Gadgetory

hello welcome to birch cast I mean I Patel and the other people are not here there's no one else here it's just me The Verge chance to the podcast where we talk usually about technology culture and culture culture and really whatever we want but it has so happens that Paul Miller's out on the spirit journey of some kind Josh kopalski is out shooting a taping of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon soon to be The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon so we thought because it's a slow weekend news and we've been running a lot of stories on one topic lately that we would dedicate this episode of The Verge cast to that topic and so welcome to The Verge cast special edition you are being watched and we're going to talk about kind of a crazy that's a coming together of a lot of surveillance topics a lot of state surveillance topics and a lot of drones topics and drones are also being used for surveillance as well so I've got some special guest with me carl franzen one of our reporters ben popper one of our editors and on the phone in the air in the ether Matt Stroud Matt hey doing hey man you look good you mean you look like you are in fact surveilling us with that headset yeah that's the idea I mean that is terrifying actually I like that I like the the the yeah the jaunty microphone place it's like a pro gamer rig yeah it's good so there's been a lot of this stuff going on we've run a ton of stories on it and basically everyone is watching each other whether the government's watching you whether people want to watch the cops what the cops are watching each other which is just not okay and the amount of technology involved is absolutely crazy so let's jump right into kind of the big the big story that really kind of brought this together in our minds that are doing the show which Matt wrote a big piece on what taser is up to they're mounting cameras and cops essentially so we have a little clip of video and this is astounding so just take a look at north yeah go back west hold on hey it's not all that get your hands up now stop right there I'm gonna tase you I'm gonna tase you if you've not stop I'm gonna pay you don't let stop this is absolutely insane it's right what we're watching you he's gonna usual he's gonna hit the guy he's not kidding holiday stuff so that's terrible so this is taser obviously that's a cop of the Taser and tasers now mounting well they're selling cameras that are mounted on cops their first person cameras kind of like Google glass for the police Google last five point out from and the cops are recording everything you're doing so Matt can you tell us what's going on you were at taser you went to the headquarters you're looking all this stuff what's happening there um so what's happening in in the general vicinity of taser taser is located in scottsdale arizona and right down the street from taser from taser is a is a suburb of phoenix called mesa arizona mesa arizona was the first police department in the country to start using these cameras they're called the axon flex and they spend fifty thousand dollars don't think they got about 20 of them so it's just an experimental phase but what they do or what they're doing is they're mounting these cameras on police officers glasses among the I like the on their ball caps and the idea is that these cameras are streaming video constantly whenever the the officers are wearing these videos heard these cameras there is video streaming constantly to something called evidence comp and whenever an officer wants to record an incident i'll hit a button that's on his chest and that from that point forward it will be recorded there's a 30-second audio delay after the officer presses the button and then after that there is both video and audio from the officers perspective from his from the perspective of his eyes yeah so it's point of view and you can see everything that the officer is seeing and so the story is about kind of why that technology is interesting and then the policy implications behind you know whether that's fair but what so really grabs you know this all of this is that this is the they're streaming to a company called evidence calm which is not the government which is not law enforcement which is not sanctioned or regulated by the citizens united states it's just a private company the promise is to do the right thing and then the technology itself is just being developed and deployed it feels really weird I mean the first question that comes to mind when I hear Matt talking is like why do they decide when to turn it on and off like yeah why not you go on duty you turn it on you're on duty for 12 hours and then you turn it off right like I understand maybe there's some considerations about how much data you have but allowing them to selectively turn it on and off seems like asking for trouble yes I mean yeah yeah it's a great question but I you know I think too and maybe Matt you can chime in on this as well but anybody really uh is it is it that much different than a you know the cops videos that we're all familiar with from like the 1990s like the old reality show you know I mean is it because they show had like the Heisenberg principle in it right like you could never be sure what they would have done if not for the cops producer rent-a-cops cameraman right is it much differently in cops is like trying to be a television yeah sure I mean that is that the sense that you're getting it to me that they they feel similar because you're watching because you're only going to watch the exciting stuff but the reality the mundane reality is that most cops like sit in a car all day long I think that's part of it that's part of the reason why these aren't recording constantly there's there are file storage issues if you can imagine imagine a video recording for 12 hours straight and having to keep every piece of that video I mean that's that's a lot of that's a lot of storage and the other thing is is yeah well there are two there are two peripheral issues here one is that most of what cops do is sitting around in a car and or on be not really doing anything that's that's consequential and the other issue is and this is something that was mentioned by the Taser spokesperson but cops don't want to feel like they are being recorded all the time and in fact the way it was presented to me the reason for that 30 second lag is in case there's a conversation going on between say one police officer and his partner they don't want to have that on record and they don't want the cops to feel like they are being recorded all the time sure who who who actually wants to feel that way right I'm yeah they even want their own privacy too i mean that's yeah but they're not come on man yeah like they're cops like I don't like I you know what you you know who wants to feel like the cops for being recorded all the time Nilay Patel all the rest of us who are not cops I I totally agree i mean i think that that but i do think it's a bit unrealistic i don't know Matt you know you you studied this more in depth in it than any of us and we're grateful to you for it and you know I just you know I do think it's a bit impractical to imagine until we're all surveilled at the same time that the cops are always going to have this thing on and recording every single conversations they have among each other like when they're saying you check out that you know that hot person's hommerson yeah it's Jagger neutral yeah like that so check out that gender neutral I'm just imagining a B is very much are you saying there are you saying that that's a good idea but they should be recorded all the time I don't know I don't that's why I'm not so I'm trying to be a little question whiteout say if they're not in the car I think that's it right if not in the car they might be getting recorded well I really hope they want to check out hot daddies and i'm putting this agenda on or box earbobs how Betty's are bobs in there in the car and they whatever that's fine the second they get out of that car and start interacting with other human beings right particularly the public who are they they're committed like they build an enormous amount of power right because I think there's a lot of stuff like four in New York right now for example there's a lawsuit coming out about stop-and-frisk which is not necessarily incident it's like how do you interact with the populace like are you treating them like they're guilty or like they're innocent you treating them like civilians or like criminals and it would be really interesting to just have a lot of film about that you know like why did you stop this person what were they doing that was so suspicious right I guess one thing Matt that I thought was interesting about this story was the one of the police chiefs was saying you know at first a lot of cops did not want this and now seeing how you know it records what they do and kind of shows them to be in the right or you know they feel like it validates their job and so more cops are actually asking for it and so that I think is a kind of an interesting dynamic there it is interesting and I think that points out something else there there are police officers who feel that they can use this to their advantage one of the stats that I heard one of the numbers that i pulled out for the story is that shortly before May so went into this agreement with taser there was a lawsuit a police brutality lawsuit where the city of Mesa had to pay out more than sixty thousand dollars in one lawsuit and so you're talking about that one lawsuit costs more than the entire amount of money that they paid for these cameras and so I think what police officers are look how police officer looking at at it is a way to ensure that those kind of cases don't have the solution to these cameras being used only for police use is pretty close to what you're talking about with every interaction outside the car being recorded I talked to a guy named in Greenburgh or a green would follow this thing Scott Greenwood because it civil rights attorney his suggestion is that you make it mandatory every time there's an interaction with the civilian that interaction has to be a record and if it's not then the case has to be thrown out of court and that seems like the most realistic way to approach this is that you require every time there's a police interaction between police officer in a civilian that it has to be recorded well what counts as interaction though I mean I'd could totally get behind that too but I just like again like you're saying in the car Neil I like you were saying in the case of officers being in the car not having to film I mean what if you what if you're pursuing a suspect i mean do you do hope that there's a dash cam or something that I you know I it would seem like the line between when you're interacting with a civilian or a suspect what if you're cheap what if you're tailing a suspect in your car is the camera on that I don't know yeah yeah i mean i think that there's also another really interesting question brought up you know about how this will play out and nearly move things to say about this in courts you know i was watching the video that we created which was really amazing and it sort of raised more questions for me than an answer like there was one where the guy was the cop was scream you know put down the gun or like stop agitating and i couldn't see anything like I couldn't see if the person he was shouting at had a gun he said they had a gun and then he shot somebody it's like how will that video play out you know actually just attach another story did which is totally separate but we did a story this week about animal cruelty yeah how these new laws that they're trying to pass which would keep activists you know from masquerading or pretending to be farm workers so they can film animal cruelty and I used to work on a farm and I did some chicken slaughters the chickens are all armed the chickens were like drop your gun chicken they fought back but I think you know for me the striking thing is they ever win no risings ever ever result in any live chicken the point is these chickens were humanely raised they were fed organically you know they were they lived outside had good lives up into the poem we slaughter them but killing something that is an idol of an onion article yeah I'm pretty sure that is killing something is messy and complicated and it's not pretty and if you saw that you were an animal rights activist you would get upset even though we did everything by the book where we went beyond and I would assume it's the same for a cop which is to say like you know you meet the same drunk through two three four weeks in a row and the fifth time he agitates you and pushes you a little bit off Cameron you punch him back you know now that's recorded forever and like it may look different than how it it wouldn't you have the four previous interactions are you mad so how long does evidence calm keep this stuff and I really want to talk about evidence calm because that to me is that's where this goes way off the rails it's like totally now this private company is determining what we're doing with our records of like Authority interactions what's going on with evidence on calm how long do they keep this stuff they keep records they keep all of the recorded interactions for 180 days Neela you probably know the significance of that period of time better than I do so what does 180 days meeting to you uh you know number of months pretty much I mean it varies from state to state I would assume there's some Arizona State statute that requires them to do it requires the police evidentiary procedures to last for that long but it's different from every state so I would imagine there's some sort of state law they cover and SAT but like that to me is crazy right because I'm these cases can go on for a long time they're like repeated instances of abuse like you can't look at an officer's pattern of conduct beyond like incident by incident basis it is weird that you know I mean I'm not sure Matt maybe you can help us so who gets to see what's on evidence calm and under what conditions i think it's like first the police also they can make edits which is weird and it like keeps the original but they make edits so you can show you edited versions and then the prosecutors and then the defendants you know and the defense attorneys but citizens can never see this stuff it's never just open to the public as i understand it it is not open to the public and in fact when we made the video that we watched we made a request to get that and it took quite a while to get access to that video as i understand it one of when a video is made the police officer himself has access to that video so he can tag it so that he can label it so you can say what exactly was online and essentially write a video report on and then at that point it then goes to an administrator and the police department itself will set who has access to who has administrative access and then that person can can cut the video in whatever way they want to feel that it's needed and evan is calm their reason for justifying that is saying look like d the full on video is still going to be available whenever anybody makes a cut that person will be identified as making that cut so that's how it works so here's my question what is the relationship between evidence calm and any actual accountable government institution right are they just doing this and it's there and you can use it if you want they make their own rules about like you know you can make cuts but well will you know will keep track of it right I mean is there any movement to make this official because that's it's great that all the cops have cameras but it seems to me that the potential for the cops to abuse the cameras to paint whatever picture they want right is much higher than the potential for this to use a transparent way to see what the cops are actually doing with the authority that we give them I don't believe there's any movement to make it official evidence calm is actually run by Taser International the core town is and so yeah of course it is and so at that point and there are other another thing to remember like we chose taser international profile there are all kinds of other companies that are trying to get into this space as well that have similar products that have similar systems setup to make these videos available to prosecuting attorneys to administrators and different police departments etc and so like that's that's a big issue as these things become more promises to become more of you Vic witness is trying to figure out you know what sort of standardization can we have to ensure that these videos are not being abused or edited in the loaded with you know what what's this crazy not now I realize you're saying which is like the they paid for this system with public dollars and these cops are working for the public yeah and the video is being recorded as we're paying their salaries and yet like we don't have access to any of this is totally but totally bizarre yeah yeah we should be everybody should be able to login and a question if we pay a private company to like do it and to keep it we should all have access or at least you know we should have access within certain condition I mean that rate mean do you have access can you go to the local police department be like I want to see the log book I want to see every report file today like there are limits shins are where those limits come into play and when you're at when you're talking about 24 hour 12 hour surveillance on the right of a person like those limits are definitely need to be adjusted well if if I had an interaction with a police officer and it was recorded they should give me a stub at the end that's like here's your copy you know I just had an interaction with you the citizen you can go view the video at ww prints at or chest yeah i see i receive our surveillance receipt the QR code that you scan and then it takes you to a video don't use a QR code I have some dignity alright alright this is the police force Oh Matt what's so you've got this sounds like what there is what they're actually is going on is that the police have created a market for these systems right police departments across the country are saying we need this to protect ourselves from brutality lawsuits to make it appear as though our officers are more accountable whether or not the systems actually make them more accountable but we need this technology for all this host of reasons and a market is sprung up to Phil to fill that need is there any push to like make it a national level thing to standardize these systems to make it so that you know if you live in illinois and there's one of these and you move to montana and they're like something will happen that you'll know because right now I feel like people think their interactions are the cops are pretty much similar from place to place to the go but I feel like adding in a tremendous amount of video recording changes that interaction I mean it's part of a much larger question like how how are different police departments connected to one another and in many ways they're not at all I did not see a national push I did not see any standardization outside of some police departments I did not see a any push to make this standardized on a state level I did not see any push to make it standardize on a federal level and so you know I think that's going to be the next step the ACLU there are certain branches of the ACLU LC ACLU that are looking into it and attempting to establish policy but really it's it's in a very early stage right now um and so actually I'm curious by that what does he still you say about this stuff are they happy about it not happy about it where's their wares their final stand on whether or not police officers have cameras I was surprised by that the main person i spoke with who this is that a greenwood guy Scott Greenwood um he his his recommendation is that these cameras should be mandatory yeah that they should be on every police officer and that there should be a requirement that like I said every interaction however you define that interaction should be recorded and so it was it was odd to talk with him I assumed that he was going to have problems with the technology itself and with how the technology is used but his the way he's pushing it I mean he's saying you know if we we need more of these on the streets and once we have more of these on the streets then we can have a serious discussion about about some sort of overarching policy to make them fair so it's almost as if he was working for Taser International I was talking yes it was it was very much for them and he said on a couple occasions that like Taser International is really the company that that hit the nail on the head Erwin like this is the account of this camera is really doing what it's supposed to do and what dash cams have failed to do and past which is record police interactions from a police officers point of view and so he's he's he's all for it but he understands that with that policy they can be abused right what are the cops the ground saying so that's what it's like we're talking about this is a really high level but like I have this image of like a cop in mesa being like like you know like casually hitting the button and then like walking in the deli me like what's going on here guys well like I mean like one of the things that the cops said and one of the reasons they wanted it right was because citizens effectively already have cameras right like right and he showed that bust on the bart subway platform and I've seen dozens of subway videos in bus in New York you know it's like where the citizens I'll get their vantage point and they all get to edit it and upload it to youtube and like this is kind of a they need to have their own PR outlet or their own viewpoint on it you know they need to be able to basically match the technology that citizens have in the palm of their hands but they got that guy in the video we saw at the beginning of this he didn't have a camera I mean come on it was back was to the camp the cops camera the whole time I was running away that's right that's what I'm saying I feel like when they when they deploy this thing it's not it's going to be when the when the suspect or the person that they're in they're questioning or pursuing doesn't have a camera like specifically does not that seems like the you know all the videos that we see about that video I think this is what's interesting about that video that we watched and cops the show they really paint a picture that it's like action packed my police work like this is what it's like being calm and this is what we have to deal with and if only you knew that like we're chasing Scotty wouldn't stop and I warned him 50 times I was gonna tase him and finally I reluctantly tased him but right yeah what the video didn't show is a cop who kneeling on the ground begging for forgiveness for that never happens but there's far more routine bad cop interactions right and he chases himself yes I got a pen and allow you sad guilt taste right it's a funny banned by the way Gil teaser it's also gonna create I mean just like like cops did you know create sort of this cult of the hero I mean you know like for anybody who watches that and who's played a video game it's like okay now you press X and you jump over the fence and then like you tell the guy not to go and then you taste it you know it's just like it says the first person perspective is so loaded in our culture you know that's gonna bring a lot of what I mean like this may I bad cop interactions like I don't know i went to the whole show i want to hear bad cop interaction well shall we all have stories like mine is i went to school in the south side of Chicago which is notorious for bad cop interactions and one of my friends once got caught for using a fake ID and the cops slammed him against a car how old were you guys at this point where he was a legal age it was just a different name that's not sure he was definitely not of legal age right uh but he got slammed against a car and he was really mad about it right cuz I mean fine take my fake ID do what I write to you but he's like don't say me it's carding I bet super annoyed and he asked the cop for his badge number oh well in the cops was that me know if you if you you can have a badge number but the only place you're going to get it is in a jail cell at a police station and he was like you're just gonna go you're going to leave the situation right now and that there was no like he was mad about it forever right I'm pretty sure he considered like going to law school just to remedy this what's your friend kind of one he asked the badge in the cop was like why have to take you to jail to get the cop was always gonna let him go the cop was like literally is roughing in because he could i right I and then that that's like endemic like I there countless videos my friends are all activists in college and they're always getting slammed around around like it just happens that's yeah I mean you know like well so my sister and her boyfriend were just out there walking on the street in brooklyn and she wasn't riding her bike she was like sitting on her bike and he was pushing it you know they're like taking this romantic stroll together and this cop like pulls up into cars like you're riding your bike on the sidewalk like i'm gonna issue a ticket she's like give me a break i'm not really riding it were blocked from our house you know they get into a conversation they get into an argument my sister's boyfriend spends the night in jail right right and so my fam when my family heard this story you know they're all like this is as soon as the cop tells you to do something you do it you're like grovel and you're like totally submissive and then usually you get off like that is how you respond to police and some people either can't do that or don't want to do that but that is like what i have always been taught and i feel like is that usually the smartest yeah play well I mean that veers into a hole you know other topic about how different people being raised in different socio-economic strata if you will like learn different lessons about how to interact with the cops right and that was kind of the whole thing that came up during the Trayvon Martin you know that that whole debate and and and that tragedy that occurred and so you know I yeah I've had interactions with the police as well and you know I you know a law-abiding citizen now I am now yeah as opposed to right I haven't always been in my hole and the hole on you know I'd be lying if i said i abided every single law everywhere that i've lived every single day of my life but I generally break in like four laws right now I thought so yeah but which one in a in a world where I have google glass and the cops have this technology everyone you know and maybe this is why the ACLU and those guys feel like it's a good thing everyone should feel empowered to just be honest and like fought and like do what is appropriate right so but is that Matt let me ask you is that just the nanny state like run completely amok like we're all just recording each other at all times so that we can like refer back to some canonical record of our interactions and like make it might make up post xfast the judgment about who is right and wrong is that the nanny state or is that just the state of affairs yeah we want to he said she said clever clever bastard he saw she saw right no but I that is the truth it's the truth that on video as art as our to face cameras tell it ah right face to face face to face and argue yeah and then you give video evidence there for both of your point of view and then you can discuss what reality was what you need is a panel of three judges whoever gets more you male and they all live in water filled tanks and then they decide what actually happened and they release assume they have to be mutants precognition Newton's from the future exactly good so do we want to talk about I have a good segue from here that was doing other stuff so I mean like it you know I wrote this story about drones and in doing that learned about some technology that you know the military uses and which police departments are interested in using and you know we're talking about just being able to see everything at all times the military has this technology called Argus which police are thinking about deploying at a you know a slightly less advanced level and it's basically a drone that would fly over a city and be able to record everything every car everything that moves they would have a complete record of that from every day and in a certain sense that would be a good thing you know like think about all the people who are exonerated by DNA evidence you know it would be like I wasn't there that day you know I was somewhere else well maybe this technology could show you that and it might maybe it would make easier to catch people but when I talked to the ACLU about this actually you know they had kind of had the opposite reaction to what they did with Matt which is to say we don't want to live in a world where the police are watching us at all times just because they can like that's not okay so well so what the thing about the drones and we should this is this is literally it just changes who has the cameras and what the cameras are doing right I think cameras if I was just talking to Paul Miller and his big line lately as technology is fundamentally inert it's what you do with it so it's like fine you can put cameras everywhere and you can you can load the world with cameras and point them at everything the question is who decides what we're putting the cameras at and who gets to watch it later right and and when you're watching it like what do you how do you decide to act on it and I think that the key difference with the cop cams the axon flex cameras and like drones everywhere is that the axon flex cameras you're saying there are response to their fundamentally consumer technology being repurposed right it's all stuff that we recognize we understand and when you see a cop wearing camera on his glasses like first nerd top and then secondly like you know what's going to happen right right your your balance of power in that relationship hasn't fundamentally changed because you can just plot a camera to when it's a cop with a drone and you don't know how high the drum is in the sky what the drones doing whether or not the drone can launch a missile at you the balance of power is completely changed like and now it's now you're you're literally like looking at a faceless technologically superior Authority force that is telling you we're watching you and judging you and that changes your behavior i think way more dramatically sharing cop cans hmm but but but i think it at a certain point it is like where do you draw the line right like it's how much of a surveillance state do we want to have an effect already you know both of us grew up in the Chicago area and and our lived in the Chicago area and I you know know that that the city government there has like what some of the most the biggest camera camera network I love it in the world I get more tickets at chicago street lights then any other place I've ever lived it's like I go home now and I you look at a red light in Chicago it gives you a ticket and yet Chicago has like the worst epidemic exam gun violence in the country so it's not working to discourage crimes not in Chicago tily not so so even even with that pervasive all seeing all those all-seeing eyes or you know same thing same thing in New York I think they introduce something that was like all in Midtown there was a bunch of cameras you know I whether it's on a drone or on the street I mean the question is where does the surveillance stop like does do people feel should people feel like there's any place that they can go that they're not being watched or have we crossed a point right now where like you should just assume that somebody's taping you at well so that's I mean I think in the UK like most people just assumed rather being watching tvs in London but that's being watched by that's a network of private camera operators right and they're not linked and there's no central authority as much as I'm sure the British government would love for them all to be linked so they could you know pervasively watch everyone well what's happening in the States particularly with like domestic drones and like we're going to fly drones around and like the cops will have drones and learn right random government agencies will have drones like that stuff that is starting to get linked that is starting to be like I in the sky Big Brother stuff so you actually just went to a hearing an FAA hearing well I other revising use of drones I listened in on let's let's be clear was I listened in on an FAA it was a public call 24 for any citizen in America to participate in this colony people participated odd doesn't it was it doesn't it was tough anyone in America yeah and dozens participant of course you know that that was actually more participation than than I thought and that's something that a lot of the citizens on on the on the phone during that call pointed out to was that you know they felt like you know they hadn't heard that this was even going on and and or that you know it wasn't well advertised that the FAA was doing this but essentially the FAA was seeking to gain public comment and response to this proposed privacy policy it's going to have for when it opens the door for commercial drones to begin flying basically anywhere in US air space into 2015 so it's it's trying to kind of so here's my question about a drone and I'm actually like very curious for this because I love planes like and I I would love to have a drone mm-hmm sure I think it'd be pretty sweet to have a drive and if you are a drone manufacturer please call me i would love to play a card ran but what is a drone like fundamentally is it is it a quadcopter i can answer that question I mean right now the word is used very loosely yeah so the public has a sort of conception in their mind I think fueled by mainstream media of a drone which is the predator drones you know the stuff we use in Afghanistan this guy right so nobody in America is allowed to own and fly that that isn't why that's why am I not allowed to own and fly that and I ask you President Barack Obama as a man who loves things that both fly and explode right why can't I had one so you could fly a miniaturized version of that that had no weapons on it you could fly like a under 55 our g plane right so so it's complicated so again I would say when we talk about drones when we talking about the predator or what I just really were talking about as unmanned aerial vehicles right and that could be an RC helicopter it could be a Predator drone is something that doesn't have a person in it that flies and then some of them are semi-autonomous meaning they can adjust for wind they can return to a GPS home you know like they can take a no to go out and return to the same spot they're smart and then really what we want to talk about what we mean what we hope what we were going to get to and there's what Chris Anderson defines distinctly as a drone is something that's capable of completely autonomous flight I say go pick me up a taco then go drop off this package and then come back here yeah and it does that without moving anything even the predator can't really do that right so we haven't gotten to that point of sense and avoid yeah we're getting there but like but even the dress that's there's what we're getting to right and what we have right and then there's like what we have is actually a huge spectrum and people think of non drone things by this definition is clearly being dressed right yeah I mean you know because basically drones now are everything from a model hill a model airplane or helicopter all the way up to a Predator drone and in between the stuff that's really interesting are the things like that we reported about the Phantom yeah you know which can go well over a thousand feet it can fly over half a mile away once it's half a mile away it can pilot it cell phone here this thing's awesome and so it can do a lot of semi autonomous flight and you know the people who produce this well they're gonna they're perfectly willing to sell them to consumers now yeah but they would also tell you they think would be a good idea if you needed a license to fly something like this you don't know and so they're happy to sell them to you but they would ride that oh look I mean look this is crazy we're flying over Austin you know we have a camera mounted on there if you didn't know what you're doing and you flew into a power line or you went too low you know you could hurt someone is there's some physical danger and and risks posed by these things in that that was something that actually a lot of the callers on this FA a call that would that I listened to the other week was they were private pilots like guys that fly manned aircraft you know the tiny little prom prop planes or propeller planes or Cessnas and they were worried about okay oh my gosh FAA when you let all these drones start flying into the air space in 2015 we're worried they're going to collide with us because it's going to be a bunch of inexperienced drone pilots flying these things around and they nilay patel yes drown draw lying around and you're drawing on drunk droning and you're you're not gonna have a second thought about flying it anywhere because you're not yet not even a first thought not even a first not even on a massage around drunk man yeah I'm just straight up side yeah I mean I think the answer is really boring it's what Paul said you know the technology is sort of you know it's sort of morally neutral it's like you could fly a drone as someone in my article did on a search-and-rescue mission and save somebody's life you could fly a drone in Afghanistan and use it to kill terrorists or use it to kill civilians and you could fly a drone responsibly irresponsibly you know it's about the regulations we have in place in and how people are using the technology although i think that there's some interesting questions we can talk about now about sort of what is acceptable so for example in my store we talked about this famous case florida vs riley and this brings us back to the cops if the cops are flying in a helicopter yeah and they have to be flying over 400 feet and they're way above your house they're now in sort of public airspace yep so if I'm flying over your backyard which would normally be private and I couldn't look into without a warrant I'm flying over it and I can see down into it I don't need a search warrant and so people have been arrested like this the cops fly over they see their growing marijuana in their greenhouse and they can go and get a search warrant arrest those people so that brings us you know that's sort of the legal precedent the Supreme Court said that was okay so now it's like if I have a drone can I fly it over the house of someone I have you know can I stock somebody with this like as long as I'm in public airspace as long as you're about 400 feet I mean it would seem like the Supreme Court supports that at least at least for the you know the the police and civil agencies what so you know what's interesting about this is that I'm what's built into that fundamentally is that the supreme court assumes the police I've got of limited resources so they're only doing things is a have to for some reason and I think that there's also like hierarchy in a police department so like if you're like the rogue cop and you're like that hot Bob right is hot I'm going to put the drone above his house but like your superior the Commandant to be like no like you have to catch drug dealers or something with our limited resources like flooding a market or flooding a community that so now everybody has the same resource and there's no hierarchy changes the terms of that decision dramatically no absolutely because you could fly a drone above a city all day for a fraction of the cost of like a two-hour helicopter ride yeah and so it definitely creates a it's a technology that enables ubiquitous and constant surveillance as opposed to a helicopter where like they knew that they thought this guy had pot in his backyard they couldn't get a search warrant so like let's do a flyover and see if we can see something and they did write the helicopter is a much more limited resource to neil eyes point then uh you know I'm gonna drown in a quadcopter yeah by the way I'm getting one of those pair of quadcopters as soon as the show's over and I'm surveilling the hell out of all of the rank just constant low-level you guys seen the life anti-drone hoodie I could be wearing that yeah like makes you invisible to the eye don't but then he would know that you were at work and you would you know make it I mean look at this thing it's amazing the Phantom is very I mean the difference is like there are clear and this is where I think it comes back to the cops it's always going to be the cops it's we're sort of fine with a huge network of private cccam CCTV cameras there in New York they're pervasive in Europe right everybody in Russia has a dashcam to prevent against police corruption right to prevent bad actors from dealing with them and that's fine that's like decentralized it makes sense as soon as you like put them in the air and get them out of your physical space or your property or your person now it's like now you're using that technology to directly encroach on other people in a way that only the state has previously been able to do so like another you know the other case is the surveillance case that you need to you know you need a warrant the cops can't come to your grow operation and point an infrared camera and be like as a slight right because the courts say they can't see that with their eyes so if you're going to use an additional piece of technology like you need a warrant to go do it right and so it's like we have all these lines we draw all these lines around the cops because we're like this is this is where your behavior is prescribed but we've never tionally not done that around ourselves right because other human beings can do it for us yeah right like that's we don't want the government to say like you can only fly your plane in the air this this high-flying point and that's like weird like we do weird stuff with it yeah I mean I think that that is what's creating such an interesting environment right now with drones is that the police and government agencies are more or less explicitly banned from using them in most states but hobbyists are not and the technology is getting so much better so much faster so cheap now people are flying you know more powerful craft the police and they can easily put cameras mount cameras on them and record that stuff but we need what we need is Matt strata do a follow-up piece and people are just follow cops and ice around with drones right we were talking okay can we step back for just a second and yak about what the FAA's response to those questions was I mean what sort of regulations are they talking about to make sure that you don't have just swarms of drones everywhere running into one another and in to assess lyst yeah no it's a great question i think that that was part of the you know what was revealed on the call was either they don't have great answers for that right now and they're working on it the problem is the FAA has traditionally not dealt with issues like privacy so like the safety issue you know they could say maybe you don't you can't fly a drone with an X number of miles of an airport or commercial airspace that we know is highly trafficked for instance but that they haven't said any of that stuff yet basically all they've done is released so there's going to be six drone test sites that they're going to you know basically figure out how to start integrating drones into US airspace and there were there was a contest for air fields around the country to become one of these six sites and a lot of you know a lot of different places a lot of different government agencies want to want to test the drones out there want to be a pioneer in this effort but the FA so far hasn't hasn't released very many regulations on what publicly at least on what will happen at those test sites it's only released a pretty loose privacy policy that has like four points and it's just you know it's basically like if you're going to fly drones at any one of these six sites you need your own privacy policy and it needs to comply with all existing state laws which is like obvious you know there's that John your own privacy policies right yeah that's that's that's what they said in in the FAA's privacy policy they said you need your own privacy policy and that's gonna be the private you need to bring your eyes it's it's byop do i do a pap but yeah I I talked to some mother be OB yopp is amazing UIL PP that's pretty good yeah I talked to some sources and I would agree with what you said which is that the FAA basically is going to be completely hands-off when it comes to privacy they are going to focus only on safety that's going to be what they're going to regulate and they are not they're going to let the courts decide about privacy they're not going to touch that and so basically what's going to happen is we're going to get to a point where commercial use is allowed and TMZ is going to have three or four drones following every a-list celebrity you know ten feet away at all times of day and one of those drones is going to crash into somebody or catch something really nasty on camera and then there's going to be a lawsuit and then we're going to figure it out you know we're gonna it's going to work its way through the courts well I mean I think it'll be before that and I really do because I mean there are court cases I mean if you look at property law or torts right these like classic areas of law they get way in the weeds real fat man we've been litigating these cases for hundreds of years like if I'm your neighbor my tree grows high enough to block the Sun coming through your window but you can just sue me and be like cut down your tree can I cut down your tree you cannot cut down my tree I can't physically go over there and cut not to part the branch that's on my side you can cut that you can cut the branches on your side okay right but like what the keep that a matter thing to do is like sue me and be like that takes too long tree is like what it takes too long but like the first time TMZ puts a drone and Britney Spears assuming that she hasn't signed a contract to be purposely first first drone reality show the first drone surveillance target but as soon as that happens there's gonna be a lawsuit and immediate lawsuit right uh without any of the bad stuff ok I see crashing right just is this acceptable because they're right there are torts and there are sort of laws in place about peeping toms and expectations of privacy and so as soon as the private citizen right parks our drone outside my window I'm gonna I'm going to file lawsuit just say I have a reasonable expectation of privacy that you're invading right you know you're evading my personal space and within so that that reason watch that's that the thing right that's as to the government right you have an expert okay so it's different it's different for from a private citizen right but they're they're also like it's like the First Amendment only applies the government I can call your speech whenever I rat so speaking of a man I want you to keep that in mind let's let's take this to the next level yeah and Carl heard this on the on the call with the FAA and people have raised this question in some of the interviews I've had if I can buy a gun legally and i can buy a drone legally can i put my gun on my drone and yes use it as a weapon am i allowed to do that drone gun yeah obviously know what they didn't answer they didn't answer and the FAA call was not for them to answer any questions let's be clear they were just receiving public comment many of the comments were about like really good ways to put gun I want to proton am I join that one guy did specifically say I got a comment this would be sweet right yeah that's a lawyer in Missouri said I specifically I want to use he didn't say wanted to arm his drones but he did say that he should be able to use them for self-protection and he said that every American should have a drone and that that would eliminate that that that would eliminate the need for all other weapons I really said I want you guys to go if you're if you're at a computer go to youtube and type in drone paintball yeah and you could see you know a drone a guy rigged up at home with a guy just asked and maybe this is just getting a little why is it that that the gun argument is always that everybody should be armed like fully all the time cuz the only there's no there's actually there on is there no balance in this world all or not like it's like one gun or no got it's like an one person thought of putting a gun on a drone now everyone should have heavily-armed roads that's the only way please yeah please got it there must be some middle ground mutually assured mr. why are you drawn so thoroughly to these slippery slopes and then why must fling yourself down like oh man the slope is slippery I better grease myself up don't worry a drone will be there on the other end to save and or shoot you a break every wondrin to watch you a cop hitting his chest over and over again to bypass the 30 second audio delay and another another drenna put your misery there you go this is just how technology works you know I was I was thinking about this today and thinking about drones and surveillance and it's like people the people who invent the technology think that they're going to be helping us right and then somebody gets their hands on the technology and turns it into like a weapon right always finds a way to misuse it the the guy from the nobel peace prize is named invented dynamite you thought it would like end all wars and it just made things worse like you know it's right now I was like that it is cool that everybody has take a dynamite now that's yeah I mean I feel safe everyone with me yeah yeah I feel so much safer right uh let me ask you this Matt and here's my question for you so from the the police perspective and I know that you you mostly focused on the head cams I mean are they as interested in drones and using that stuff as they are in the head cams or is that just like a whole different basket for them I get the impression that's completely different really a lot of the people i spoke with in mesa were a lot of the cops i spoke with and they said so they put us in touch with a bunch of people who had already used these cameras so they were comfortable with them and they put us in touch with people who were in the department who are familiar with them and so these people are comfortable with these cameras to find them but the impression I got from for people who were not outfitted with these counter that they didn't want them really yeah like it's going to just add another layer of bureaucracy to my already extremely bureaucratic job where I have to fill out reports and now addition to writing a report at the end of my of my shift or whatever however many reports are right i'm now gonna have to take care of labeling this video is just a pain in the ass and so the idea of adding you know drone use on top police officers shift i imagine probably go over very well well you know what's interesting is it in other context the robotic or autonomous like assistant for a government function like we love it so like let yeah we should give robots to fire departments right like obvious fire fighting robots we should definitely do that right the bomb squad should definitely have one of those like bomb robots yeah no question about it like we should augment or otherwise replace human beings in all sorts of situations of the government is the IRS should definitely have a computer I don't know what they're doing right now I'm abacuses yeah but it's weird that it's it's whenever they interact with the public you want that person to be there and you want that person accountable in a way that doesn't change that balance of power well Mayor Bloomberg was saying and you sort of disagree with this before you know a camera on a building is the same as a drone in the sky and it's coming you know he basically said you know deal with it but I think that if you look around the country the majority of states 30 of them have actually enacted legislation that would prevent police departments and government employees from using drones so I think the popular opinion is that domestic drones for law enforcement we don't want them and the legislators are responding to that and I would argue having you know done a pretty extensive reporting on like their capabilities that that's a bad thing in the sense that fire departments or police departments could really use these to save lives and that we need to be able to use them in a very limited and well-regulated way for law enforcement you know that if we cut off our access to this technology between even between now and 2015 when the FAA is supposed to return their you know their their rules of the road um alright that looks is but this is what Matt was saying about the helmet cams not helmet cams the comp cams um glass even the ACLU right Matt correct me if wrong even in ACA you're saying we need more of them out there so that we can craft an appropriate set of regulations around them so like for the drones it's like well we have to build a critical mass of drones in the sky before we know where the boundaries are and that's me is way more uncomfortable than comp cams right it's fine give all the cops cameras we'll see how it shakes out like the the Delta between normal behavior and wherever they end up will probably relatively small and then we can like do something to fix it with drones it's like we're going to put a bunch of drones in the sky the one lawyer in Alabama is going to put a gun on it missouri missouri he's definitely going to our Miss Brown and then like sell kits so that everybody can arm their drones right and that's like you're rapidly down the wrong slope before you've ever had a chance to regulate it but if you try to regulate it ahead of the time you're gonna end up with states banning drones and firefighters can't ya know you make a good point which is that uh right the glasses camera is not so different from a cell phone but a drone in the sky is extremely different and it has it just has way more capability there's nobody attached to it and there's no risk to you know flying in any way right which is why they're so popular for for warfare because like I mean and that's the another interesting sort of like most American citizens support drones overseas you run Afghanistan but they don't want them here where they want them overseas where they let Americans stay out of danger we don't want them here threatening our own civil liberties and right privacy but you know I think in this case I mean you know about this as a lawyer it's just that the states are going to be the laboratories where we're going to figure this out right and like some states like Carl said are pushing to have the test sites and think that drones will be a big boon for their economy and so some states will have lots of drones and other states won't and once we see how that goes for two years people's minds may change but you know state that's why I actually want to say to mind yeah that's why I wanted to ask you to is like I mean are we gonna end up with like a hodgepodge of legislation then around around the country because everybody's figuring it out on their own terms and so a court yeah Sam is gonna rule this way in accordance that's the Federalist way and in this case I think some people feel that's a feature not a bug like that's not a bad thing right yeah you me cuz you want the laboratory right you want you want some states to go join crazy and see what happens right and you want the other states to be like we're going to go slower right until overwhelming yet but I think what's actually most interesting is what you said about drones overseas right because when it's a war we're like fine we're going to go impose war on another population and we'll do it at a remove right so our soldiers will wear khakis and polos and sit in a basement in Las Vegas and they'll kill things over there right in like there's no outrage about it it's really weird like yeah that's right you seen reports on this for us like every week right like you know look we're gonna buy another 50 drones and like blow up everything over there well i mean i'm gonna i'm sure some people will think that this day me makes me a sort of you know war criminal but were longer if you look at the statistics which were recently released you know over the last 10 years and since the obama administration took over the number the percentage of civilian casualties you know with each of these strikes has really decreased and so i think there's a valid argument to be made that when you look at you know the casualties on both sides of boots on the ground versus the casualties of drones in the air perhaps drones are the most efficient you know i think they feel wrong because we don't have to put anyone in danger but they may be the most effective way to fight terrorism and no i'm not at least innocent lives I don't agree that what I'm saying is that once you once our government has sold that like this it'd be like if your Police Department on today tank right I mean cuz they all do and we've actually runs stories about how they're buying these like heavily militarized vehicles they did share they probably don't need but like if you are like the local police want to spend money on a tank they really want to take and they say they need one most people like no yeah but they don't they definitely don't need a tank right right like they are not fighting a war in the drones like the drone program has become so tied to our notion of war and like how we're fighting and effectively which may or may not be true right seems to be leaning true um that I think when people are like and now the cops will have a tank yeah actually the tank is an unmanned flying plane that can stay in the air forever it's like isn't that worse than a tank like is that ultimate like wouldn't you rather they have the tank and they like they're always authorization polishing the tank I like looking at the tank talking about when you're gonna go use the toilet they never sneak up on you yeah either out the tank is like yeah this is gonna go to some really weird places but when I was in Texas when I was in Austin take us there I saw a number of college students testing out a spoofer that they had which was based on technology the Iranians used and it was very low-tech to take down very high tech yeah and so criminals or whoever if I want to protect my own privacy I could have something over my house that basically Bork's the GPS of the drone it's like if you fly a drone over my house which is my private property like yeah it's gonna take down your drum you know I mean like we're gonna enter a very wild space next couple of years with these things yeah I wild drone west but I mean you know that I really want to drown like what I don't want the cops to have a drone I want the cops to always have cameras that are on but I want to drown sounds good I think that affair I would you should bring it back onto the verge cast when you uh when you get one there's one watching right now oh that's what's filming the drone has a gun yeah drone has a makeshift God dashed yeah I I did want to say before we close out i mean the issue about you know this disconnect between domestic drones and overseas is it's more than just a raw numbers of fighting war for instance in terms of casualties I mean it's it's it's about morality right that's the that's the thing that people get hung up on where it's like do you value a human life less because it's not you that's pulling the trigger it's or you are pulling the trigger but it's an indirect weapon system that is you know flying thousands of feet above the sky and eliminating the target and you never have to see that target even a sniper from you know the video a mile away is is is is more connected to the life that he's taking then a drone operator some would argue and and I would I would you know put myself in that camp because there is a level of abstraction there with the technology so that's I think part of the issue that the uncomfortability that people have with with drone usage right but I guess if my argument would be that this brings us back to the cop cameras and seeing how their jobs actually work or the cameras in the farms and seeing what actually goes on it's like you're just seeing now what we people war has always been like like a bombing in World War two or you know a soldier shooting somebody is really not different it's just now it's all in video right and and you could see it and you can do it remotely and so that that sort of changes the way we think about it alright well we have to wrap Matt you have any last thoughts before we have to wrap up here i am so i have a whole bunch of questions but oh and for a later it hit me give me give me your top two uh well actually just one I think it started discussion which is you know what exactly are police police forces like local police forces thinking you're thinking they're gonna do with drums other than you know looking at a growth or trying to them know they get the same thing is II think here were they able to do the same thing they'll do with their super sweet tank which is habit what I mean that's isn't that the answer I mean like it lied around yeah fly it around the extend force without having to like put people in the way in a previous drone Senate hearing they had a guy with a sheriff's department and and he was saying that they've actually used it to try and and they quickly found in a tragic case but an elderly woman who went missing they found her body quicker using the drone because an apparent presumably she died of you know natural causes or not she wasn't murdered she wasn't killed and and so they found you know and and and and the point he was trying to make was that know if we had found her sooner and we could have using this drone then we could have with dogs or people on the ground yeah you know it could have say it's a verla that's definitely drones could act could and should be used to save lives with search and rescue period end of story as far as I'm concerned yeah drones and I just want to clip that for cops teen this is added same drones good roads can use drones can save lives and I think Matt any what was your other question you have another one and well now how exactly would that work so you drones are flying around looking for looking for people buying on the ground in in odd circumstances and that will have to I don't know he didn't he didn't specify you know how we eating going to detail the great detail about how they how they used it that was just his that was his point if you can read my drone story there's a search-and-rescue story in there you can yeah we can learn about and we should we'll have links we have a bunch of stories and all the stuff that we've been doing again it's why we did the show even exhausted number of stories and this we wanted to spend the time doing it unfortunately however we have to wrap up the drones are coming for all of us now stay tuned top shelf will be on at five thirty eastern or whatever time zone you're in I don't know because I'm remotely located right now and not actually here I'm a drone body alright so top shelf a 530 stay tuned for that you can reach all of us there's all kinds of ways to get a hold of us to attend is ben popper on twitter Carl France and carl franzen Twitter Matt Stroud you have the worst twitter handle of all time which is yeah stir it out it's like 5 s's 3ds right it's my last name points every every letter r r oo uu DD yeah it is terrible i'm sorry our daughter to you bro ah pretty difficult you can leave a comment on our post you can you know send an email to somebody forge cast of The Verge calm I'm told or you can just send an email to one of your friends or leave a comment or talk about it whatever Thank a vine shop make a fine I would love seeing a drone if you look at our own vine if you could hit me with a drone vine that would be great it I July up one last that I do want to say a little self promo here the verge has been nominated for five different webby awards which we're very proud of who you should go vote because there's like a regular the ones that give out and there's people's choice we have a post up on the site you should look at it if you feel compelled to vote for us which I hope you do you should do a number of clicks and then do that and other than that we will be back next week I think with a different compliments of people and some non drone topics but for now the drones will be watching you and with that goodnight