ShadowGeek

Now, this is interesting.  I just read a story about the Sea Shepherd activist organization has now deployed a drone to track Japanese whalers.  If you aren’t familiar with Sea Shepherd, it is an anti-whaling organization that follows the Japanese whaling fleet and attempts to disrupt their operations.  You can watch their activities on a reality show.

Well, they just got a donated drone, and are now using it to track the whaling fleet.  This is pretty cool.  This is also an interesting use of the technology that probably wasn’t thought of by the drone inventors.  It makes me wonders where this technology may go in the future.  What would happen if Occupy Wallstreet had a drone overhead constantly, alerting them as to what the police were doing?  How would constant monitoring change police tactics?  Does the police shoot down the drone before evicting the protestors?

In this case, Sea Shepherd and the Japanese whalers are in international waters so there is not police that will claim jurisdiction.  I have to wonder how the Japanese will respond?  Will they even try to shoot down the drone?  I would doubt that they have anything on board the ship that will effectively shoot down a drone.  Maybe they could get lucky with a harpoon, but I doubt it.

This is an interesting development in this multi-year conflict between Sea Shepherd and the Japanese whaling fleet.  As the technology continues to develop it will continue to influence this battle.  Just wait until someone decides to bring along torpedoes.