San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Drone defense
Professor Austin Choi-fitzpatrick argues for aerial technologies as a public tool in new book
Austin Choi-fitzpatrick is well aware of the public’s perception of drones. ■ That is, for those who don’t regularly use drones, be it recreationally or professionally, that perception is generally one of general suspicion or even annoyance. ■ “A lot of it has to do with exposure and knowledge. What makes them great is that they can go places other tools can’t, but that also makes them invisible,” Choi-fitzpatrick says. “So a lot of the usages that are cool and promising are in the places we’d see it least. The places we do see them are when the police use them, which makes us and should make us nervous. But the promising alternatives are kind of invisible, and that’s what I’m hoping to show people.”
That negative perception is one of the many issues Choifitzpatrick attempts to address in “The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance,” a recently released book that argues, among other things, that drones serve as something of an equalizer in an already heavily surveilled world.
“Smartphones put cameras into everybody’s hands, and drones put everybody’s cameras into the air. That essentially means there’s greater and greater power that belongs to the people,” says Choi-fitzpatrick, who currently serves as a professor at the Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego. “I’m just trying to say with this book that if the powerful have it, then the people should also have it.”
The release of “The Good Drone” seems particularly timely, considering the recent social unrest surrounding racial justice and, to a lesser degree, the protests over COVID-19 restrictions. What’s more, the book, which is available for purchase or as a free PDF on Choifitzpatrick’s website, could be seen as a useful primer on how
aerial technologies have been beneficial to social causes.
“I’ve always been interested in technology and how technology affects politics, culture and protest,” Choi-fitzpatrick says. “It wasn’t until I bought a drone, and then wrote an article about how drones are part of the technological toolkit. What I quickly realized is that when we talk about technology and politics, we almost always mean social media. With this book, I wanted to say that yes, social media is important, but there’s all these other tools and techniques that people have at their disposal.”
Choi-fitzpatrick’s initial fascination with these types of emerging technologies “started on the street,” as he puts it early on in “The Good Drone.” Covering a protest against Internet taxes in Hungary in 2014, Choifitzpatrick used a drone to capture a video of thousands of protesters in Budapest. A picture from the video went viral and appeared on the front page of the International New York Times the next day, directly contradicting government reports on the size of the crowd and reinvigorating the movement.
“Our drone didn’t take the picture, it made the picture possible — it directed eyes and mobilized action,” Choi-fitzpatrick writes in the book.
Choi-fitzpatrick went on to write about the subject of drones in his 2019 textbook “Drones for Good: How to Bring Sociotechnical Thinking Into the Classroom,” but wanted to explore the topic further in “The Good Drone.” He knew that books already existed that explored how social media and other emerging technologies were helping to “shift the balance of power — however modestly or temporarily — in favor of the people,” but found that aerial technologies such as drones, satellites and even kites and balloons were not often explored as a means of effecting social change.
“Of course, it started with drones on the streets of Budapest, but I had this largest interest in technology, and once I started tugging on that string, what was on the other end of it was not social media, but a series of technologies that the public can engage,” says Choi-fitzpatrick, who points out throughout “The Good Drone” the ways in which emerging aerial technologies, which are often naysayed early, inevitably help societal movements.
“That was my litmus test,” Choi-fitzpatrick continues. “Can I, or other people like me, use this technology for good? The thing that ties them all together is that they’re all affordable and deployable by the public without regulatory oversight.”
To prove this point, Choifitzpatrick points to how the vast majority of the public uses drones for altruistic causes such as documenting human rights abuses, anti-poaching advocacy, and researching climate change research. With help from his students at USD, he meticulously scraped the Internet, logging incident reports and media stories on negative drone usage. He says the data proved that, more often than not, that “the smallest categories were for spying and crime.”
Still, the public’s suspicion of drones does worry Choi-fitzpatrick. It’s his hope that “The Good Drone” will help the public understand the benefit of the technology before rushing to have them banned for public use.
“Whatever gets decided, it should be decided with meaningful public involvement,” says Choi-fitzpatrick, who will discuss the book with political reporter Danny Freeman at Warwick’s on Wednesday at 6 p.m. “The government already has surveillance drones monitoring protests, and I think it’s important that news agencies, the public and social movements also have drones to tell their side of the story as well. It’s only imagery and video that will tell the full story.”
“I’m just trying to say with this book that if the powerful have it, then the people should also have it.”
Author and USD professor Austin Choi-fitzpatrick