Discussions

Hi all,

I would like to start a discussion about the way, blog posts are approved - or not.

Today I wrote a blog post quoting an article from a German newspaper about a terrorist plot involving hobby UAVs which was discovered and prevented by the German police.

I posted it because I think, it is important to be aware of those things and to have a public discussion, especially on how we as a community can help to prevent them. IMHO it's also important that we as a community take a public position on those things.

The world is not all fairies and unicorns. Avoiding a sensitive topic can be viewed as "having something to hide", especially in the current anti-drone-witchhunt climate!

This blog post was not approved (rated as "iffy") giving as main reason:

1.) "Also, even though your post is somewhat newsworthy, is this type of behavior something that we want to encourage by publishing this incident?"

In the course of a discussion via PM, additional arguments were presented:

2.) "This issue has already received national and international coverage on the major news channels and websites"

3.) "To publish your blog post would be an advertisement to anyone intent on hurting other members of society of how to use a hobby uav to do so or to give them ideas of how to do so"

4.) "To discuss how these terrorists would have used hobby uavs to harm others just gives other terrorists insights as to how to go about doing so. The FBI monitors this website and I am very sure that I have approved many terrorists as members without knowing that they were terrorists. I have no way to filter terrorists from legitimate members."

5.) "If I was a terrorist, this is one of the first websites I would sign up with to learn everything that I could on how to make a hobby uav into an autonomous flying bomb. Therefore to discuss the ins and outs in detail about how these recent terrorists planned to use hobby uavs as autonomous flying bombs just adds fuel to the terrorist fire."

In my opinion, all of those arguments are invalid. My reasons:

1.) A press report about the police taking down people who planned this kind of action is in my opinion not encouraging. The opposite is the case.

2.) We are frequently discussing about topics that have been in the news over and over again. That cannot be a reason!

3.) This argument is logically flawed, because with terrorists, the intention to harm others always comes first. When a terrorist made this decision and is already here on DIY-Drones to read that blog post, he already has "the idea" and already has full access to all relevant information. Not posting the topic does not help anything about that.
This way of thinking is comparable to parents trying to prevent children from getting interested in guns by not talking about guns and trying to remove all information about guns from the child's perception. A futile enterprise, doomed to fail, because you cannot prevent people from gaining knowledge that is publicly accessible.

4.) A press article about the police preventing the plot does not provide any strategically useful information. But it DOES show that the authorities are on top of things and that those attempts were futile, which is - in my opinion - discouraging.

5.) a) see 4.). b) A community that discusses that kind of abuse of it's technology, sets a sign against those abuse. It is impossible to prevent that kind of abuse. As written, all the necessary information is publicly available. By avoiding those topics, we cannot prevent those things from happening, neither do we promote those things by discussing them. But we can and - in my opinion - should make it clear to the public that we are aware of those plots and that we do not condone them!

If another of such plots is discovered and it turned out that the suspects gained information from DIY-Drones, a previous public discussion in which the community takes a stand against such actions, can make a substantial difference in the perception and ultimately in the reaction of the public.

Besides this, decades of experience, among others, from the software industry, have shown that the concept "security by obscurity" is faulty by design and that the best way to address security risks always is a public discussion.

-Stefan