Gone is the bullhorn. Instead, New York City emergency management officials have turned high-tech, using drones to warn residents about potential threatening weather.
With a buzzing sound in the background, a drone equipped with a loudspeaker flies over homes warning people who live in basement or ground-floor apartments about impending heavy rains.
“Be prepared to leave your location,” said the voice from the sky in footage released Tuesday by the city’s emergency management agency. “If flooding occurs, do not hesitate.”
Warning people that are in danger from incoming dangerous weather seems like a good idea to me. We need to stop fucking up the climate to reduce the amount of dangerous weather, yes, but it’s sensible to protect people from it until we do that (and of course, even if we never did anything to change the climate, sometimes it would still be dangerous)
I think the worry here is that if they are already using drones to monitor weather, what else are they using drones to monitor?
I don’t live anywhere near NYC, but I do know Adams was a cop, so I wouldn’t trust him to just use city drones for helpful reasons.
Drones have been banned in the city for years. Iirc the city uses anti-drone drones occasionally, but I’ve literally never seen one overhead, be it personal, commercial, or governmental.
Do you trust Adams enough that you think he’ll care if his own government defies that ban if he feels it’s necessary?
No, but the point is if I see a drone I know it’s a government drone and not just some hobbyist. The ban already doesn’t apply to the government, hence the weather warning drones and anti-drone drones.
I was talking about government ones to begin with.