Interestingly, something bring legal is the very definition of it being OK. And I would not get annoyed, as I actually understand the legalities behind the actions of people taking photos in a public place like Times Square or the Washington Monument.
I don’t spend a lot of time at these places, but I am certainly aware that I’ve likely been shot many times and an in the background of a good many family photos.
It’s a photo, they’re not stealing your soul.
This is clearly not the case. If I followed you around all day long, taking pictures and making loud buzzing noises, would you say its ok? Because, as you’ve pointed out, its perfectly legal to do so, assuming you’re in a public space.
Laws set a bare minimum of inter personal behavior, but in general its cultural norms that define what’s “ok” in our society. And the cultural norms regarding drone use are still being worked out.
Again, because I clearly understand the rights of others I have to be fine with it because it allows me to take photos of them or anyone else on the streets. I’m pretty sure I was clear about it in my last response to you, but I’ll mention it again, I would say that it’s okay if you did this to me. I also have the right to tell you they are annoying and I have the right to complain to the police about it, but there is nobody that can stop you, as being annoying is not a crime either.
You act like that’s what this guy did when his drone was fifty feet away and not even following her. Enjoy your strawman, I think it’s okay that you’re having fun with it, before you wonder if I would say that is okay too.
Even if you assume that what he did may have been illegal, should have been illegal or was morally objectionable - which I don’t - then I still don’t see how that justifies her actions.
Self defense? Not really, mainly because it was after the fact.
Citizen’s arrest? He seemed perfectly compliant.
She deserves to go to prison for this and it doesn’t even matter what he was up to. I am not holding my breath though.
You act like that’s what this guy did when his drone was fifty feet away and not even following her. Enjoy your strawman.
I’m not really interested in this case specifically, but in cultural norms regarding drone use in general. When I asked if you’d be fine with someone following you around all day long making loud buzzing noises while holding a camera in your face, I was making an analogy.
Here’s another interesting drone incident:
A surfer is changing out of his wetsuit, and someone flies his drone down to film him. The surfer was in public, so legally had no expectation of privacy, but its pretty clear, to me at least, that sticking a camera in his face while he’s changing is a dick move. But again, I’m sure you’d be perfectly fine with someone doing that to you?
Again, I’ll use small words, since you don’t seem to understand.
Yes. Me be fine with it.
My solution, and I think this is a good one, is that if I’m changing clothes on a beach to, wait for it, not expect any privacy.
Finally got to see some of his footage. The lad has some skills, no perving there, unless boardwalks, sand and trees are your thing.
He’s owed an apology by this woman.
I’ve been following this story since yesterday afternoon, when I saw it on the DYI Photography site.
And the focus there, and what I’m disappointed in Boing Boing, given their stance as ever ready to pick up the muskets when things slant the other way, is the fact that this guy was clearly about to be arrested before he presented his video to the police. Solely on the word of the women in the video, who, from what you can see in the video and from all accounts of what actually happened, doesn’t seem to be the most stable individual.
I don’t see any reason to believe that, had he followed police “best practice”, and not spoken to them without a lawyer, he’d have been charged immediately, despite the fact that he called 911 as well, reporting an assault (her 911 call was just for the quad-copter usage).
This to me is a consequence of things squarely on the lap of the “Don’t question the “Victim” crowd”, with victim being a dog whistle for Woman. Which I think is a disservice in the long term toward both women as a gender as well as equality as a goal.
The disparity in presumption of guilt in violent interactions between men and women does the cause of equality no favors, even if it makes things easier for some individual women in the short term. We erode standards of evidence and proof of wrongdoing to justify state action at the peril of us all, no matter how good it might feel in any particular instance in which it feels justified, and this video clearly demonstrates one aspect of that peril.
We have an individual who feels justified in making assumptions that not only didn’t have any evidence, but, with hindsight, appear to have been completely unfounded. Further, Instead of the measured response of summoning authorities, she felt justified in initiating direct action against someone, Not simply to prevent some harm, or, stop some perceived ongoing harm, but in a retributive fashion. On the video, you can clearly hear her say, in response to the videographer’s cries to stop, that “Maybe you shouldn’t be taking pictures of people on the beach!”, and other, more aggressive statements to the effect that she was delivering punishment for his “misdeeds”. And frankly, even if he’d been guilty of everything she suspected, and more, this would still have been a shocking abuse of violence. Even if, possibly especially if, she were an authority figure responsible for enforcing some law he’d broken, such a beating would have been wildly inappropriate, and would fall under the category of some of the disgusting police brutality videos that seem to crop up on a weekly basis.
But she’s no authority figure, and even the inadequate justifications she thinks she has are simply untrue, yet we still have people on this board who seem to think there’s a scenario where this would have been justifiable. Folks who, I cannot help but think, would be horrified if you simply swapped genders of the individuals involved. And because of that, it seems like there needs to be a recognition that gender inequality is a factor here, and not in the way that sits well with the drumbeat that’s regularly set on this site.
Replacing misogyny with misandry isn’t movement toward equality, and it isn’t really an improvement. Empowering women to stand up for themselves and their rights is a good thing, and makes strides toward equality. Freeing individuals or classes of individuals from responsibility for their actions, or having a general systematic bias that makes individuals think, rightly or wrongly, that they’ll not be responsible for, say, assaulting an individual, making false statements to authorities, etc. And once they have that disconnect between what they can do, and what they’ll be held responsible for, you’ll see abuses like this.
And, frankly, on that score, depressingly she was right. She’s facing no repercussions for her attempt to frame her victim for a crime. And the charges she is facing are drastically different (aka, lesser) than those that would be filed were the genders reversed.
Either those who purport to hope for equality confront this issue head on, and try to remove gender based decisions from law enforcement, or, they refuse to do so and eventually find that gains in ability for women who truly do need assistance from authorities will prove to be built on a crumbling foundation, undermined by abuses like these.
On the other hand…
This afternoon, a stranger set an aerial drone into flight over my yard and beside my house near Miller Playfield. I initially mistook its noisy buzzing for a weed-whacker on this warm spring day. After several minutes, I looked out my third-story window to see a drone hovering a few feet away. My husband went to talk to the man on the sidewalk outside our home who was operating the drone with a remote control, to ask him to not fly his drone near our home. The man insisted that it is legal for him to fly an aerial drone over our yard and adjacent to our windows. He noted that the drone has a camera, which transmits images he viewed through a set of glasses. He purported to be doing “research”. We are extremely concerned, as he could very easily be a criminal who plans to break into our house or a peeping-tom.
And…
It’s disconcerting how no one else tried to break up the fight or called police. Were they the only two folks on the beach?
I like to think there were a few people standing to the side taking videos.
If only there was an article that you could read to answer these questions.
Or… I don’t know, this might sound kind of radical, but hang on and hear me out… we could teach young boys basic respect for fellow human beings? I know, how dare I suggest having parents, teachers, and our society imagine that men and women are equal human beings who have bodily autonomy, but it seems like it might work. CRAZY NOTION, I KNOW!!!
Also, I think as lots of people have already pointed out, there seems nothing pervy in what the kid was doing. the woman overreacted, and was in the wrong. Period. She beat up a minor to boot. Hope she goes away for overreacting.
If a 17 year old kid wants to perv, he’s got all-you-can-eat HD hardcore 24/7 on the Internet.
Piloting a quad copter is a lot of effort to go to to get a grainy shot of sideboob.
I was going to get one to record cool zoomy aerial shots and stuff, but with turds like her around, I don’t think I’ll bother.
EDIT: Wait until glassholes start getting assaulted too.
Ha! That video is epically awesome (and he has more here), and a really powerful statement about the etiquette concerning camera use. Its a shame they didn’t film @SteampunkBanana, since as he said he’d have been totally fine with it, it being legal and all.
Drone use will have similar etiquette soon, but it’ll take a few smashed drones to get there. In the meantime I’m thinking Daisy bb guns can do a good business rebranding their product for people who don’t like remote cameras following them, or maybe someone will do a Kickstarter campaign for a drone jammer…
Sorry if the link doesn’t work, I’m on a mobile device.
I’m imagining you are of the belief that all cameras should be destroyed then, even the ones on poles?
You must be load of fun at parties.
If you’ll notice the common response is to leave the public sphere if you want to have privacy. It’s not rocket science.
I’m imagining you are of the belief that all cameras should be destroyed then, even the ones on poles?
You must be load of fun at parties.
You’re taking my argument far too personally. And, for what its worth, your imaginings are incorrect. None of what I’m saying is about me personally, it has to do with what we as a society are going through, at least as I perceive it. Sadly, I think our society has largely accepted surveillance cameras. But I think drones are a completely different matter, mostly because they’re run by private citizens as opposed to commercial or municipal entities, and also because they’re so heinously loud. And, of course, there’s the newness factor.
If you think I’m wrong about that, go get a drone and hover over some strangers, really obviously targeting them like the guy in those YouTube videos does, and see how they react to you…
Got it. Surveillance that is obvious is bad, covert surveillance is okay.
Most (all? ) of those clips show the guy physically and offensively invading someone’s personal space and refusing to leave. The camera makes it worse because it’s obvious that he’s staring at them and has some kind of agenda with the footage. 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. It’s literally just an asshole with a camera who is obviously going to upload the video to YouTube. You can point out that security cameras aren’t as beneficial as we’re told and that the footage isn’t as secure as we’d like it to be, but this is going so far to cause a reaction that it ceases to have a point.
