Banned from flying drone and suspended Jail sentence - USA

Yes I know its in USA but interesting never the less, they have actually started a Gofundme for his legal defence he is escalating to high court.

2 Likes

It is a shame but unfortunately he was out of VLOS so thatā€™s given the prosecution all they need.
Most people are ignorant to drones. The benefits they give etc. It was a police deputies property he flew over. That certainly doesnā€™t help.
I wish him luck but at the end of the day the VLOS thing has got him.

2 Likes

Good point Paul

1 Like

VLOS is an issue but it wasnā€™t the one that they hung him on. And he didnā€™t really admit to VLOS in so many words.

The prosecution didnā€™t want the flight logs produced as evidence. They were looking to convict on hearsay. The property owner being a law-enforcement officer prejudiced the case in favour of the prosecution. When the flight logs were ruled admissible it was found that the camera was pointing downward over the LEOā€™s property. So they had him on the legal grounds of conducting surveillance and thus trespassing (yes, American law IS strange),

No attempt was made to seize or produce images resultant from that ā€œsurveillanceā€. A common misconception, fostered by CSI-type TV shows is that you can take any digital image and enhance it and enlarge it many times when all you get in reality is larger pixels. So fluing at 400 feet hardky counts as spying.

The problem is that what America does today Britain slavishly follows tomorrow. Without the gentleman and his legal team standing up loud and proud the states will bring in a drone ban for all hobbyists. Flights only to be undertaken by commercial operators (who will pay a hefty licence and per-flight fee) and emergebcy service professionals. And Amazon.

The UK will follow.

That, FWYW, is my two centā€™s worth ā€¦

6 Likes

Thatā€™s insane, fair play ro him for pushing back and standing up for whatā€™s right.
I lived, and worked out in the states for a year in a few different states and its astounding how different they police and govern thier respective states and how the law differs.

Iā€™m maybe going to be a bit controversial here and say that my reaction to this guyā€™s case isā€¦ meh. :man_shrugging:

We all know that Americans take their right to privacy very seriously. We all know that the US laws around trespass areā€¦ insane. You canā€™t live in Louisiana and not know itā€™s the state where Yoshihiro Hattori, a Japanese exchange student, got lost on his way to a party, went to the wrong address and was shot dead by the homeowner for trespassing as he approached the front doorā€¦ or that the courtroom burst into a round of applause when the homeowner was found not guilty of manslaughter. You just canā€™t.

So this guy flew his drone over somebodyā€™s property with the camera pointing downwards. Not the crime of the century, but in Louisiana itā€™s a misdemeanour and heā€™s been found guilty. Thatā€™s the law where he flew.

Iā€™m also not sure the argument that his camera wasnā€™t good enough to ā€˜surveilā€™ the homeowner would really stand up in courtā€¦ because it didnā€™t. The prosecution brought in a witness who said you can zoom in enough to see a person on the phone. Thatā€™s got to be the easiest rebuttal in history - ā€œHereā€™s a video taken from the same height and speed with the same camera. Show usā€. I guess the problem is you donā€™t need to be able to read the display on the phone to have invaded the personā€™s right to protection from ā€œintrusion upon seclusion or solitude, or into private affairsā€.

Also, whatā€™s not mentioned in the video is that Benson and the neighbour whose property he flew over haveā€¦ history. They donā€™t get on. They get into heated arguments. I donā€™t fly over my neighbourā€™s properties without asking them first. But if I did, Iā€™d certainly steer clear of any I didnā€™t get on withā€¦ because Iā€™m not an idiot and Iā€™m not out looking to escalate any bad feelings.

Benson also failed to mentioned in the video that there were several different witnesses in the trial who testified that Benson had been undertaking low flights over and around their properties for years, at least once hovering directly outside windows, and that when challenged heā€™d become agitated and shouted ā€œNobody can tell me what to doā€.

Nor did he mention that the neighbour came to speak to him about the incident on the day of the flight, and only afterwards was it reported and acted upon. I canā€™t help but wonder if the reason this particular flight over the neighbourā€™s property escalated to criminal charges is because when the neighbour came to speak to him about it he didnā€™t exactly apologise and promise not to do it again.

Rather than see this guy as the victim of public misconceptions about dronesā€¦ perhaps heā€™s, just a little bit, one of the people who give the rest of us a bad name?

2 Likes

Haha! Well, it didnā€™t take a whole lot of looking to find the address for both partiesā€¦ Benson lives at 404, Henderson 602:

Doesnā€™t look like it would be exactly taxing to avoid pissing off the neighbour you donā€™t get on with by flying around their property.

And given the density of trees, Iā€™d have to say that yes, I think maintaining VLOS would have been a little tricky.

1 Like