Police in Montgomery County were preparing for a photo op on Sunday when the surveillance drone they were going to use to take aerial photos of the maneuvers crashed into their SWAT vehicle. The Examiner reports the vehicle started having trouble and went into “shut-down” mode, causing it to crash:
http://liarcatchers.com/electronic_surveillance.html
Vanguard CEO Michael Buscher said his company’s prototype drone was flying about 18-feet off the ground when it started having trouble. It’s designed to go into an auto shutdown mode, according to Buscher, but when it was coming down the drone crashed into the SWAT team’s armored vehicle.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) studied the increasing use of drones in 2008 and cited the loss of control of one of these vehicles as a major concern. Increasing use of drones for domestic surveillance drones within U.S. borders has raised significant privacy concerns, with the EFF suing to find out who the Department of Transportation has authorized to control drones within the U.S.
