Drones In My Backyard
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
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DRONES IN MY BACKYARD is a funny and scary video mash-up about the coming of aerial drones to the United States.
One day a drone appears in the filmmaker's backyard, hovering over his head. It's the catalyst for an extended meditation and free association on the presence of drones in war-making, the role of drones in surveillance, and the thrill of flying when you put on goggles to see what the drone sees.
Whether it's the Predator, the Argus, or cute little Hummingbirds, drones of all shapes and sizes are flying to a rock and roll beat. We see them following us...and listen to the incessant buzzing of cameras overhead.
'Drones In My Backyard does a spectacular job of exploring the implications of drones entering our domestic air space by 2015. It asks all the right questions, presenting perspectives of those in Gaza and Pakistan who live with the buzz of drones daily, as do the directors who wonder about the loss of their individual privacy as drones hover in their backyard...The film conflates this footage with positive uses for drones - hobbyists playing, juggling drones, farmers monitoring crops, environmentalists watching for proper care of rivers and forests - and we are presented with a compelling aerial vision: A vision that suggests, while we may have a flyby view of the Statue of Liberty, we are also set to lose more liberty as drones enter our domestic airspace invading our every privacy.' Ken Rinaldo, Professor and Director, Art and Technology Program, The Ohio State University, Director of Emergent Systems
'Whether constructed for recreation, surveillance, law enforcement or for subject elimination, drones have become a topic evoking an even greater range of emotion and responses. This DVD describes in a masterful way the diversity of sizes, construction materials, designs and purposes for these machines...Whether the drones evoke fear, wonder, or hope, this DVD provides the viewer with not only information about them but poses questions that allows for further probing on one's own views about what glides, soars and or hovers above us. Drones in My Backyard is a concise but revealing overview of this continuing emerging form of technology.' Marylin Lisowski, Eastern Illinois University, Science Books and Films
'A good...introduction to key issues concerning the advent of military and civil Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs), otherwise known by the public as drones. The adverse consequences of UAVs are emphasized over the benefits.' Dr. Robert Finkelstein, President, Robotic Technology Inc., Collegiate Professor of Management and Technology, Director, Intelligent Systems Laboratory, University of Maryland
'An unforgettable short film that beautifully captures an increasingly surreal aspect of the twenty-first century, Drones in My Backyard is highly recommended.' The Midwest Book Review
'[The filmmaker] uses original interviews and footage, spliced together with clips from PBS, the Israeli Army, YouTube, and other sources to demonstrate the potential uses of drones...With a playing time of 13 minutes, robotics or government classes would have ample discussion time for practical or ethical issues, and budding engineers could consider positive and negative possibilities before assembling any unmanned aerial vehicles.' Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, School Library Journal
'A solid, short overview of a hot topic...This is recommended.' T. Keogh, Video Librarian
'Snitow's sighting of a neighbor's drone in his supposedly private backyard leads to a musing on drone technology's growing ubiquity. How comfortable should Americans be with current uses of unmanned aerial vehicles?' Peter Wong, BeyondChron.org
Citation
Main credits
Snitow, Alan (film producer)
Snitow, Alan (film director)
Snitow, Alan (film editor)
Snitow, Alan (screenwriter)
Snitow, Alan (narrator)
Kaufman, Deborah (film producer)
Distributor subjects
American Democracy; American Studies; Humor; Law Enforcement; Privacy; Recreation; Science, Technology, Society; Social Psychology; Sociology; War and PeaceKeywords
WEBVTT
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- One day, sitting on my
backyard porch reading,
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I heard a buzzing.
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Oh my god.
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It\'s a drone.
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My partner Deborah and I are
making a movie about the coming
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of what are called \"unmanned
aerial vehicles\"... UAVs,
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or drones... in
the United States.
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But it\'s too late.
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Our neighbor shows us
they\'re already here.
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I wonder if he can see
the expression on my face.
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This is our backyard.
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We leave the curtains open.
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There\'s a skylight over our bed.
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The trees around us, the fence
that blocks the neighbors,
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all for naught.
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But what sticks in
my mind isn\'t so much
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the spatial violation,
but the sound.
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I can\'t get it out of my head.
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Now when I hear a plane
overhead, I think \"drone\".
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What if you heard them all
the time like in Pakistan,
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or here in Gaza,
one of the places
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where drones are part
of everyday life?
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- How do you call them?
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- Sorry?
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- How do you call them?
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- We call them
surveillance planes.
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In Gaza, they call it \"zenana\".
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Zenana means
\"nnnnnn,\" the voice.
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That\'s why they call it zenana.
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- Drones are now
the weapon of choice
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in America\'s undeclared wars.
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Soldiers at video screens
kill people 7,000 miles away.
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Will these dead come
back to haunt us?
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Are armed drones coming
home to American skies?
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- A lot of people have an
impression of drones as these
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multi-million dollar
military things,
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and then when you show
them... y\'know, our stuff is
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made out of styrofoam.
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Much more along
the lines of a toy.
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- The other day, we went to the
park with two do-it-yourself
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drone makers.
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- That is a beautiful sight.
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It really is a tinkerer\'s
dream, because nothing
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is ever quite working right.
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Like you can see here, we use
wiffle balls for the landing.
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We got some of these pieces
straight out of the recycle
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bin.
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There\'s War Man\'s camera mount.
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- Are there good
uses for drones?
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Well, the forest service wants
them to look for lost hikers.
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Environmentalists
like them when they
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were used to expose illegal
corporate dumping of pigs\'
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blood in a river.
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Farmers want drones to monitor
dryness in their fields.
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Archaeologists want them to
look down and see possible dig
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sites.
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But really, how important
are these problems
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when compared to
UAVs\' killer apps
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that enable mass surveillance
and long distance killing?
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However, there is an app that
may prove hard to resist.
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It\'s the dream of flying.
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Put on goggles, and you\'re
seeing what the drone sees.
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Everyone I know has had dreams
of flying, and with the drone
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your feet never
leave the ground.
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It\'s been taken to
the highest level
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by an intrepid group called
Team Black Sheep, who
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bring us the thrill of
flying all to a techno beat.
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Drones are becoming
a diverse bunch.
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They can now be large and
shaped like a missile, or small,
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smaller still, and
even smaller than that.
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They can swarm.
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They can play, and
they can juggle.
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- I think it\'s worth
talking about the fact
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that it\'s not just about the
drone, it\'s about the camera.
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Drones can be equipped with
quite powerful cameras.
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They can be equipped
with cameras
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that can zoom in far
more than you could ever
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see with the naked eye.
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They can be equipped with
thermal imaging cameras that
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can see in the dark.
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There\'s technology
being developed
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that could potentially
see through walls
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and other surfaces.
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- But when real drone
surveillance comes
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to the U.S.A., it won\'t be
just little buzzy things
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in the backyard, but giant
vehicles flying so high we
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won\'t hear or see them...
But they\'ll see us and track
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our electronic communications,
even if they are too far away
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to hear us singing
in the shower.
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- This whole image is at a
very, very fine resolution,
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and everything that
is a moving object
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is being automatically tracked.
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From even 17,500
feet, the white thing
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that you see flying
around is a bird.
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We would like Argus to be over
the same area 24 hours a day,
00:07:01.918 --> 00:07:03.041
seven days a week.
00:07:03.042 --> 00:07:05.998
That\'s not very
easily achievable
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with manned platforms.
00:07:08.083 --> 00:07:10.208
This is where UAVs
come in, and they\'re
00:07:10.209 --> 00:07:13.249
absolutely the perfect platform.
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- I think one of
the things we see
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with all sorts of
surveillance technology
00:07:16.959 --> 00:07:18.958
is a tendency towards
mission creep.
00:07:18.959 --> 00:07:23.166
A law enforcement agency
acquires a drone, for instance,
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for one totally benign
purpose; \"We\'ll only focus this
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on of people engaged
in wrongdoing.\"
00:07:29.709 --> 00:07:31.998
And then of course, it has
these additional capabilities
00:07:31.999 --> 00:07:34.208
which are used
more in the future.
00:07:34.209 --> 00:07:36.541
- And without even a
big leap of paranoia,
00:07:36.542 --> 00:07:39.833
mission creep gets more scary.
00:07:39.834 --> 00:07:42.082
- Now most of the quad rotors
that you\'ve seen on YouTube
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are doing some pretty
sophisticated maneuvers,
00:07:44.667 --> 00:07:47.542
and none of those toys is
equipped with a submachine gun.
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That was awesome.
00:08:04.292 --> 00:08:05.958
Let\'s try something else.
00:08:05.959 --> 00:08:09.041
Lucky for us, this baby is
equipped with a self destruct
00:08:09.042 --> 00:08:11.918
payload with a 15
foot blast radius.
00:08:25.209 --> 00:08:27.998
- Maybe it\'s dangerous
to oversell the threat
00:08:27.999 --> 00:08:31.541
and then, like this guy,
accept omnipresent drones
00:08:31.542 --> 00:08:33.998
because, well, they turn
out to be not quite as
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scary as we once feared.
00:08:36.375 --> 00:08:39.458
Drone lobbyists and a
congressional drone caucus
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want big drones to be integrated
into American airspace by 2015.
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But there are already thousands
of drones flying in the U.S.
00:08:48.250 --> 00:08:51.249
They\'re easy to buy and
getting cheaper, and delighting
00:08:51.250 --> 00:08:54.125
news reporters all
over the world.
00:09:14.792 --> 00:09:17.958
- Police forces, of
course, can\'t wait.
00:09:17.959 --> 00:09:20.708
And drones are already
showing up at demonstrations,
00:09:20.709 --> 00:09:22.374
like this one in Poland.
00:09:22.375 --> 00:09:24.917
But they\'ve been used
by demonstrators too,
00:09:24.918 --> 00:09:27.998
and in this case by journalists
blocked from the action
00:09:27.999 --> 00:09:28.999
by police lines.
00:09:31.834 --> 00:09:33.999
There are now
global competitions
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for drone dexterity.
00:09:35.999 --> 00:09:38.917
Engineering students come
from technical schools
00:09:38.918 --> 00:09:41.917
from all over the world and
spice up their nerdiness
00:09:41.918 --> 00:09:44.125
with the romance of espionage.
00:09:53.999 --> 00:09:57.249
- Chief of the Bureau
of Covert Actions,
00:09:57.250 --> 00:10:00.208
Trilateral Intelligence Agency.
00:10:00.209 --> 00:10:04.998
Mission Six: remove sensitive
data from the Hesamic Republic
00:10:04.999 --> 00:10:09.291
of Nari without
being compromised.
00:10:09.292 --> 00:10:11.458
Credible and
actionable intelligence
00:10:11.459 --> 00:10:15.124
received from the
Hesamic Republic of Nari
00:10:15.125 --> 00:10:19.708
indicates that highly sensitive
information detailing plans
00:10:19.709 --> 00:10:24.416
to sabotage our control of
the Eurasian banking system
00:10:24.417 --> 00:10:28.333
is contained on an
unsecured USB flash
00:10:28.334 --> 00:10:31.583
drive kept in the
intelligence organization\'s
00:10:31.584 --> 00:10:35.833
remote Rafq security office.
00:10:35.834 --> 00:10:38.291
Mission Six will
involve the removal
00:10:38.292 --> 00:10:41.416
of the flash drive
and its replacement
00:10:41.417 --> 00:10:43.918
with an identical black drive.
00:10:55.792 --> 00:10:57.374
- Can we regulate drones?
00:10:57.375 --> 00:11:02.082
Can we make distinctions between
good drones and bad ones?
00:11:02.083 --> 00:11:05.791
So the next time you see
a shadow, or the next time
00:11:05.792 --> 00:11:10.998
you hear something in the clouds
or coming out from the sun,
00:11:10.999 --> 00:11:13.082
it might be a drone
looking over your shoulder
00:11:13.083 --> 00:11:14.000
and into your life.
00:11:14.001 --> 00:11:17.042
Or it may be a drone with
a more violent pedigree.
00:12:07.626 --> 00:12:12.291
Oh, I finally went over to see
my neighbors over the fence.
00:12:12.292 --> 00:12:15.041
Turns out the drone was a
birthday present from Pam
00:12:15.042 --> 00:12:16.999
to Norris.