Gadget With Huge Scope For Misuse
It is hard to tell whether Amazon’s latest wheeze is a revolutionary masterstroke, an interesting idea looking for a problem to solve or a potential threat to society.
The online retail and distribution giant has just secured a patent for pocket –sized, voice-controlled, camera-bearing drones.
These would be so small that drawings included in the patent application show one ‘docking’ on the shoulder of a user.
It is easy to see the market for such beasts taking off. They could become the latest ‘must have’ gadgets and become as prevalent as mobile phones.
But what would they actually be used for?
Amazon is suggesting a number of applications, particularly by uniformed services. They see police using them instead of dashcams to record the scene when traffic cops stop a driver, hovering overhead, just out of reach. They suggest firemen would send one ahead to check out a burning building.
The everyday public, they project, would search for misplaced cars in a car park or lost children in shopping centres with theirs.
There are, though, more practical solutions to all of these problems, ones which do not involve electronics taking to the air.
What is wrong with a camera sewn into a police lapel? Gizmos for finding lost vehicles and kids using a smartphone have been around for some years and deliver results far quicker and with much greater certainty than aerial searches would.
Add to that the potential for misuse of lower-cost, harder-to-spot drones, by thieves, voyeurs or sexual predators, for example, and one does wonder whether this is one scheme that should be banned before it leaves the drawing board.
