Woman arresting for beating up boy using drone on beach

boing
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Got it. Surveillance that is obvious is bad, covert surveillance is okay.

You’re almost there. I think the deciding factor isn’t how covert or overt the camera is, but rather whether its being deployed by an individual or by a commercial/municipal entity.

And, as I said, the noise and newness of drones aren’t helping them any.

But remember, none of this is with me specifically, I’m talking about societal attitudes, not personal opinions. And I agree that there’s an interesting contradiction here, and maybe it’ll change, since as I said all the cultural rules concerning drones are just being worked out now. Hell, maybe the backlash against drones will be so strong that we’ll start questioning ubiquitous surveillance cameras. One can dream.

And since you insist on making all this personal, I’ll say that personally I think drones are badass and super fun toys. But that’s entirely beside the point.

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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.

That’s a really interesting criteria, and one that I think people assume municipal and commercial security cameras fulfill.

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

I think the guy who made those videos was indeed making the point that him holding a camera in someone’s face is analogous to the security cameras in the stores they all just left, but I think the more interesting analogy is with drones. Drones fail the practicality test you stated above, and become “just an asshole with a camera” using the footage for god knows what purpose.

The amount of personal space one can expect from a drone is a tricky one, especially once they start using cameras with good zoom. But the noise alone can be pretty invasive. I wouldn’t be surprised if, when the dust settles, we have “no drone use allowed” signs in public spaces like parks.

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I wonder if the assailant has been a victim of sexual violence in her past.

It would certainly not excuse her actions, that is not where I’m going with this.

But if she has, or even if someone emotionally close to her has been, then any attorney involved in her legal defense will almost certainly bring it up as a mitigating factor in whatever penalty she might face.

Whether or not the woman has ever been a victim of sexual violence, at some level, that is what she inflicted on the young man.

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I was simply acknowledging that there are, in fact, certain specific circumstances, in some places, where filming someone in public is not actually legal, even though they’re very unlikely to be done by drones (at least right now). E.g. upskirt photographs, which have been explicitly banned in some places.

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No, those are exactly the sorts of violations to which I was referring.

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The video wasn’t posted when I made my comments, obviously. So obviously this isn’t an example of what I was talking about. OK? (And to answer your question: if the genders had been reversed, the power relationship would have been completely different as well. Obviously.)

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“we could teach young boys basic respect for fellow human beings?”

That would be very nice. Sadly, it’s a idea that plenty of people never seem to take to heart and clearly isn’t being sufficiently taught.

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I think one issue is that someone with a camera is free to control the footage and use it in other contexts. As far as I know, nudist beaches tend not to allow cameras; while the location is public and the people aren’t ashamed of their bodies or afraid of others around seeing them naked, the footage could have currency online and the subjects can’t control where and when it’s shown once it has been taken. People also seem to recognise a gradient of privacy rather than a public/private dichotomy. If you’re sitting at a table in a restaurant, you expect people outside your group to respect your privacy by not acting too interested in your conversation or staring directly at you. The other extreme would be on a stage, where you fully expect people to notice you and take pictures. On the other hand, you probably wouldn’t mind your neighbour seeing you in your garden, but not in your bathroom or bedroom.

While a photographer may not always have a legal obligation to do this, it’s basic politeness to tell people why you’re taking a video of them and ask their permission if you are taking footage they might object to (say if you’re on a beach and you think a particular person looks very photogenic, or if you think someone in Walmart looks particularly ridiculous). You may or may not have the law behind you when your say this, but your presence in public does not mean that you lose any right to expect a degree of privacy or respect.

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I do wonder this with the Fremont Solstice Naked Bicycle Ride in Seattle.

What is the etiquette in photographing this event (and hence, naked, if painted/decorated people)? What about putting the photos on Flickr/Facebook?

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You have no expectation of privacy on a public beach and the video footage he showed of what he was recording was clearly the landscape and you could barely make out people. This women assumed a nonexistent law existed and decided to beat a 17 boy who did nothing wrong.

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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.

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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.

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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”.