So, will the truth be known widely or will the broader population remember only the drone accusation? Cynic in me thinks this was deliberately suggested to make passing some drone laws easier.
Came here to say pretty much the same thing. It's a familiar old pattern: 1: "Thing" is developed which enjoys benign use amongst small subset of geeks 2: Military discover "Thing" and develop a way to use it for evil and/or killing 3: "Thing" gains in popularity amongst general public 4: Government says. "General public can't be trusted with "Thing". Thing is capable of doing evil and/or killing people!" 5: News sto…
People have been flying models for a long time. But originally, model planes, etc. were expensive and relatively hard to fly. So people often knew each other and could have a mostly self-policing community.
Then quadcopter were made to be very easy to fly, and popularity made them cheap.
So now we have people flying them everywhere. Quads with cameras make people nervous. Quads flying over large groups of people, make people nervous. And quads flying very close to planes is just a very bad idea.
So it makes sense to have some rules. But governments go completely over board. And instead of investing in enforcement, they introduce painful administrative requirements.