Moderator Comment by Roberto Navoni on June 14, 2012 at 9:23am

Dear Friends ,

i think that this kind of app is not legal , and the DIYDrones cannot doing this kind of service :(

Best

Roberto

Comment by Mike on June 14, 2012 at 10:39am

Can you please explain what this means: 'the EU’s denial of the legal entry to many non-European
migrants' ?

Developer Comment by Andreas M. Antonopoulos on June 14, 2012 at 11:19am

I would strongly suggest we avoid discussion on the politics of immigration, which is off-topic and in fact against the rules. 

If you are concerned about the legality, morality or politics of drone operations by governments or NGO's, this is probably not the place to discuss. If you think this is the "wrong" cause, then feel free to ... not help them. Since this is a technology site, I think it would be best if we stayed on the topic of technology.

I would be interested in the practicalities of banner-towing over water 

3D Robotics Comment by Chris Anderson on June 14, 2012 at 11:33am

Just chiming in to underscore what Andreas said: discussion of politics is not permitted here. Please only engage on the UAV application, and do not get into debate over the social/political/legal issues of immigration or the mission of this organization. There are other places for that.  

Comment by Daniel Gru on June 14, 2012 at 1:41pm

Great Idea for using the Drones for, no matter if you support the Matter or not.
@Robert Navoni: They don't want to use them for the monitoring yet, they want to fly banners around the boat. Can't see where this would be a legal problem...

Comment by John Wiseman on June 14, 2012 at 2:58pm

Some moderators may need a refresher course in site guidelines and policies.

Comment by Mike on June 14, 2012 at 11:53pm

What hypocrisy. The content of the blog post is highly political, If I am going to comment on technical issues then I have a right to know the basis of their objectives and those objectives are seemingly based on the sentence which I queried. Avoiding political discourse is fine but it does not mean that we blindly ignore people's agendas and particularly when they are overtly political. Allowing the blog post through moderation was maybe the first mistake...

Comment by charles heller on June 15, 2012 at 2:13am

Dear DIYDrones community,

Wonderful to see you so responsive ;)

I’ll of course respect the moderators demand not to enter into debate over the issue of migration policies. Let me just stress that we are academics, and if we may have our political leanings this certainly does not prevent us from producing the most objective and detailed analysis possible. This is what we have done towards our April 2012 report (see http://www.forensic-architecture.org/homepage/fields/investigations... ) using all the technologies we could imagine gathering to this effect, and this is what we are trying to do once again. Our fundamental job and objective is documenting with precision migrants’ deaths and migrants’ rights violations. If in our analysis we remain as descriptive and non-judgemental as possible, this may contribute in turn to the work of NGOs with a deeper political agenda. Personally I am quite happy with that but any collaborator should be conscious of these parameters.

For those who might be interesting in supporting this initiative, here are a bit more technical details:

Apart from flying a banner with messages reminding seafarers of their obligations to assist migrants at sea, there would be a monitoring objective – trying to identify migrants vessels in distress as well as the vessels surrounding them - which is a serious challenge using drone attached cameras since we are talking about an extremely large surface.

As a non-drone specialist reaching out to your community, I could imagine two possibilities:

1) flying a drone from the solidarity boat during its travel from Palermo to Monastir and back to Lampedusa, extending its vision so to speak within a larger perimeter, exactly as military and coast guards use helicopters operating from their deck.

2) flying a drone from either the Tunisian coast at key points of departure or from the island of Lampedusa’s coast, the point of arrival of many migrants’ vessels. So here the drone would be launched from the coast at either end of the main migration axes:

-       1) Tripoli (12' 32.876174, 13.187507)  – Lampedusa (35.508682, 12.592918)

-       2) Jarjis (33.503681, 11.11538) – Lampedusa (35.508682, 12.592918)

-       3) Sfax (34.745159, 10.7613) – Lampedusa (35.508682, 12.592918)

These are the further technical specifications I can provide, of course not only technical feasibility but desire to participate is key ;)

Best, Charles

Comment by Carl La France on June 15, 2012 at 4:20am

Key word "Academics"  DIY stands for  "DO IT YOURSELF"  "Hands On " Try some thing new  Go build some drones and take them out there

Comment by Mike on June 15, 2012 at 9:38am

Charles,

I asked a question, I wasn't opening a debate. your post was political and I asked for you to explain it as the statement is unclear. That aside have you investigated the legality of what you are doing? Prevention is better than cure - spend your time and money on education of local seamen and potential migrants using leaflets and other traditional means, you will get much wider coverage and pass on a more meaningful message. Might not be as sexy but will be far more effective than gimmicks. Drones, in my view, are not the answer to your problem,

Mike

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