Imagine for a moment that you are standing in a crowded New York street, roasting in the sweltering heat given off by the press of bodies surrounding you. Signs are being waved, songs are being chanted, somewhere off to your left there is angry shouting in a language you don’t even recognize. Suddenly, there is a deafening crack, then another, somewhat muffled by the encircling mass of people. All at once, people are screaming and shoving, desperate to escape the clouds of gas billowing into the throng. A series of dull thuds in quick succession indicate by their bass staccato that more rounds are being launched into the crowd, followed swiftly by the firecracker chatter of exploding shells, drowning out the shouting for a few milliseconds. There is stumbling, slipping, pairs of hands that were clasped tightly a moment ago torn apart by the tide of bodies. This is chaos, a warzone. But it doesn’t have to be.
Freeze. Rewind. That, right there.
In the midst of the Occupy protests which swept the nation in the past few months, there has been a vast increase in the weight of citizen and independent journalism in relation to these events. Google Trends shows a vast increase in searches for “independent media” and “protest videos” since the inception of the Occupy protests in 2011, with a proportionately large increase in traffic to sites which offered live streaming and video documentation of the protests. As many of the corporate major media outlets in the United States aired little or no substantial coverage of the events occurring in cities across the country (media link), it seems that hundreds of thousands of people turned to the internet and citizen journalists to relay on -the-ground information to the masses. However, much of this independent coverage consists of grainy cell phone footage, or the quintessential camcorder operator who suffers from a bizarre inability to hold his recording implement still for more than half a second before lurching in an ungainly fashion to a new film target. Furthermore, much of what good documentation we might have had was destroyed in the purges of Occupy camps by various metropolitan police departments, using heavy construction equipment to flatten dwellings containing private property, or via house-to-house raids in which Occupants were arrested and their possessions black-bagged (media link). Some citizen journalists were actually shot by police as they peacefully went about recording the events occurring in their neighborhoods. (media link) How can law enforcement be held accountable for their actions if major media outlets refuse to document the events they are involved in, compounded by the destruction of private, legally recorded records of their conduct?
The answer, some are now saying, lies in the civilian use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, for independent journalistic purposes. Not only does this avenue of documentation allow journalists without a multinational corporate employer access to coveted helicopter shots of a developing event, but it creates a means of recording which is difficult for authorities to suppress due to its unconventional nature. Examine, for instance, the moments captured on video leading up to the near fatal shooting of 24 year old marine veteran Scott Olsen by Oakland police forces on the night of October 25th, 2011. (media link) As one can see, the actual moment of impact is obscured by the surrounding crowds and the roiling tear gas. However, Olson can be seen standing at the police barrier a few moments before, and the injuries he suffered were deemed by Highland Hospital trauma surgeons to have been caused by a “nonlethal” police projectile fired into his head at point-blank range. However, due to the nature of the incident and the blurred recording which exists as the only impartial witness, no action can be taken against the individual who is responsible for the disfigurement and permanent brain damage suffered by the young man in question. Now, imagine recording that scene from perhaps 30 feet in the air, hovering behind the glare of the streetlights and above the concealing chemical mist. This angle of documentation would have secured a much more accurate picture of the events as they played out, perhaps elucidating the shooting in question and certainly illustrating how the evening progressed.
Fortunately, civilian aerial journalism is quickly becoming a realized goal as model airplane and RC enthusiasts team up with software engineers and media experts to create functioning, low ceiling UAVs which can be controlled with a factory spec consumer computer interface or through a more traditional handheld or mounted guidance system. One such journalist is Tim Pool, who has been testing and tweaking a modified Parrot drone (a hacked RC toy model) to operate with a camera payload and fly using a digital command interface controlled by a radio-compatible laptop. Pool’s software guru, Sam Shapiro, has said that the intent of the project is to keep protesters safe by informing them about police movements and traffic positions, further stating: “While I can’t be involved in stuff like that, I don’t want to see my friends being beaten up because they don’t have tactical knowledge of what’s going on.”. This is risky business as it seems that even digital contribution to the Occupy movement can be met with swift reprisal; police recently arrested raided and arrested the operators of the Occupy Wall Street livestream, which was operating out of a legally rented and fully paid New York apartment, on unknown charges. Pool and his contemporaries hope to combat this heavy-handedness and lack of due process by emulating the mythic Greek hydra, a serpent who, when beheaded, grows two more heads to replace the severed appendage; the direction software his team is developing is designed to allow another remote operator with the proper access codes to seize control of a UAV if the primary controller is subdued or arrested, allowing documentation to continue and for the recovery of the vehicle post-event. Another key element in this strategy is proliferation; by supplying affordable UAV training and equipment to Occupy protesters, Pool is likely to spread official countermeasures to his aerial surveillance drones quite thin, making the hovering sentinels effective objective observers of the ongoing protests unfolding on the streets of the nation. With funding pouring in and a drive to push the project into full gear in 2012, we can hope to see these civilian UAVs in the air in the next few months. Until then, stay safe.
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