They fly, take pictures, can be operated remotely and even come with an auto-pilot feature to land safely in case their owner gets distracted.
The flying miniature drones are marketed as the AR.Drone by wireless device manufacturer Parrot and have been available in German electronics stores since summer 2010.
But some German politicians are concerned about privacy issues relating to the toys priced at 299 euros ($393) and steered by devices like the iPhone and iPad.
“Even just by using the small, helicopter-like hobby models, people can quickly go beyond the limits of the law,” said Ilse Aigner, Germany’s consumer affairs minister, in an interview with the Deutsche Presse Agentur.
For example, if hobbyists or children fly the AR.Drone onto neighbors’ property and capture images of them in their home without their permission, the photographs could already stand in violation of data privacy laws.
Will mini anti-drone techniques (nets, missiles, lines) soon become available? What about intercepting and taking over the control channel for the drone? Will it be illegal to commandeer another person’s drone if it is over your property?
Ok, it’s not really a virus, but the next time you hear a cyberwar expert warn about the risk of widespread power outages from cyberattack, think about this: critical infrastructure disasters have happened before. Today, for example, RiaNovosti says nearly a half million people in the middle of a Moscow winter are powerless.
Power outrages have left 412,000 people without electricity across several regions in central Russia on Sunday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told a government meeting.
He urged Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu to “mobilize all units” in order to tackle the “latest weather anomaly,” as meteorologists predict there is little relief in sight.
CBS Local reports that criminals opened a hole through the wall of a home in New York to steal works by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. The culprits also managed to take the security camera recorder. Apparently the recorder did not upload data to a remote site.
Authorities are ramping up their effort to solve a Manhattan mystery: Who drilled a hole into the home of a beef fortune heir and stole a collection of iconic artworks by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol?
The culprits also made off with surveillance video footage that might have caught them in the act.
“These technologies were developed to help stratospheric balloons land on Venus and communicate with each other without using heavy duty transmission equipment,” says Guell.
Guell says the balloons never made it to Venus for budgetary reasons. But their technology may soon be helping cars find parking spots in Toulouse and other cities in Europe and Canada that are interested in the project.
Supposedly it can tell a car from a truck based on the magnetic profile, and drivers are expected to pay their meter with a wireless chip on their windshield. Above all is the fact that drivers will be able to see in real time if there is parking.
French government studies show that 60 percent of urban pollution in France is due to idling cars searching for a place to park, which translates into 700 million wasted hours a year…
Unless they build a queuing or reservation system, however, it seems that people still will drive around wasting time, but far more anxiously — all trying to get to a spot before others when their phone alerts them. Maybe they can build in a control so drivers more than a few blocks from the spot will not be notified. It certainly sounds like a fun system to try and manipulate. I can imagine sending a false signal that parking is available on the other side of the village and then, while all the other cars race to get there, taking a spot nearby that is left open the old fashioned way.