UK to get even more Big Brother with hovering drones

With literally hundreds of thousands of cameras -- some sporting speakers and microphones -- trained on its poor citizens from the moment they step out of the house in the morning until their hasty retreat inside at night, we're not sure why the UK needs yet another set of eyes scoping out so-called 'anti-social behaviour' among the populace, but that isn't stopping the vanguard of Big Brother technology from deploying its first unmanned police drone next month. In what is being perhaps optimistically billed as just a three-month trial, Merseyside police will unleash a one-meter wide, night-vision camera-equipped mini-helicopter into the skies (up to 500-meters high) above their jurisdiction, and task it with gathering evidence for court cases as well as the less glamorous job of monitoring traffic congestion. Originally built for the military by a Germany company and called the 'hicam microdrone,' these repurposed mechanical bobbies can either be controlled by an operator via remote or set to patrol autonomously using their built-in GPS nav systems. You'll recall that a similar system being considered by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department was shot down by the FAA around this time last year, proving once again that up-and-coming British criminals could probably minimize their risks of incarceration by making the move Stateside.

[Via The Register, pic courtesy of microdrones GmbH, thanks Paul J. and rastrus]

[strider_mt2k @ May 21st 2007 11:35AM]

I hope they deploy them at an Anarchy Park, because my buddy Ron Cole figured out this really cool way to knock down all the Copseyes...


(Thanks Larry)

[Oliver M @ May 21st 2007 11:49AM]

Come on engadget - you're supposed to be a technology blog. I would have thought you'd be pro potentially crimestopping, lifesaving flying cameras. The only innovative publically funded uses of technology being developed in the US I hear of are designed to kill, maim or incapacitate.

I'm sure I won't give a toss if I come across a camera drone - it'd interest me more than anything and reassure me that our police service are looking to solve crime. If some kind of evil dictator gets into power and the dominant political ideology in the UK starts to resemble 1984 a bit more closely, I might start becoming concerned...

Until then, give it a rest. This 'Big Brother' line is becoming a little dated.

[Vanillacide @ May 21st 2007 12:01PM]

Okay the UK hasn't been renamed Airfield One yet but the dominant political ideology of the UK isn't too far off 1984 already; 'Big Nanny' watches our every more, we have dubious wars in foreign climes, thought crimes increase prison sentences, planned ID cards "present your papers", planned National Identity Register than keeps track of your every interaction with the state and every electronic/payment transaction, right to trial by jury gone, cameras on every corner of ever street no matter if there is no crime in the area, proposed tracking devices in every car, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I doubt these flying cameras would stop one crime or save one life, but they would probably enable the state apparatus to fine (read tax) regular people for something ... littering maybe.

[murray @ May 21st 2007 1:35PM]

Oliver, the point is that a 1984 scenario never just happens, it develops very gradually. If you don't make noise about each little development, one day you wake up and it's 1984.

[Ollie @ May 21st 2007 2:20PM]

I understand that Murray. It's not how it ever gets reported though. As Vanillacide said, if we went from no CCTV, ability to be tracked to street level by our mobiles, ATMs etc.., to our current situation, we might well decide we're already in 1984.

We've lost a ridiculous amount of 'privacy' already and I can't say I'm troubled by it. The press is so rabid in the UK it acts as a pretty good check and balance anyway.

[Michael Gumn @ May 21st 2007 11:54AM]

Unlike the frontier attitude of the US people of the UK generally have a benign opinion of CCTV, with many seeing CCTV as a protective measure.

[flamsmark @ May 21st 2007 2:05PM]

I actually *am* a brit, and I hate them; as does everyone I know. The thing is that it's just a bit *too* much work to fight them at ever turn: which is why we're headed for disaster.

[alex @ May 21st 2007 7:50PM]

"Unlike the frontier attitude of the US people of the UK generally have a benign opinion of CCTV, with many seeing CCTV as a protective measure."

And that's why George Orwell (a brit) wrote a love book about the fantastic and benign society we'll be living in where EVERYONE is being watched. YEAH! FTW!

[Michael Gumn @ May 21st 2007 11:55AM]

@Oliver M

Precisely

[G5 Power @ May 21st 2007 11:59AM]

Worst part is i eat my breakfast on the way to sixth form, and there is nothing that makes you more self-conscious then knowing someone is watching you eat a banana.

I hate CCTV.

[paul34 @ May 21st 2007 12:04PM]

Although in theory I'm not opposed to monitoring of public places (after all, it is *public*), I can see the potential for abuse of this system.

Wrongly accused of thoughtcrime? You'll find it pretty hard to run. Threatened with death from an overzealous government? Nowhere to hide.

Etc, etc. Many people will believe me to be paranoid... but realistic projections beat denial and apathy anyday.

[S. Brown @ May 21st 2007 12:11PM]

Can I buy one for observing topless beaches? For anti-criminal purposes of course.

[Vanillacide @ May 21st 2007 12:14PM]

Do you have any topless beaches in USA?

[S. Brown @ May 21st 2007 12:22PM]

Well I'm from the UK, so I don't know. It was a crap joke is all.

[Dan @ May 21st 2007 12:23PM]

>Vanillacide @ May 21st 2007 12:14PM
>Do you have any topless beaches in USA?

Evah notice that the western edge of the USA is one long beach? Every inch of which is topless.

Hairy, but topless.

[Ollie @ May 21st 2007 12:15PM]

Dubious wars are nothing new - Henry VIII etc... used to voyage overseas when they fancied a bit more hunting land. Our dominant political ideology is a load of absolute garbage, but I don't see it as a massive threat to my privacy.

There certainly aren't a massive number of cameras around the places I live. One of the existing ones, however, caught an image of someone who most probably went on to attack a young girl with a hammer, hospitalising her.

I have *no doubt* such cameras could help save lives / stop crime. Existing city-centre cameras do so regularly. If someone chooses to try and stab me in such an area, there's a good chance there'll be some police en-route almost immediately.

I'm certainly not a supporter of most New Labour ideas - car tracking would be needless and purely to boost tax. When the technology's there to serve a useful purpose though, it's no bad thing.

[Bill Payer @ May 21st 2007 12:24PM]

"Airstrip One" was what Orwell called Britain in 1984.

[Lee @ May 21st 2007 12:37PM]

its not as bad as people in the US make out, i have to walk into town before i see a camera, the only time they piss me off is if one is following me when im not doing anything wrong

[patsy @ May 21st 2007 12:54PM]

Imagine how much more pissed off you will be when you ARE doing something wrong. You'll be downright livid. But I'm glad you all are adopting this nothing-to-worry-if-you're-not-doing-anything-wrong attitude, makes it much easier to sneak up the police state on you poor sods.

[Sunny Man @ May 21st 2007 12:40PM]

I'm from the UK and feel that out CCTV network is invaluable in fighting crime and also finding people. People are always complaining about being watched or being tracked but I don't see the problem. I've got nothing to hide so why should I have a problem with it?

Some plans such as the national road charging scheme will never come to fruition - we won't let it - as it it just a method of tax increase and it would be too costly to implement. We're not a Big Brother state and we never will be.

If you have a problem with our CCTV network, maybe when you're mugged on a street and left for dead and there's no video of your attackers you'll think twice.

[flamsmark @ May 21st 2007 2:05PM]

And this is the sort of attitude that worries me. I have been mugged, and you know what I'd prefer to a CCTV camera? A police officer. If we need anything, it's humans, not data, and certainly not ubiquitous surveillance.

[Sunny Man @ May 21st 2007 2:19PM]

It's impossible to have a police officer on every street at every hour of the day. What would you rather have, a camera or nothing?

My attitude towards CCTV isn't worrying at all. Sure, our police service is not what it could be but I'd rather have something than nothing.

Of course there is a worry that police will begin to rely on CCTV and this is why we need to politically active with our local MPs to tell them this. CCTV is good but, yes, more police is even better. Just don't complain when your taxes go up.

[harvey @ May 21st 2007 12:46PM]

i was watching the news this morning. We've actually got 4.2 million cameras in Britain now.

[Lee @ May 21st 2007 2:11PM]

its not police state, CCTV is just cheaper than getting real police, id rather walk home at night where there is CCTV as your allot less likely to get mugged, just as long as they cant see my house

[Revels @ May 21st 2007 1:11PM]

This'll keep the paintball/airsoft gun toting chavs busy

[jsteven @ May 21st 2007 1:13PM]

Imagine how pissed you'd be if you were walking down the street doing nothing wrong when the batteries die sending this thing plummeting towards your head!

[Justin @ May 21st 2007 1:44PM]

Behold, the first generation probe droid!!

[Shannon @ May 21st 2007 1:45PM]

Anyone remember watching Dark Angel with those Hovering Cop Cameras? They had guns, and they also liked to watch in windows... Good luck thinking your homes are safe from the Hovering Peeping Toms

[Alan @ May 21st 2007 1:57PM]

FFS Engadget, stop with all the UK is Big Brother nation spin. The truth is, the majority of the UK population either don't care or welcome the use of CCTV.

"...trained on its poor citizens from the moment they step out of the house in the morning until their hasty retreat inside at night..." I stepped out the house today. No camera suddenly zoomed in on me and started tracking me. In fact, the likely hood is I wasn't recorded a single time today. And I certainly didn't retreat inside hurriedly this afternoon to stop the cameras recording me any further.

You don't like CCTV in America. That's fine. But I'm really getting fed-up with your anti-surveillance spin on every UK CCTV story. Ever visited Britain or spoken to the average Brit about the matter? Didn't think so.

[flamsmark @ May 21st 2007 2:05PM]

I'm a brit; and I think it's bad. I'm not alone.

The fact is that there are *many* brits who dislike CCTV, and engadget is a liberal-left news source, so they're totally entitle to approach technology of this kind with this attitude. Approach the articles with a healthy view of debate, but don't berate them for being out of touch: they know what they're saying, you just may not agree.

[Alan @ May 21st 2007 2:32PM]

If they're a 'news' source then they should approach it with impartiality, not with the blatant bias they do. (This isn't an editorial, after all)

I don't begrudge them their opinion, just like I hope they don't me mine, but IMO it doesn't have a place in a news *article*, especially not in the title. I think it's healthy to have debate, but I think the place for that debate should be the comments (like we're talking about it now), not the article itself.

[Isaac @ May 21st 2007 1:57PM]

Are we *sure* that the Nazi's really lost WW2? I wonder if any of those V rockets were carrying some sort of bug that infected the populace... making the people complacent and the politicians more like them... In preparation for invasion and assimilation, but it worked too slowly...

Hmm... I might try to sell that one to the Sci-Fi Channel. :) England turns into the next Nazi Germany thanks to a secret genetic virus they were working on in secret and they take over the EU, now the rest of the world must contend with them and stop the spread of this Nazifying virus! But there's a twist... America's becomes just as bad, thanks to it's soldiers being infected and bringing it back! Oh nos!

[Michael Gumn @ May 21st 2007 2:07PM]

why does everyone fear the state so much?

[patsy @ May 21st 2007 2:58PM]

The thing with CCTV is that until they all sport remote-controllable guns, they are really just a forensic tool. They can watch you being mugged/killed without being able to help you much there, and can perhaps lead to the perp eventually being caught if (s)he didn't wear a hood and took up more than 2x2 pixels on the surveillance video so as to actually be recognizable. And with deterrence being what it is to your average criminal (not much, it seems), I wouldn't count too much on those cameras to prevent much of anything. Look at the number of convenience stores, banks and ATMs still being robbed in the US, where all these establishments have been heavily video taped for a long time now.

[Lee @ May 22nd 2007 11:19AM]

but thats the US, this is the UK, and it does almost as much as a police helicopter but much cheaper, and fitting guns on them, police in the UK dont have guns anyway

[flamsmark @ Jun 20th 2007 12:46PM]

In all honesty, I *would* like to pay more tax and get better public services. Finland, Norway, Sweden: they have the right idea when it comes to government.

Other than that: I'd prefer no CCTV and more (even if not ubiquitous) police. Spend the CCTV money on coppers. Please.

[gamma @ May 21st 2007 2:22PM]

It's ironic that this news comes just the day after a senior policeman warned that CCTV is turning Britain into an Orwellian state:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/6660681.stm

And today it's reported that the government is considering what would be in effect a Department of Precrime:
http://www.trevor-mendham.com/atuxviii/blog/2007/05/uk-proposes-department-of-precrime.html

[KitKat @ May 21st 2007 2:48PM]

Remember, remember the fifth of November.

[Kenundrum @ May 21st 2007 3:16PM]

That LA drone was put frowned upon by the FAA, not the FCC... they didn't have the proper license to operate an aircraft...

[tmark rushworth @ May 21st 2007 3:16PM]

Now you know some crafty scoucer is gonna outfit a model biplane with machineguns to knock it out of the sky :) i know it was my immediate thought :)

mark

[Steve @ May 21st 2007 3:32PM]

I foresee a huge rise in catapults & long range air rifles - these things will be like flying targets for the criminally-minded.

[Urza @ May 21st 2007 3:42PM]

Thank God the US is too big and sparsely populated to easily coat with surveillence. They can do a hell of a lot, but they couldn't easily fly drones over the whole damn country.

[david @ May 21st 2007 3:45PM]

funny thing,

the UK had an almost non existent facist party before WWII while it was rampant throughout continental europe.

now, with the cameras, portrayal through books (1984..) and movies (V, children of men...) it seems closest to that state.

at least they have some pretty good freedom of speech, for now.

[kowalski @ May 21st 2007 4:23PM]

if i saw one i'd shoot it down with my... oh wait

[Oliver Treend @ May 21st 2007 4:27PM]

I think CCTV surveillance it getting absolutely crazy nowadays.
I can't believe they're actually doing this now!

[Matt @ May 21st 2007 4:29PM]

The whole "Big Brother UK" thing is getting tired.

How many times does it need to be pointed out that of those 4.2 million CCTV cameras, 4.15 million of them are run by Tescos and McDonalds - i.e. they are not "state" cameras, but are in private hands.

There *ARE* CCTV cameras in know trouble spots in town centres which are operated by the councils and/or police, and are used mainly as a deterrent to 14 year old kids etc - or if it comes to it for identification/prosecution purposes.

[Dan @ May 21st 2007 4:41PM]

Matt scribbled on his monitor and it looked like:
> The whole "Big Brother UK" thing is getting tired.
>How many times does it need to be pointed out that >of those 4.2 million CCTV cameras, 4.15 million of >them are run by Tescos and McDonalds - i.e. they >are not "state" cameras, but are in private hands.

OH! Well, THAT'S different now isn't it? So your internal spying has been outsourced to two gas chains? Very clever. ;-)

[Raz 4 life @ May 21st 2007 4:44PM]

Are you sure that's a drone and not a PILOTLESS AIRPLANE?!?!

[Michael Gumn @ May 22nd 2007 7:44AM]

Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in 1949 and was written as a warning against the perversion of socialism by totalitarian states, it was written in post-war fear. The fact that technology was used by the state in this *fictional* situation for this monitoring was simply genius on Orwell's part.

If you recall the picture painted is that of a socialist state that seizes power by nationalising everything and then concentrating the control of this universal wealth in the hands of a small few (Orwell calls it "collective oligarchy").

The UK is, at the moment witnessing life under a controlling, yes, but most defiantly perfect centre government. The trend is to slowly privatise our most precious national assets, such as our schools and the NHS, not nationalise them. The labour government is mildly socialist in ideals but conservative in action, hence the creation of a perceived nanny state through legislation etc but a conservative lean in terms of economics.

My current point: that George Orwell wrote a book about the dangers of state surveillance of the individual before the word CCTV had been invented, and he certainly wasn't writing a book about the current situation within the UK, no matter how people wish to believe it the ideas behind the current CCTV "epidemic" are most defiantly benign.

My original point:

people in the UK are generally ambivalent to CCTV, many probably aren't even aware of the huge numbers of cameras watching them, and many others probably feel safer walking home knowing that if anything happens, there will be filmed evidence. The UK population is far less wary of the intentions of the state, a nationalisation of health care and until relatively recently the railways, as well as the existence of an extensive social care system could be posited as evidence of this.

Engadget is not representative of the general UK population because most of its readers are reasonably educated a tech savvy and are aware of what could occur

The US fosters, in my humble opinion, a frontier attitude that they are free agents and the state should have as little as possible to do with individual lives, at least when it comes to things like CCTV etc.

@Papa24: your statistics (if true) are a little unfair as much of the worlds population live in extra urban areas, many without basic clean water, let alone the electricity needed to power CCTV cameras. Figures as the percentage of Urban population in MEDC's (or whatever "1st World" countries are called these days) would probably be more representative, although i expect that the UK still has more than its fair share of CCTV cameras/coverage etc.

@alex: have you even read "Nineteen Eighty-Four"? because if you have i think you have missed the point of the book. It is not predictive, it is a story.

[papa44 @ May 22nd 2007 2:42AM]

the uk has 22% of the worlds cctv and only 2% of the worlds population.

tell me, who is watching the cameras? waste of time and money springs to mind.