Just when I thought the selfie stick was the worst gizmo of our time, I’ve been proven spectacularly wrong. Several weeks ago, my wife, our daughter and I were sitting on the decking in our back garden having dinner. There we were, relaxing, eating pizza, when a loud buzzing hit my ears. For a minute or two I couldn’t work out what it was. It sounded like a garden house strimmer, but I could swear it was coming from above. Then I saw the offending object: a drone.
If you haven’t seen one up close, you probably will soon. They’re extremely compact aircraft that fly and hover with the aid of rotors, controlled remotely using Wi-Fi and often sporting a camera too. On its first visit the drone just lazily circled around, zipping over the neighbourhood before disappearing whence it came. It was irritating and a bit invasive, but not the sort of thing to get too het up about. When it came back a couple of days later, though, it not only came closer, hovering about 20 feet above our hillside plot, but stopped for a minute or so to have a good, long look. You could see the camera dangling underneath it, giving me the nasty sense that I was eye to eye with someone, but not revealing who that might be.
Maybe the pilot was just someone having a good time, checking out the neighbours and thinking that they’re just saying a remote-controlled ‘hello.’ All the same, it made us uneasy, then pretty angry. What was this person watching or recording us, and why? At best, irresponsible drone pilots are nuisances or nosey parkers. At worst, they could be high-tech peeping Toms. Plus, what happens when these things get in the hands of burglars or – worse - letting agents? The Civil Aviation Authority has taken steps to stop these miscreants using drones to spy on tenants, but it just shows: we can’t let them fall to the wrong hands.
There are more drones coming, too. Sales went up 24 per cent last year, with huge spikes in the summer and at Christmas. They may well be the musthave ‘toy’ again this year. You don’t have to have a licence or even be an adult to fly one, and the only regulations are that they can’t be used within 50 metres of a person or building, and must remain within a defined line of sight. I’m sure my nemesis flouted both restrictions, but unless they post their footage on YouTube, who’s to know?
It’s not just the privacy issues that bother me, but safety too. Last December, a drone hit the chimney of an Essex house, while at least two weddings have been spoilt by a drone hitting one half of the not-so-happy couple. Last Christmas, a TGI Friday’s publicity stunt in New York backfired when a drone carrying mistletoe cut off the tip of a photographer’s nose. As drones proliferate, who else will be hurt by the damn things?
Of course, there will be prosecutions, like the one for the guy who flew a drone too close to a nuclear power plant. Yet the law seems fuzzy. Is this just a civil aviation issue or a data-protection issue? It could even be a sexual offences issue depending on what the drone catches you doing. No one seems to know.
I know lots of people are doing great things with drones. They take amazing aerial footage of our countryside and coastline, check risky roofs and chimneys, and monitor endangered birds. But not everyone is going to use them so sensibly, and some are going to be an absolute menace. We need better controls, or it might end up with me in hot water. Next time that drone flies over, I’ll get my lowtech, boyhood catapult and take it down.