy invading drones in public spaces being assholes? And when exactly do they cross the line from someone playing with a fun toy to someone who’s being an asshole? Using them in otherwise quiet spaces, filming someone while they’re changing, targeting a specific person, etc.?

And to what degree does it matter if they’re being assholes?

As a society (not just the few legal absolutists), we’re going to have to figure those questions out. And eventually, we’ll probably have to codify them into laws, so that people who don’t mind being assholes are legally prohibited from doing so.

Thanks for enlightening me, I’ll do my research better next time.

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“You’re completely ignoring the concept of morality, aka social norms. As @jsroberts pointed out, it may be legal to film at a nude beach, but its certainly not ok.” -yes, I’m ignoring them intentionally. Social norms vary widely across the United States, not to mention the world as a greater whole.

Do we expect people from other states, countries, locales, upbringings, to just understand our “social norms”? What is acceptable here in my state is as likely not to be somewhere else.

There are also civil infractions to consider. These are situations that are covered by exactly this type of behavior. You can be escorted off a public beach by the police for being an asshole without actually breaking any laws. And yes, you are right – a lot of laws are based in basic morality. Take public indecency and or public intoxication, for example.

However, it is not a crime to be an asshole anywhere as far as I can tell. Otherwise, 75% of this country would be behind bars!

I would expect that as this issue grows with remote cameras, cameras with increased capability, drones, quad copter’s, you name it – issues will present themselves and laws that protect citizens in these situations will arise out of it. Until then, that is absolutely not okay to enact vigilante justice.

At the end of the day, if someone is being an asshole to you your choices are either a) tell them to cut it out and or call the cops if they are actually harassing you, or b) go home. It Is a crappy set of choices, but sometimes those are the only ones we have: crappy ones.

I am by no means saying this issue does not deserve consideration and looking into from higher legal authorities. However, I do believe there is a point where people need to drop the emotional aspects of it and the "social norm "aspect of it and look at what their actual rights are in the situation.

People have the right to be assholes, people don’t have the right to beat them up for it. Unless that changes, people should just keep their hands to themselves.

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You’re comparing apples and oranges.

Where I live I truly do have to deal with regular flyovers from POLICE helicopters (not going to any actual event, just displaying force), several times a week. They fly directly over my home at a height of about 30-40 ft. It’s incredibly disruptive, and can even damage roofs. It’s totally legal for them to do it (for anyone else, flying that low is illegal), and they do it to keep their flight time up, and show that the copters are “necessary”. It’s not even my neighborhood that’s even a problem, we’re just in the flight path. That is a real, true irritation and we can do very, very little about it (we’ve tried). Where I live, I live with real, actual intimidation.

This woman had NOTHING “buzzing in her face” - video from the copter shows it was 50-100 ft above her at all times, in a public camping space, and it runs on batteries. I’ve heard them, played with them, and the type of quad he was flying isn’t loud. So what you’re describing has nothing to do with what happened to that woman. (Your “surfer” video - wasn’t shot by this guy, and I agree with @SteampunkBanana , the guy changed in the open. I grew up by the beach, and we always went to the car, and covered up with a towel to change.)

If I did follow you around buzzing at you for hours, all day even, IT WOULD BE ILLEGAL. In CT, it would fall at the very least under “disorderly conduct” and possible under “intimidation”. They already have a “voyeurism” law, and the guy controlling the copter clearly wasn’t guilty of it.

http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/SSH-KYR-Connecticut.pdf

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I’d say that “etiquette” is different from “law”. But I’d say it is a no-brainer that you shouldn’t go naked in public if you don’t want people to see you naked.

So it isn’t just in a response, I’ll post this link separately. Lots of people seem to want to talk about two ideas at one time, use of drones and illegal photography, and they’re blurring the topics. That’s not really great because legally they’re wholly separate issues.

Copters are perfectly legal to use in public spaces. They’re not legal to use to actively, closely pursue someone (harassment), or enter private spaces to get pictures unavailable in public (voyeurism, and possibly trespassing), or even take pictures in public from angles that require a sneak shot (up skirts - again voyuerism). Please stop confusing the issues.

http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/SSH-KYR-Connecticut.pdf

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Hopefully I’m not coming off as advocating beating people up for flying drones, or as saying what this woman did to that kid was justified. I’m just interested in how the social rules are taking shape here. I see this particular incident as an expression of the confusion over the topic currently, and as an expression of the frustration over the way some drone operators trot out their “no expectation of privacy in a public place” argument. There’s going to be lots more incidents like this, and its going to be interesting to see how it all plays out.

And the solution is going to take a much more nuanced ethos on the part of drone operators than “I can do whatever I want because all the people around me are in a public place”.

Typically, at the start of public events where you may be photographed, it’s up to the organizers to put up signs letting participants know (a helpful reminder) that, “by participating in this event you may appear in a photograph or on video.” Responsible organizers do so, and that tends to prevent later confusion.

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Man, check out the corners on that pixel! I’d marquee-tool that!

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If he’s a surf photog the same guy probably has a ridiculous telephoto lens. He could take a crisp junk shot at hundreds of metres if he wanted to.

We’ve already figured out the cultural norms: Are you in public? Are you upset about being photographed or filmed? Then go somewhere private.

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Wait until glassholes start getting assaulted too.

Dude, what do you mean wait?


Luddite morons of the mission district who don’t understand supply and demand have already taken to attacking people with Glass.

show the guy physically and offensively invading someone’s personal space and refusing to leave.

That’s your assertion. He’s doing nothing illegal (except filming on private property). You can stand on the sidewalk and film inside a private property, but you cannot stand in that private property and record without the owner’s permission.

has some kind of agenda with the footage.

Again, merely your assertion.

There is no promised payoff of increased security or even the implicit assumption that the footage will be used in an ethical way or destroyed once it has fulfilled its purpose.

So? Nor is that a promise for any particular security camera, nor is there any promise that security footage will eventually be destroyed. Worse yet, In-store security camera footage can be tied to your financial transactions, all of which can be added to a database for potentially far more nefarious purposes than sticking up on youtube to make a philosophical point.

It’s literally just an asshole with a camera who is obviously going to upload the video to YouTube.

When you find the law or rule that says he’s doing something disallowed come back and type more. Until then:

Edit: I watched a few more of his vids. Some of what the guy does could be construed as harassment, and the one where he’s filming a taxi while standing in front of it on a crosswalk is both douchey and illegal. I think he would be sensible to do things that are strictly legal as his social commentary would have more weight. I actually find it fascinating that by doing something entirely legal he can entice members of the public into doing things that are illegal. I really like the subjects who are just like “Hey man…sup?”

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Can you explain what aspect of SEXUAL violence she inflicted on the young man ?

Question: Would ripping a 17 year-old girl’s shirt off be considered a sexual assault? If so, why not for a boy?

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Did a quick check through my history and it didn’t pop out at me. I’ll look again in more detail tomorrow.

Dude - many of the women who have attempted to report an incident of sexual assault or domestic violence to law enforcement or other authorities are already familiar with their reports being scrutinized, doubted or treated dismissively (see: tens of thousands of untested rape kits in uncontrolled, uncatalogued storage).

For every “abuse” such as this - there are thousands of incidents of assault , sexual assault, violation of privacy that girls/women have TRIED to report which are essentially ignored. Tenfold if the woman is of a “marginal identity”(ie non-white, poor, obviously LBGTQ identified, not a US citizen, not gender normative, mentally ill, sex worker, too young, too old, not "dressed properly"etc.).

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Yeah, I gotta say, she had him in a submissive position, was taunting him and ripped off his shirt for the express purpose of exposing his torso. She probably wasn’t doing something that would be considered a sexual attack, but that’s only because she wasn’t doing for sexual gratification (that’s usually a required component, so I doubt she’ll even be charged that way). The attack was due to her responding to a perceived threat in a manner that isn’t OK with our legal system.

Her history won’t excuse her attacking a stranger. I already posted a link to the current CT laws for voyeurism and various other public misbehaviors. If she’d been attacked in the past, she’d be well-versed in them and know that he had every right to film at a state beach.

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