Tag: houston

Aerial drones, lies, censorship, and video news reports

Whatever would I do without great posts from Boing Boing like this? The YouTube video embedded therein is a news report from KPRC-TV (which Houston folks will know as Channel 2, our local NBC affiliate). Stephen Dean reports on what was supposed to be a secret test of unmanned aerial drones conducted by the Houston Police Department (HPD). I’ve embedded it below for ease of commenting, but I do recommend you check out the Boing Boing post linked above for the comments.

[Edit 2016-04-05: the original video was deleted when the YouTube account was terminated due to multiple copyright infringement incidents. I have replaced it with another link I found, still online today.]

The scary part is a quote at 2:54 into the video:

Back at the secret test site, police helicopters claimed the entire airspace was restricted. They even threatened our Local 2 Investigates pilot with action from the FAA if we didn’t leave. But we checked with the FAA several times and there never was a flight restriction. That leaves some to wonder whether the police are ready to use terrorism fears since 9/11 to push the envelope even further into our private lives.

Really, HPD? What jurisdiction are you operating under? Airspace is the FAA’s jurisdiction; local police departments cannot arbitrarily restrict airspace. If local police were allowed to restrict airspace at will we would have total chaos, and there would be little use for the FAA at all.

The KPRC-TV news team had every right to gather the information they did. It is unfortunate that the law enforcement agencies running this exhibition (particularly HPD) did not secure the proper airspace restriction from the FAA, relying instead on the “no media allowed” on the invitation and bully tactics.

I think HPD is owed a visit by the FAA for what certainly appears to be a nominal disrespect of Federal law, possibly much worse. Law enforcement agencies must operate within the law, or risk losing the respect of the citizens which they have sworn to protect and serve. Example: Ever seen a police cruiser blasting by you, well in excess of the posted limits, without lights? They’ll say it’s a “code 2” or something similar, an emergency that’s just enough of an emergency that speed limits can go out the window, but not for lights and siren. Now, no matter what emergency we, the common citizens have, we are subject to getting a ticket if we do that. The same goes for stop signs and red lights, or even parking tickets.

And I’m not even touching on the downright creepy surveillance allowed by this technology yet. That’s almost a whole rant in and of itself. The fact that HPD went to these lengths to hide their new toy (which quite possibly fly in the face the First Amendment of the US Constitution in addition to FAA regulations) is quite chilling, and makes me wonder what kind of a society we live in now in \2010. The report mentions speed limit enforcement as one possibility; I think I made my viewpoint clear on that above. This is the stuff of dystopian sci-fi novels, made into reality. Sorry to disappoint, but I’d prefer as much of that be kept fiction as possible.

The only constant is change

And now, a few brief words about other efforts of mine, which I have not yet brought to the forefront here. I try not to do this often; in fact, I think this is the first time I’ve made a post like this here, ever.

For those of you who do not follow what I do all around cyberspace, I started a local (Houston, TX, area) events blog about two months ago now called Quinn’s Big City (referred to as QBC for brevity). I’m going to explain a bit about QBC, how it relates to what I do on this blog, and what both mean for the future. And yes, as much as I talk about QBC in this post, this post itself belongs here, not on QBC, for the simple reason of preserving the latter’s intended role.

I was hesitant to post about QBC here at least prior to the official wide launch, scheduled carefully after the soft-launch so as to give me time to “get in my groove” and realize the full potential of what I had started. I meant to make this post here at least a week ago, partly to explain why my posting volume here fell off, partly to introduce the few people who haven’t already heard about QBC somewhere.

And I know what you are probably asking already. Yes, QBC is a large part of the reason I don’t post here as often. I’m not going to do what one other local blogger did and flat out shut down this blog. However, you will notice the content and character of my posts here change. Yes, the day finally came that even I got tired of my posting style. I hope I’m not pushing the rest of you away by saying it’s time for change; I do treasure the fact I have the readership I have given that the quantity of my postings has slowed down as much as it has.

Make no mistake about it: QBC was and is a rather big undertaking; big enough to have both its own Twitter account and Facebook page. I have not set up Facebook pages for either this blog/site, or my other blog Iced Tea and Ramen. Part of that, is I’m not sure where either of them fit in long term; I’ll get back to this later.

Some detractors may say “we don’t need QBC, there are other blogs/sites like it in Houston, the last thing we need is another one.” I disagree. There’s room for QBC alongside similar efforts already in place for Houston. Heck, there is room for another five, ten, twenty, even a hundred other blogs/sites like it, just for Houston. This is a huge city, and QBC being subjective on purpose will pretty much by definition not be for everyone. If you took a look at QBC and found out it’s not your speed, by all means, start your own. (Now, I assume if you already have your own, that defines what is your speed more than QBC or any other similar blog/site ever could, and you’d only be looking elsewhere out of curiosity.)

As if that weren’t enough, there’s another piece of news I may as well go ahead and break. I plan to move the blog currently hosted here to another domain, redirecting the previous URLs from here to the new domain. I need to use this domain for something else, probably more of a personal portal/clearinghouse which points to all of my other blogs/online sites. I haven’t decided what, exactly, but it needs to be something more representative and worthy of my future personal brand. I need a personal soapbox, but long term, it won’t be here.

That, by the way, is another reason I haven’t bothered yet with a custom style for this blog. I didn’t like what the new Ahimsa did, so I quietly went back to the WordPress default. I’m assuming nobody minded the change. I know it’s only temporary, otherwise I’d have gone hunting a new theme. The eventual goal is my own custom designs on all of my blogs/sites; QBC is just the first, and for reasons I won’t go into here, it had to be the first.

The posts I have made here will remain intact and online, somewhere. If it’s not here, the URLs here will redirect to where they’ve went. I do that on purpose; I believe cool URLs don’t change. And maybe I’m that weird 0.01% that actually cares about such things. That’s me; I will always just be myself, and I endeavor to be as transparent and honest as possible.

Okay, enough already, I lack the ego to make this post much longer. Questions, concerns, comments? Comment here on this post, or send me something via the feedback form if it’s not intended for publication.