Researchers at the University of Vermont are using pricey, high-tech drones to study infrastructure and waterways in The Valley and throughout the state. Using devices that can glide smoothly, hover steadily and capture intricate details with a high-resolution camera can certainly be applied to projects that benefit society in a number of ways.
Take, for example, the project of an American filmmaker who exposed a major U.S. factory farm – Smithfield Foods of Virginia – for draining unthinkable amounts of animal waste into a manmade lake, then spraying it onto land surrounding the facility. It was found that residents’ properties in the area were being drizzled with this excrement – their health and wellbeing put at risk.
But applications of drone technology can be malicious and destructive, too. The CIA can program unfeeling drones to carry out acts of violence that leave innocent civilians dead in Pakistan and elsewhere. And issues of privacy have been raised again and again.
It is not the gadget that comes imbued with a particular purpose, but it is the individual, or the society, that brings an intent to the technologies at hand. It is up to us to decide how we will use and regulate drones.
This year, Act 169 incorporated a new law that seeks to prohibit law enforcement agencies from using drones or information acquired through them for the purpose of investigating and prosecuting crime – unless the agency has obtained a warrant.
Colonel Jason Batchelder of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department’s law enforcement said that the department had “great aspirations” for the use of drones in surveillance of illegal hunting and fishing, but the new guidelines will constrain such efforts. “They are very prohibitive, as they should be. We are dealing with people’s privacy, which is very sensitive,” he reflected.
How will the state protect its citizens from infringement upon their rights to privacy and what other issues will arise from the practice of flying drones? How can we balance our desire to use new technologies with the desire to protect our privacy?
It’s a brave new world as The Bard noted in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and which was the title of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel.
— TLB
