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African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones

bbc.com

1–10 of 51 posts

Re: African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones

#3

If I were a manager at the mining company that purchased the drones, I would be worried about retaliation in kind by workers who obtained a similar drone.

Why drones - invest in smart ground based flak cannon manufacturing.

If we can't fly -- we won't let anyone else either - old anti aircraft moto.

Re: African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones

#5

If I were a manager at the mining company that purchased the drones, I would be worried about retaliation in kind by workers who obtained a similar drone.

That would mean your workers had too much disposable income and free time. You should reduce both as a precaution.

Re: African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones

#6

If I were a manager at the mining company that purchased the drones, I would be worried about retaliation in kind by workers who obtained a similar drone.

Why drones - invest in smart ground based flak cannon manufacturing. If we can't fly -- we won't let anyone else either - old anti aircraft moto.

Indeed. Here's something somewhat related, from PyCon 2012. It deals with using computer vision to fire a squirt gun at squirrels. The principle is basically the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPgqfnKG_T4

Re: African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones

#9
I am surprised that anyone would be caught off guard by this sort of thing. After all it is going to be much more effective to fly over a crowd and shoot at them than to try to hit them from behind a riot shield.

The Union outrage is interesting too, mostly because I agree that as your government (or companies) acquire tools for crowd control it certainly has a chilling effect on peaceful assembly. That said I don't see why these folks don't have drones of their own. They were used to good effect to document some of the protests in Turkey. As the drone is probably efiltrating its video during operation it is much harder for a repressive regime to shut it down and suppress the video.

Re: African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones

#10
post #9

I am surprised that anyone would be caught off guard by this sort of thing. After all it is going to be much more effective to fly over a crowd and shoot at them than to try to hit them from behind a riot shield. The Union outrage is interesting too, mostly because I agree that as your government (or companies) acquire tools for crowd control it certainly has a chilling effect on peaceful assembly. That said I don't…

>> That said I don't see why these folks don't have drones of their own

There's some important historical context here. The client was a South African mining company (I assume - it said mining company, and the company is in South Africa). There were recent riots in South Africa between a miner's union and the mine, and the miner's got slaughtered (literally). Most likely not the same company, but miner's in South Africa have a long, unfair history and it's getting worse. They're extremely destitute and there's no way I see them showing up to future protests with their own air support.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marikana_miners'_strike

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