Game of drones as remote pilots ignore the rules

I can hear them, but I can’t see them. Over the barking dog, the daisies swaying gently in the breeze and the steady drip of gossip from some people nearby, a hum wafts over the hedgerows in this park in south Dublin. It sounds midway between a lawnmower and a moderately angry beehive.

As I round the corner, I see half a dozen men standing in line, looking up ahead. Controls in hand, they are absorbed in the machines hovering 15ft above an empty pitch. They are flying unmanned aerial vehicles. Drones.

Several operators glide away at the arrival of an interloper for fear of detection, but others are more forthcoming. Kevin, from Bantry, bought his DJI Phantom drone for €450. It has an in-built camera, which transmits what it sees, live, to his phone. “This is fresh off the shelf. You can have it flying within about 20 minutes of buying it. Even if you don’t take videos, it’s fun messing with it.”

As we speak, his drone flips on the grass like a fish out of water, an abortive take-off. “That doesn’t usually happen,” his friend laughs.

They come here most weekday lunchtimes. Some send the drones farther afield. As they don’t have a licence, what they are doing is technically illegal.

Dog walkers and office workers out for their lunch look askance at drones overhead and duck instinctively. It’s a natural response to a device that is piloted by remote control. “It’s a bit unnerving having it fly over you,” says Laura Bradley. “As long as they keep it over a field I suppose it’s no harm.”

The IT professionals in their early 30s manning the drones look harmless. They are more interested in sending the devices through the goalposts than in videoing people. They usually have this part of the park to themselves. Today, however, in the next pitch, another group of men indulge in their own hobby: the Leinster senior rugby team are practising scrums again. According to Kevin, the Leinster coaches have taken a friendly interest in their hobby, hoping to use it to their advantage. “I sent them some footage I took from just flying over their training sessions, and they may use it or not,” he says.

Even with a licence, Kevin would not be allowed by the Irish Aviation Authority to use his on-board cameras, the very attraction that has popularised what was once the niche preserve of technical specialists.

Model aircraft

David (35) is an old hand at model aircraft. He doesn’t do cameras. He prefers to see his machine with his own eyes. He assembled his DJI Flame Wheel 450 using component parts ordered for €200. The Dubliner is wary of giving his full name. “I generally go out in the evenings on a GAA pitch. I’d be a bit more nervous about where I fly. Some of the other lads here would not really care,” he says.

Stephen, a garrulous, likeable Cork man explains with pride how, unlike the others, he and a fellow Cork man, Graham, use an open-sourced system, APM. “We can do all sorts of cool stuff like plan missions,” he says, beckoning me over to his Nexus tablet. By clicking a Google map on his Nexus, Stephen can programme a flight path for his drone.

Using this method, Stephen has flown his drone around the RTÉ mast and UCD tower yesterday without moving a thumb. “I lost sight of it after two minutes, so I was out of control. And you’re standing there going, Jesus Christ, please come back.

“I’m not that experienced, and I could still send mine down to the RTÉ tower. If I was stupid I might try and go around it or something. If I did cause damage, there’s no traceability. But I love doing this, so I do it properly.”

Recently he sent his drone down to the seafront at Dún Laoghaire from Glenageary, again trusting the GPS system. “I lost complete control for four minutes as it completed its mission. My worry is if it falls out of the sky.”

He is not the only one to worry. The mass production of drones has put a lot of sophisticated hardware in civilian use, and it has resulted in the summer of the drone.

Scarcely a week goes by without a remote-controlled helicopter missing passenger aircraft by a whisker. Recently, one disrupted efforts to fight a forest fire in northern California. The owner was trying to film the blaze.

In June, overhead wires at Wheatfield Prison in Clondalkin foiled an attempt to smuggle drugs into the facility using a drone, while in New York two operators were charged after police claimed their DJI Phantom drone forced a police chopper off course 2,000ft above George Washington Bridge.

In April, Raymond Fogarty’s dazzling video boasting panoramic views of Cork city went viral, but also drew heated criticism from licensed operators SkyTec.

Regulators worldwide are scrambling to legislate for the technology. In the UK, the House of Lords has announced an investigation into the civil use of drones.

Here, the IAA says all drones require written permission, which is a more stringent regime than in the US. Even IAA- licensed drones are restricted to flying no higher than 150m and no farther than 500m away from the operator, and cannot use cameras. They have issued just 25 permits this year.

“You’re supposed to have licences, but the rules are ridiculous,” says Graham.

“Regulators don’t know how to react so far,” agrees Kevin. “It’s about people being careful with it. They’re not unsafe.”

To make a point, he switches off his controls. The drone slowly begins to return to base.

US ‘pervert’ alert

There are also privacy issues. Recently, Colm Keena, in An Irishman's Diary in this newspaper, decried drones after being "buzzed" twice on a quiet beach in Wexford, where children were playing. Last month, in the US, a woman was filmed punching a 17-year-old male, whom she called a "pervert" for flying a drone 50ft above a beach. She was later charged.

The inherent dangers of a device that allows people to observe others, while themselves remaining unseen, are obvious.

Dr Eoin Carolan, a senior lecturer on the Constitution at University College Dublin, points out that the test is whether you have a “reasonable expectation” of privacy. “It depends on where you are, and it depends on what you’re doing: if you’re a celebrity who courted publicity or not, for example. People on a beach would probably be able to assume they’re not being videotaped,” he says.

He adds that the widespread use of CCTV and cameraphones has already changed people’s privacy expectations, particularly in cities.

Drones are used by the BBC to film sports events and in rescue missions in such places as Australia to Canada. The growth in private ownership of the devices means that, for good or ill, we seem to be about to enter the age of the drone.

@reporterdarragh